Quantitative Bio-spectroscopy

The Danish food, pharma and biotech industries have in recent years shown a steadily increased interest in developing and adapting spectroscopic measurement techniques for rapid quality control and for on-line monitoring of their processes in real time. The advantages of using non-destructive spectroscopic measurement techniques may give significant improvements in raw material grading, product and process knowledge, quality and safety. It is endorsed by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) for use in the pharmaceutical industry as a key technology in Process Analytical Technology (PAT). Spectral sensors in combination with multivariate data analysis have the potential to minimize raw material use, energy and waste in most manufacturing processes. This has the potential to provide a major contribution to the future sustainable production. These tools are some of the most important elements in the future transition to digital food manufacturing and industry 4.0 manufacturing solutions.

Spectroscopic methods have several advantages over classic chemical and chromatographic measurement techniques for quality control and process monitoring:

• Rapid: This is an advantage for at-line Quality Control (QC) and for monitoring process dynamics
• Non-destructive: This facilitates measurements on intact samples which is a requirement for on-line and in-line measurements
• Green analytics: In contrast to chromatographic methods, spectroscopic methods require no sample preparation and thus use no chemicals and make no harm to the environment
• Multivariate: Typically, a large number of wavelengths are measured simultaneously, which makes it possible to exploit the first order data advantage and to measure several quality parameters simultaneously
• Remote: This is an advantage which allows for non-contact and 'through packaging' measurements.

Through lectures and hands-on laboratory exercises, the course will introduce and familiarize the students to/with the most widely used spectroscopic techniques spanning a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum including visual (VIS) , near infrared (NIR), infrared (IR), Raman and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

Course relevance
The course is of prime importance to the food, pharma and biotech candidate education as on-line process monitoring becomes more and more widespread in the advanced segment of the industry and because spectroscopy constitutes an efficient tool for investigating biological processes in industry, humans and plants. Furthermore, the methods have the potential to ensure a sustainable production, since they can optimize processes and hereby reduce the raw material need together with reduction in the energy and water use (targeting especially the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, but also SDG 3: Zero Hunger).