An Elementary Review on Principles and Applications of Modern Non-Conventional Food Processing Technologies

Abstract

Post-harvest processing and value addition is the most important aspect related to all the food products. Processing of agricultural commodities means converting the raw food material in to consumer acceptable form with increased shelf life and maintained nutritional quality. It can be achieved through various conventional food processing methods like drying, dehydration, evaporation, extrusion, freezing etc. The main lacunae with these conventional methods are loss of colour, flavour, vitamins and other nutrients due to higher temperature and longer processing time. These methods also causes problems like fouling on heating surface, energy inefficiency and emission of combustion gases in to the atmosphere leading to atmospheric pollution. The non-conventional food processing technologies like ohmic heating, microwave heating, ultrasound, pulsed electric field and high pressure processing are modern processing and preservation methods, rising as green technologies in food processing sector which represents environmental impact in terms of energy efficiency, water savings and reduced pollution. These technologies can produce high quality products with improvements in terms of heating efficiency, energy savings, reduced time and processing costs. All these technologies have wide range of applications in food industry like pasteurization, sterilization, oil extraction, juice extraction, clarification, filtration, cooking, baking, blanching, evaporation, drying, and dehydration. A comprehensive review is made to study the working principles, equipments, applications, advantages and limitations of these processing methods for used in various food product development and preservation operations.