Food production values

[Paculino]

I started adding onto the food production XML (fixed a typo "slat" to "salt") as well as the resources and meal XMLs, and noticed some discrepancies where the output amount did not seem to match the input. The major discrepancy was for rice flour, which based upon the XML is 80 % water by mass. Should it not be more similar to soy flour in this manner (this is how I edited it to be)? The other discrepancies made more sense, as water can boil off, or food waste, and about these I am only curious as to whether or not the sim takes these into account when calculating partial pressure of water vapour and the waste production.

[mokun]

@Paculino ,

I suppose you're looking the process called "Process Soybean into Soy Flour" here in foodProduction.xml

Great that you pointed this out we may need to adjust the amount of water.

So the question is, what the amount of water by percentage of the input weight when producing rice flour ?

The other discrepancies made more sense, as water can boil off, or food waste, and about these I am only curious as to whether or not the sim takes these into account when calculating partial pressure of water vapour and the waste production.

Yes I assume it will go through some cycles of boiling and a lot of water will be lost. For now, it was just simple input and output.

Q: are you able to find any good reference out there as to how much water is actually needed to turn the white rice into rice flour approximately ?

I saw this one and this page but it talks about only the dry mass and gives the breakdown of protein, carbohydrates, etc. We haven't gotten down to that level of nutrition modeling yet.

whether or not the sim takes these into account when calculating partial pressure of water vapour and the waste production.

Not yet. We didn't consider the specific type of waste being produced when doing food production. No calculation on how the water vapor may be recaptured.

After each meal is being consumed, the kitchen will create some generic amount of food waste and that's it.

For sure, we can model better if you can come across any useful reference

Do by all means post any link you want us to use to improve our modeling.

[Paculino]

Unmodified rice flour can be dry-milled de-hulled rice, so it does not necessarily need any water unless you want to rinse or wash with sodium hypochlorite as with soy sprouts. If the macronutrient levels are adjusted, then I am unsure how much water would be required with the level of infrastructure in a mars base. If reducing fat content is the goal (assuming the process works like with partially defatting peanuts), then blending with water and waiting for the emulsion of oils in water to rise (or centrifuging, but I have not tried this) before removing oil and water should work. Extrapolating my experience with small-scale peanut fat reduction may not apply, and a centrifuge may be required to reduce fat in rice flower. Is the rice flour meant to be rice protein in powder form, or regular dry rice flour?

According to the Wikipedia page on (unmodified) rice flour, it can be milled while dry (whether soaked and dried or just never soaked) and be shelf stable without extra processing, or milled while moist from rinsing and need to be kept cold (or dehydrated?). A form of sweetened rice cake can also be made similarly, but is not shelf-stable, according to Wikipedia.

I found a video of someone removing fat from rice bran meal with hexane rather than water, and a centrifuge was required. I assume that a bacterial culture could then be used to mostly convert the carbs into simpler sugars and/or alcohol, and then the protein could more easily be extracted and dehydrated and powdered. My only edit to the rice flour was an assumption that the flour would be 0 % water when done processing, and that the water was only used to rinse (without sodium hypochlorite).

[mokun]

@Paculino

it does not necessarily need any water

oh I see. Then it's just a matter of grinding the rice without having to boil them in water...

a centrifuge may be required to reduce fat in rice flower.

Yes if we want that process to isolate the protein and other nutrients, we can specify the need of a centrifuge device.

Chances are we should create a different process to extract whatever you have in mind.

Is the rice flour meant to be rice protein in powder form, or regular dry rice flour?

I suppose this process is only supposed to create it's just dry rice flour. Once we start model protein and fat and carbohydrates, we can certainly expand what we output.

There is another process called "Process Rice into White Rice and rice bran oil". By definition, the fat is being extracted into oil isolate.

The rice bran oil is one of the 6 types of oil being produced. For now, some of the meals requires the use of a little bit of oil.

If no oil is being produced in a settlement, the quality score of meal in a kitchen will be lower.

Note that the quality score of each batch of meals is being displayed in the Kitchen/Cafeteria tab in the settlement unit window / panel.

So the question is, if we create a new resource called rice protein, how and in what would we be able to use it for what purpose at this point ?

[mokun]

I just added new contents in our Food Production wiki.

In particular, the sections Preparing Meal and Oil for Meals are the new addition.

Let's discuss more on how we might improve the modeling in near future.

[mokun]

I found a video of someone removing fat from rice bran meal with hexane rather than water,

I just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxVsjpLueyk

One problem is that once things are mixed with hexane, none of the ingredients are good for eating anymore, right ?

[Paculino]

Hexane is a common solvent for food(-grade oils such as soy and rapeseed according to wikipedia), but its vapours should be avoided, especially in confined areas; it has a high vapour pressure and is flammable (it is probably safest to do this in a glovebox). Because it is non-polar, it is relatively poor at dissolving carbs and proteins. Once the lipids are dissolved in it, the hexane can be drained off via gravity filtration or vacuum filtration, and then the process can be repeated (mixing with hexane) to achieve greater efficiency of lipid removal, or one could start the next step. The next step would be to separate the lipids and hexane, possibly through (low-pressure) distillation, and to remove residual hexane from the defatted meal. Because hexane and water are not miscible, submerging (and centrifuging) the damp defatted meal in water and draining the top layer, followed with drying, would remove most of the hexane. Another possible method to remove hexane from the meal (or additional step for redundancy) would be to repeatedly rinse with ethanol and gravity/vacuum filter, because ethanol will mix with hexane.

Much of the hexane could be recovered if distilled carefully, but undoubtedly there would be waste. However, Hexane's formula allows it to be synthesized through the Fischer-Tropsch process, (2n + 1) H2 + n CO → CnH(2n+2) + n H2O, in order to make up for losses.

I think that the easiest way to remove the carbohydrates from the protein in small scales would be using yeast to turn the carbs into alcohol, and then distilling off the alcohol using low-pressure (in order to not denature the proteins with heat), but I'm sure that there are much more efficient methods that scale better.

PubChem Miscibility source

[mokun]

The use of hexane as solvent would involve a higher fidelity of simulation than we are currently having.

But food production will certainly be a big area to explore when colonists start flooding in.

Before we can produce food, what will the plan of scaling up the crop produce ?

Any prospects for be using lab growth methods of producing food to feed the population ?

[mokun]

@Paculino,

I just went ahead and fixed those startup issues since I need it to work in order for me to test on the mission related issues.

You are welcome to contribute to mars-sim in whatever areas you are interested in.

[mokun]

@Paculino

Are you closing this thread ?