Fouling is a widespread and costly issue, faced by all food-processing industries. Particularly, in the dairy sector, where thermal treatments are mandatory to ensure product safety, heat-induced fouling represents up to 80% of the total production costs. Significant environmental impacts, due the massive consumption of water and energy, are also to deplore. Fouling control solutions are thus desperately needed, as they would lead to substantial financial gains as well as tremendous progress toward eco-responsible processes. This work aims at presenting a novel and very promising dairy fouling-mitigation strategy, inspired by nature, and to test its antifouling performances in real industrial conditions. Slippery liquid-infused surfaces were successfully designed directly on food grade stainless steel, via femtosecond laser ablation, followed by fluorosilanization and impregnation with an inert perfluorinated oil. Resulting hydrophobic surfaces (water contact angle of 112°) exhibited an extremely slippery nature (contact angle hysteresis of 0.6°). Outstanding fouling-release performances were obtained for these liquid-infused surfaces as absolutely no trace of dairy deposit was found after 90 min of pasteurization test in pilot-scale equipment followed by a short water rinse.

This paper presents a feasibility step in the development of an ultra-small biomimetic flying machine. Advanced engineering technologies available for applications such as the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technologies are used. To achieve this goal, a flapping-wing flying MEMS concept and design inspired from insects is first described. Actuators and an actuation way for the control over the wing kinematics are proposed. The initial concepts are subsequently analyzed and presented using multi-body and finite element models. An overview of SU-8 photoresist structures and their functions in the future micro-robot insect is then presented. Consequently, micromachining enables the implementation of a flying MEMS. It is also demonstrated that the structure can be made at insect sizes and actuated at low power inputs. Moreover, the flapping frequency obtained is within the flapping frequency range of wings of many common insects of millimetric dimensions. Such prototypes are of interest as tools to artificially recreate and study insect flight with characteristics, similar to those of insects, that are able to produce lift and hover. Finally, if a micro-battery, wireless receivers, microcontrollers, sensors and actuators can all be fitted onto chips only a few millimeters square, with a mass in the order of milligrams, then we believe that an insect-size flying MEMS can be realized. All these requirements can now be achieved due to advanced engineering methods.