Scale-up to pilot plant dimensions of plasma processed water generation for fresh-cut lettuce treatment

Publication date: Available online 23 August 2017 Source:Food Packaging and Shelf Life Author(s): Mathias Andrasch, Jörg Stachowiak, Oliver Schlüter, Uta Schnabel, Jörg Ehlbeck The increasing demands of society for healthy nutrition in combination with continuously decreasing willingness to spend time for food preparation leads to a rising consumer demand for minimal processed ready-to-eat (RTE) products (convenient food). The USA is the leading nation in the consumption and therefore, the biggest market for these kinds of products. Thus, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has long term experience in the evaluation of consequences of the consumption of minimal processed RTE products. This authority publicized a list of the ten riskiest foods with leafy greens on the top. Sanitation steps based on plasma processes could be an promising addition to conventional cleaning procedures. Plasma, often introduced as forth state of matter, differs from the gaseous state of matter by a certain amount of free charge carriers caused by ionization processes of the gas atoms and molecules due to the supply of energy. The electrical conductivity allows supplying the energy needed to sustain this state electrically, giving access to a huge variety of plasma generation methods with excitation frequencies from DC to several GHz offering wide parameter ranges e.g. electron energies from 0.5eV to 10eV. The treatment of natural products with changing parameters like size, shape ...
Source: Food Packaging and Shelf Life - Category: Food Science Source Type: research