Comparative assessment of innovative and conventional food preservation technologies: Process energy performance and greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract

This study aims to establish whether innovative food preservation technologies can offer significant reductions in energy consumption and corresponding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while delivering equivalent microbiological lethality, nutritional and organoleptic quality to conventional processes. The energy demand of high pressure processing, microwave, ohmic and conventional heating technologies, for achieving the same pasteurising effect in orange juice under commercially-representative processing conditions are measured and compared. The corresponding GHG emissions are evaluated using UK energy system emissions data, while the effect of equipment scale is explored empirically. The results show that for the same product quality, the innovative technologies are more energy-and non-renewable primary resource-efficient, with ohmic heating performing best, followed by high pressure

High‐pressure processing, microwave, ohmic, and conventional thermal pasteurization: Quality aspects and energy economics

“…Current industrial HPP systems operate usually in batch mode, which increases labor costs. Industrial ohmic heaters are of the continuous‐flow type, which are about 20% more efficient for liquid food pasteurization than the batch system studied in this work as the power losses due to voltage switching does not occur (Atuonwu et al, ). Wang et al () also showed empirically that the energy performance of microwave heaters improves with scale.…”

“…When the target temperature was reached, the OJ flowed through the holding tube for the desired residence time before subsequent cooling. Further details of each processing equipment are available in Atuonwu et al (). In all the processes, electrical power and energy consumption were measured using Fluke energy meters.…”

“…All the thermal processes had temperature–time trajectories (Atuonwu et al, ), equivalent to 70°C for 2 min based on the death time Equation (1) for a z ‐value of 7.5°C. Heating at 70°C for 2 min has been used in previous work (Pao & Davis, ) to achieve a 5‐log Escherichia coli population reduction in orange media.…”

“…Comprehensive reviews of previous work in these areas include Ortega‐Rivas and Salmeron‐Ochoa (), Gabrić et al (), Jiménez‐Sánchez, Lozano‐Sánchez, Segura‐Carretero, and Fernández‐Gutiérrez (), Barba, Koubaa, Prado‐Silva, Orlien, and de Souza Sant'Ana (), and Bevilacqua et al () studies. Other studies have focused primarily on energy and sustainability issues (Aganovic et al, ; Atuonwu et al, ; Atuonwu & Tassou, , ; Rodriguez‐Gonzalez, Buckow, Koutchama, & Balasubramamian, ). Atuonwu et al () compared the energy consumption per liter of orange juice by microwave, ohmic, HPP, and conventional thermal processes as well as the associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.…”

“…Other studies have focused primarily on energy and sustainability issues (Aganovic et al, ; Atuonwu et al, ; Atuonwu & Tassou, , ; Rodriguez‐Gonzalez, Buckow, Koutchama, & Balasubramamian, ). Atuonwu et al () compared the energy consumption per liter of orange juice by microwave, ohmic, HPP, and conventional thermal processes as well as the associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Studies simultaneously considering energy, energy economics, nutritional, and sensory quality aspects have been rare.…”