Energy saving food processing

One of the challenges to increase the profitability in the food industry is to reduce the consumption of energy. Energy is mainly consumed by either increasing or decreasing the temperature during the different processes. A known strategy to recover a patt of the consumed energy is to regenerate heat during product's cooling, to preheat the untreated products. To improve energy saving efficiency, many other techniques have been proposed either in the literature or already implemented in the processing chain of food products. These techniques, applied either alone or combined with existing ones, include electrotechnologies (i.e., pulsed IQil electric fields), microwaves, ultrasounds, pulsed light processing, high-pressure processing, and some other technologies that are discussed herein. With regard to the diversity of unit operations in the food industry, this chapter mainly deals with analyzing the energy saving using these novel technologies in pasteurization and sterilization, extraction, evaporation and dehydration, and chilling and freezing. The mechanisms of action of the described technologies as weil as their advantages and disadvantages are discussed.