A lauded refrigeration technique and resource-efficiency of frozen food industry
Kostadin Fikiin, Stepan Akterian
Abstract
An emerging mode of refrigerated preservation has recently been advertised as an allegedly game-changing means to improve the overall sustainability of global frozen food industry. Isochoric low-temperature pressure-aided supercooling (named ‘isochoric freezing’) creates exciting expectations, associated with reduced or eliminated ice crystallisation and resulting finer food structure, along with savings of cold energy for phase change. A simplified technology assessment has been carried out by comparing this emerging modality with the conventional isobaric freezing for a typical lab-scale scenario. Except several niche applications, in general the lauded method appears to underperform classical isobaric freezing in terms of applicability, and overall usage of resources and energy.