Microwave Extrusion

Extrusion technology is mostly utilized in the modern food industry due to its product quality, multifunction, versatility, low cost, high productivity energy and environmentally-friendly. Further, it is a continuous, scalable, and effective pretreatment process. Microwave heating is a promising alternative heating method for food applications. Microwave extrusion shows high potential for upscaling applications whilst maintaining a homogenous temperature distribution throughout the product. Moreover, microwave technology offers high efficiencies and the possibility to use green energy sources. Various expansion mechanisms with various types of extrusion cooking are detailed. Few case studies like Extruded Pellets, Sequential extrusion-microwave pretreatment, Microwave Expansion kinetics on development of various value-added processes and products are discussed in this chapter.