Non-conventional cold storage regime for food at subzero temperature; challenges and recent developments

The use of cold storage is the most popular method to preserve highly perishable foods, such as beef and fish. However, at refrigeration temperatures the shelf life of these foods is limited, and spoilage leads to massive food waste. Moreover, freezing significantly affects the food's properties. Ice crystallization and growth during freezing will cause irreversible textural damage to the food through volumetric expansion, moisture migration by induced osmotic pressure gradients, and freeze concentration of solutes leading to protein denaturation. Although freezing will preserve perishable foods for months, these disruptive changes decrease the consumer's perception of the food's quality. Therefore, the development and testing of new and improved cold storage technologies is a worthwhile pursuit. Chilling is defined as a storage between 0 degrees C and the initial freezing point (IFP). Superchilling is a process that combines low temperature storage below the IFP with the conversion of some water into ice, which makes it less available for deteriorative reactions. The low storage temperature delays the growth of many spoilage microorganisms, and as only some water contained in the food product is transformed into ice, less textural damages due to crystal growth should occur. The process of maintaining a food product unfrozen below its IFP is known as supercooling. As supercooling was found to have a sizable improvement over refrigeration on a perishable product's shelf life, the implementation of supercooling areas in household and commercial refrigeration units would help in diminishing food waste. Currently, a commercially viable supercooling unit for all perishable food items is being developed and fabricated. The buildup of this technology will provide a meaningful improvement in cold storage of perishable foods, and will have a significant impact on the refrigeration market as a whole. This presentation will address emerging technologies associated with chilling, superchilling, and supercooling, as well as broader scientific impacts to demonstrate how conventional refrigeration technologies could be improved and how emerging technologies would be successfully ramped up for commercialization, in terms of food quality, energy consumption, and environmental impact while gaining consumers' perceptions.