Environmental impact of novel thermal and non-thermal technologies in food processing

Abstract

a b s t r a c tDuring the last 25 years, consumer demands for more convenient and varied food products have grown exponentially, together with the need for faster production rates, improved quality and extension in shelf life. These requests together with the severity of the traditional food processing technologies were driving forces for improvements in existing technologies and for the development of new food preservation technologies. Therefore, many technological developments have been directed towards unit operations such as pasteurization, sterilization, cooking and drying, and currently the new technological approaches for food preservation are serious candidates to replace the traditional well-established preservation processes. The aim of this review is to discuss the environmental impact that some of the most promising novel food preservation technologies may represent in terms of energy efficiency, water savings and reduced emissions. The emergence of novel thermal and non-thermal technologies allows producing high quality products with improvements in terms of heating efficiency and, consequently, in energy savings. Most of these technologies are locally clean processes and therefore appear to be more environmentfriendly, having less environmental impact than the traditional ones. Novel processing technologies are increasingly attracting the attention of food processors once they can provide food products with improved quality and a reduced environmental footprint, while reducing processing costs and improving the added-value of the products.

Three Pillars of Novel Nonthermal Food Technologies: Food Safety, Quality, and Environment

“…Besides obtaining safe products with high quality with nonthermal technologies, food processors are increasing their interest in reducing the environmental footprint of the products and the processing cost [169]. However, analysis and comparison of environmental impacts of nonthermal technologies pose a challenge mainly because of the differences in the scale of the facilities and food processed (meat, egg, fruit, vegetables, liquid food, etc.).…”

Modeling of the process of peeling jerusalem artichoke in order to determine parameters for conducting production process

“…Consumption of supporting material at alkaline peeling method is significantly larger because their cost, in addition to water, steam and electricity, includes alkali, which significantly increases the cost of the peeled raw material [11].…”

Aplicación industrial de los pulsos eléctricos de alto voltaje para la pasteurización de alimentos: revisión de su viabilidad técnica y comercial

“…En la actualidad apenas existen estudios sobre el impacto ambiental que podrı´a tener el uso de esta tecnologı´a (Pereira & Vicente, 2010). En cualquier caso, se estima que los PEAV es uno de los procesos de conservacio´n emergentes má s respetuosos con el ambiente, ya que u´nicamente consume corriente ele´ctrica y no genera ningu´n tipo de producto de desecho (emisio´n de CO 2 , productos de combustio´n, etc.).…”

“…Ası´, otro de los pilares fundamentales en los que se asienta la implantacio´n de cualquier tecnologı´a es el estudio de su viabilidad te´cnica, econo´mica y comercial, sin olvidar su posible impacto ambiental (Pereira & Vicente, 2010;Siegrist, 2008). Sin embargo, debido a que la mayorı´a de estudios existentes sobre los PEAV se han realizado en laboratorio, apenas existen trabajos especı´ficos que consideren alguno de estos factores, y mucho menos estudios que los analicen de manera global.…”