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The document discusses chilling and freezing as unit operations used to preserve foods. Chilling reduces the temperature of foods to between -1°C and -8°C to slow microbial and biochemical changes while minimally impacting sensory and nutritional properties. Freezing reduces the temperature below the freezing point to immobilize water and reduce water activity for preservation. Both operations remove heat through mechanical refrigeration systems or cryogenic systems using substances like liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide that undergo phase changes. Precise temperature control during chilling, freezing, and storage is important for safety, quality and shelf life.
The document discusses chilling and freezing as unit operations used to preserve foods. Chilling reduces the temperature of foods to between -1°C and -8°C to slow microbial and biochemical changes while minimally impacting sensory and nutritional properties. Freezing reduces the temperature below the freezing point to immobilize water and reduce water activity for preservation. Both operations remove heat through mechanical refrigeration systems or cryogenic systems using substances like liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide that undergo phase changes. Precise temperature control during chilling, freezing, and storage is important for safety, quality and shelf life.
The document discusses chilling and freezing as unit operations used to preserve foods. Chilling reduces the temperature of foods to between -1°C and -8°C to slow microbial and biochemical changes while minimally impacting sensory and nutritional properties. Freezing reduces the temperature below the freezing point to immobilize water and reduce water activity for preservation. Both operations remove heat through mechanical refrigeration systems or cryogenic systems using substances like liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide that undergo phase changes. Precise temperature control during chilling, freezing, and storage is important for safety, quality and shelf life.
• Chilling is the unit operation in which the temperature
of a food is reduced to between -1ºC and -8ºC. • used to reduce the rate of biochemical and microbiological changes, • causes minimal changes to sensory characteristics and nutritional properties of foods • chilled foods are perceived by consumers as being convenient, easy to prepare, high quality and ‘healthy’, ‘natural’ and ‘fresh’. • often used in combination with other unit operations (for example fermentation or pasteurisation to extend the shelf life of mildly processed foods. • greater preservative effect when chilling is combined with control of the composition of the storage atmosphere • not all foods can be chilled and tropical, subtropical and some temperate fruits, for example, suffer from chilling injury at 3–10ºC above their freezing point. • Chilled foods are grouped into three categories according to their storage temperature range as follows: • -1ºC to +1ºC (fresh fish, meats, sausages and ground meats, smoked meats ). • 0ºC to +5ºC (pasteurised canned meat, milk, cream, yoghurt, prepared salads,etc.) • 0ºC to +8ºC (fully cooked meats and fish pies, cooked or uncooked cured meats,butter, margarine, hard cheese etc.). Theory Fresh foods • The rate of biochemical changes increases logarithmically with temperature . • Chilling therefore reduces the rate of enzymatic and microbiological change and retards respiration of fresh foods. • The factors that control the shelf life of fresh crops in chill storage include: • • the type of food and variety or cultivar • • the part of the crop selected (the fastest growing parts have the highest metabolic rates and the shortest storage lives ) • • the condition of the food at harvest (for example the presence of mechanical damage or microbial contamination, and the degree of maturity) • • the temperature of harvest, storage, distribution and retail display • • the relative humidity of the storage atmosphere, which influences dehydration losses. • Undesirable changes to some fruits and vegetables occur when the temperature is reduced below a specific optimum for the individual fruit. • termed chilling injury and results in various physiological changes (for example internal or external browning, failure to ripen and skin blemishes). • In animal tissues, aerobic respiration rapidly declines when the supply of oxygenated blood is stopped at slaughter. • Anaerobic respiration of glycogen to lactic acid then causes the pH of the meat to fall, and the onset of rigor mortis, in which the muscle tissue becomes firm and inextensible. • Cooling during anaerobic respiration is necessary to produce the required texture and colour of meat and to reduce bacterial contamination. • Undesirable changes, caused by cooling meat before rigor mortis has occurred, are termed cold shortening. • To chill fresh foods it is necessary to remove both sensible heat (also known as field heat) and heat generated by respiratory activity. • Processed foods • A reduction in temperature below the minimum necessary for microbial growth extends the generation time of micro- organisms and in effect prevents or retards reproduction. • prevents the growth of thermophilic and many mesophilic micro-organisms. • The main microbiological concerns with chilled foods are a number of pathogens that can grow during extended refrigerated storage below 5ºC, or as a result of any increase in temperature (temperature abuse) and thus cause food poisoning • The shelf life of chilled processed foods is determined by: • the type of food • the degree of microbial destruction or enzyme inactivation achieved by the process • control of hygiene during processing and packaging • the barrier properties of the package • temperatures during processing, distribution and storage. • The range of chilled foods can be characterised by the class of microbial risk that they pose to consumers as follows: • Class 1 foods containing raw or uncooked ingredients, such as salad or cheese as ready-to-eat (RTE) foods • Class 2 products made from a mixture of cooked and low risk raw ingredients • Class 3 cooked products that are then packaged • Class 4 products that are cooked after packaging, including ready-to-eat-products for-extended-durability (REPFEDs) having a shelf life of 40+ days Equipment • classified by the method used to remove heat, into: • • mechanical refrigerators • • cryogenic systems. • Batch or continuous operation is possible with both types of equipment, but all should lower the temperature of the product as quickly as possible through the critical warm zone (50–10ºC) where maximum growth of micro-organisms occurs • The chilling medium in mechanically cooled chillers may be air, water or metal surfaces. • Air chillers (for example blast chillers) use forced convection thus reduce the thickness of boundary films • used in refrigerated vehicles, but food should be adequately chilled when loaded onto the vehicle Cryogenic chilling • A cryogen is a refrigerant that changes phase by absorbing latent heat to cool the food. • Cryogenic chillers use solid carbon dioxide, liquid carbon dioxide or liquid nitrogen. • Solid carbon dioxide can be used in the form of ‘dry- ice’ pellets, or liquid carbon dioxide can be injected into air to produce fine particles of solid carbon dioxide ‘snow’, which rapidly sublime to gas. • Both types are deposited onto, or mixed with, food in combo bins, trays, cartons or on conveyors. • A small excess of snow or pellets continues the cooling during transportation or storage prior to further processing • Liquid nitrogen is used in both freezing and chilling operations. • The liquid nitrogen vaporises immediately and the fans distribute the cold gas around the cabinet to achieve a uniform reduction in product temperature. Chill storage • Control of storage conditions • The importance of maintaining temperatures below 5ºC to meet safety, quality and legal requirements for high-risk products • Fresh products may also require control of the relative humidity in a storeroom, and in some cases control over the composition of the storage atmosphere Temperature monitoring • Temperature monitoring is an integral part of quality management and product safety management throughout the production and distribution chain. Freezing • unit operation in which the temperature of a food is reduced below its freezing point and a proportion of the water undergoes a change in state to form ice crystals. • The immobilisation of water to ice and the resulting concentration of dissolved solutes in unfrozen water lower the water activity (aw) of the food • Preservation is achieved by a combination of low temperatures, reduced water activity and, in some foods, pre-treatment by blanching. • There are only small changes to nutritional or sensory qualities of foods • During freezing, sensible heat is first removed to lower the temperature of a food to the freezing point. • In fresh foods, heat produced by respiration is also removed • This is termed the heat load, and is important in determining the correct size of freezing equipment for a particular production rate. • Most foods contain a large proportion of water , which has a high specific heat and a high latent heat of Crystallisation . • A substantial amount of energy is therefore needed to remove latent heat, form ice crystals and hence to freeze foods. • Energy for freezing is supplied as electrical energy, which is used to compress gases (refrigerants) in mechanical freezing equipment Ice crystal formation • freezing point of a food may be described as ‘the temperature at which a minute crystal of ice exists in equilibrium with the surrounding water’. • However, before an ice crystal can form, a nucleus of water molecules must be present. • Nucleation therefore precedes ice crystal formation. • The rate of ice crystal growth is controlled by the rate of heat transfer for the majority of the freezing plateau. • The time taken for the temperature of a food to pass through the critical zone therefore determines both the number and the size of ice crystals. Solute concentration • increase in solute concentration during freezing causes changes in the pH, viscosity,surface tension and redox potential of the unfrozen liquor. • As the temperature falls, individual solutes reach saturation point and crystallise out. • The temperature at which a crystal of an individual solute exists in equilibrium with the unfrozen liquor and ice is its eutectic temperature • Commercial foods are not frozen to such low temperatures and unfrozen water is therefore always present. Volume changes • The volume of ice is 9% greater than that of pure water, and an expansion of foods after freezing would therefore be expected. • However, the degree of expansion varies considerably owing to the following factors: • • moisture content (higher moisture contents produce greater changes in volume) • • cell arrangement (plant materials have intercellular air spaces which absorb internal increases in volume without large changes in their overall size) • The concentrations of solutes (high concentrations reduce the freezing point and do not freeze – or expand – at commercial freezing temperatures) • • the freezer temperature (this determines the amount of unfrozen water and hence the degree of expansion) • • crystallised components, including ice, fats and solutes, contract when they are cooled and this reduces the volume of the food. Equipment • Freezers are broadly categorised into: • • mechanical refrigerators, which evaporate and compress a refrigerant in a continuous cycle and use cooled air, cooled liquid or cooled surfaces to remove heat from foods • • cryogenic freezers, which use solid or liquid carbon dioxide, liquid nitrogen directly in contact with the food. • Cooled-air freezers : chest freezers food is frozen in stationary (natural-circulation) air at between- 20ºC and -30ºC. • blast freezers, air is recirculated over food at between 30ºC and 40ºC at a velocity of 1.5–6.0 m /s • Fluidised-bed freezers are modified blast freezers in which air at between -25ºC and -35ºC is passed at a high velocity (2–6 m s1) through a 2–13 cm bed of food, contained on a perforated tray or conveyor belt • Cooled-liquid freezers: immersion freezers, packaged food is passed through a bath of refrigerated propylene glycol, brine, glycerol or calcium chloride solution on a submerged mesh conveyor. • Cooled-surface freezers : Plate freezers consist of a vertical or horizontal stack of hollow plates, through which refrigerant is pumped at -40ºC • Scraped-surface freezers are used for liquid or semi-solid foods (for example ice cream) • In ice cream manufacture, the rotor scrapes frozen food from the wall of the freezer barrel and simultaneously incorporates air. • The increase in volume of the product due to the air is expressed as overrun • Cryogenic freezers : Freezers of this type are characterised by a change of state in the refrigerant (or cryogen) as heat is absorbed from the freezing food. • The heat from the food therefore provides the latent heat of vaporisation or sublimation of the cryogen. • The cryogen is in intimate contact with the food and rapidly removes heat from all surfaces of the food to produce high heat transfer coefficients and rapid freezing. • The two most common refrigerants are liquid nitrogen and solid or liquid carbon dioxide. • In liquid-nitrogen freezers, packaged or unpackaged food travels on a perforated belt through a tunnel , where it is frozen by liquid-nitrogen sprays and by gaseous nitrogen. Effect of freezing