A short review of capacitive dielectric treatment of foodstuffs
Special Symposium - Innovations in Food Technology (LMC Congress)
Process & Product Innovation (Food-4a)
Keywords: heat transfer, radio-frequency processing, thermal treatment
Dielectric heating in the radio-wave frequency is recognized as generally even and fast heating method. Recently, literature showed an increasing interest on this technology applied to food processing. In particular, four are the targets of treating foodstuffs by means of radio-waves: even heating, fast heating, increased quality of final product, higher energy efficiency of process. Most of recent papers on this subject deal with solid-like foodstuff, basically meat based products, vegetables and fruits. For meat products and vegetables the target of processing is the cooking and the sterilization or the pasteurization of the product. For fruits (in-shell or not) radio-frequency heating is applied basically for insect and pest control.
In this paper, these two category of processes (meat based products treatment and pest control in fruits) based on application of radio-waves are analysed and discussed on the basis of specific factors influencing the process, such as dielectric properties, thermal properties, water content and chemical composition, as well as specific RF power supplied.
Presented Thursday 20, 11:15 to 11:30, in session Process & Product Innovation (Food-4a) continued.
