Dynamic modeling of milk acidification: an empirical approach

Acidification is an important process in the production of several dairy products and has an impact in taste, viscosity, and shelf life of the products. This paper deals with the development of an empirical mathematical model to describe milk acidification in terms of pH dynamics. The model is built upon experiments of pasteurized skimmed milk acidification for acid-induced casein precipitation and extended to predict the partitioning of calcium and phosphates in the whey and the dynamics of pH during fermentation of yoghurt manufacture. Furthermore, the model can be used directly or in optimization problems to provide recommendations about product design.