Flat pasta noodles are grooved to allow curls, spirals and tubes to form while being cooked. This allows reductions in packaging spaces and waste production.
Figure 1. Pasta in varying shapes, bends and twists.
People have always loved eating pasta. From the tube shaped penne to spiral-like rotini pastas, people have come to also love pasta’s interesting shapes.
Nonetheless, these unique shapes come at the cost of requiring significant packaging. Usually, these pastas need larger bags or boxes for the intricate shaping, leading to manufacturing issues and waste production. For some pasta shapes, over 60% of the packaging ends up being filled with air. This is because complex shapes can lead to inefficient packaging spaces.
Carnegie Mellong University’ (CMU)’s Morphing Matter Lab is working to develop flat pasta that molds into characteristic shapes when cooked. Yeo and colleagues experimented with pasta dough made entirely of semolina flour and water. The team stamped a series of grooves onto one side of each of the noodles. They found that because the pasta absorbed water during cooking, the liquid couldn’t fully penetrate onto the grooved side. This caused less swelling or expanding on the grooved side compared to the smooth side. This also increased the time taken for the grooved pasta side to cook. Asymmetric swelling led to bending and morphing of the flat noodles into a variety of curves. Careful planning of groove placement allowed the team to control pasta shape as it cooked.
Figure 2. Morphing pasta shapes simulation.
This great technique is not just limited to pasta and food. Grooves can be used to control the shape of virtually any material that can similarly swell. For example, researchers have performed experiments on silicone rubbers like Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). This is a common silicone rubber used in cosmetics and defoaming agents.
In many solvents, flat silicone rubber sheets with similar grooving techniques showed similar results to the self-shaping pasta. Nonetheless, while pasta held its shape, silicone rubbers eventually absorbed enough solvent over time to swell then flatten again. The authors explained these differences as being directly connected to the gluey nature of cooked pasta. This helps to lock in the bends in the cooking proceeds and fuse together the neighbouring groves. Nonetheless, the researchers found that removal of PDMS from solvent causes bends to move back in the opposite direction. This solvent-dependent, reversible bending process can possibly be great for applications like grabbers in small robotic hands. This application is yet to be explored.
Plastic materials used in food packaging are a major contributor to landfill and ocean waste each year. The group believes that self-shaping pasta is critical to reduce waste from shape dependent packaging, and shipping or storage space. Ultimately, this strategy can lower carbon footprints across the globe and help move towards a greener future.
The findings of this research have been published in the Journal of Science Advances:
Tao, Y.; Lee, Y. C.; Liu, H.; Zhang, X.; Cui, J.; Mondoa, C.; Babaei, M.; Santillan, J.; Wang, G.; Luo, D.; et al. Morphing Pasta and Beyond. Sci. Adv. 2021, 7 (19). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf4098.
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