Process Analytical Technology

The term “process analytical technology” (PAT) has been used to describe the application of analytical chemistry and process chemistry combined with the multivariate tools for process understanding. PAT is a wide and complex theme, making it difficult to capture all the features in this chapter. This chapter is presented from a food technology perspective. The food industry is aiming at better-controlled, faster, safer, more sustainable, and more automated processes to achieve an efficient management of products’ quality. PAT allows achieving process control and continuous product quality management by integrating specific sensors in the streamline. These sensors are connected to an intelligent and dynamic informatics platform, allowing a better process understanding in all stages. Chemometrics aims at extracting relevant information from a (bio)chemical process by applying computational statistical techniques, being crucial for the integration of PAT in industrial processes. With the present computation development allied to sensor development, the multivariate ability of chemometrics will allow real-time managing of industrial food processes at different levels.