E. Coli in undercooked hamburger meat causes as many as 300,000 cases of food poisoning in the U.S. each year. The FDA recommends cooking hamburger until a temperature of 160°F is reached throughout, but that is an overly simplistic approach. The rate of destruction of E. Coli is approximately first order, with a temperature-dependent rate constant. If the temperature profile of a hamburger is known, then it is possible to determine the rate of destruction of E. Coli, and therefore to predict the time required for complete destruction of all bacteria. Many chemical engineers work in food engineering, both in industry and in government. Food engineers improve food collection and production methods (agriculture), are involved with extraction and concentration (corn oil, vitamins), and apply traditional chemical engineering in conversion processes in the production of mayonnaise, dried potatoes, or beer and other processed foods. Food engineers also work in food storage, product quality for cooking, and are involved in food safety. There are several thousand companies that process food and hire engineers, just in the U.S. This is a field that all engineering students are intimately familiar with, from their experience with processed foods throughout their lives. There is significant rationale for showing chemical engineering students how to apply traditional chemical engineering methods to food. This paper describes one such effort to do so in a "computational methods" class at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR).
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