Page 14 - Food&Drink Magazine August 2019

PROCESSING TECH UPDATE
Novel technologies, new approaches
At FoodTech Qld, CSIRO research scientist Ciara McDonnell spoke about novel technologies with exciting applications and implications for food and beverage processing. Kim Berry caught up with her to find out more.
molecules that give food its fresh appearance, taste and colour.
McDonnell says: “With HPP you keep the fresh appearance and unprocessed aspects of the food. The alternative is pasteurisation, which modifies those structures and takes the flavours out and makes a bland product.
“The HPP process applies pressure that is five times greater than that at the bottom of the ocean. It puts such a strain on bacteria and yeast cells, it modifies their ability to replicate and then they cease to exist. Because it’s
an in-package process, it doesn’t get re-opened so you have no source of contamination until
it reaches the consumer.
“It’s helping the supply chain by extending the shelf life but also helping to get healthier and
57%
LESS TIME NEEDED TO DEHYDRATE APPLES WHEN USING ULTRASOUND
more nutritious products to consumers so it’s very on trend.”
It has already been applied commercially – around 1.5 million tonnes of products are produced every year.
CSIRO is now researching heat with the pressure because HPP on its own does not control for bacterial spores known as endospores. It currently can’t be
included in HCCP as a method to control Clostridium butulinum.
The novel use of HPP with heat – around 90-121 degrees Celsius – and rapid heating and cooling is proving effective as a way to avoid preservatives and extend the shelf life, improve the quality and reduce food waste.
This could have major applications in the ready meal space, McDonnell says.
WHERE IS THE HEARTBEAT
Using ultrasound as a food processing technology also falls under the “novel” category. “Ultrasound has applications in industry for homogenisation, emulsification, degassing, defoaming the surface of liquids and so on. It has had more challenges than other technologies in terms of scale.”
CSIRO has used the airborne acoustics method by experimenting with accelerated drying. McDonnell has a colleague trialing the process and found a 57 per cent reduction in drying times for apples and, subsequently, a 54 per cent saving on their electricity.
McDonnell says: “We have a lot of technologies and novel technologies at CSIRO. You can do a small scale version of a conventional process. Lots of food processors have tumblers that are around one tonne. To introduce a new ingredient on that scale you could destroy a lot of raw material. Businesses can come here and trial new ideas in a100kilogramtumbler.” ✷
CIARA McDonnell is a research scientist in the Meat Science Unit of CSIRO Agriculture and Food. She is currently working on a shockwave project funded by the Australian Meat Industry Council at CSIRO’s Coopers Plains facility.
For McDonnell, one of the exciting aspects of her job is how the the novel technologies CSIRO trials as well as the fee-for-service projects they carry out with industry, fit with current food trends. “Novel technologies can offer clean labelling and reducing or even eliminating the need for other additives. They can often be more sustainable and environmentally friendly depending on the application,” McDonnell says.
QUITE A SHOCK
McDonnell says this is the newest technology CSIRO has acquired. “It could have other applications, but at the moment we’re working on meat tenderisation,” she says.
The technology works by applying up to one gigapascal for microseconds. “To generate such high pressures, historically explosives were used underwater. So the safety concerns meant it was slow to
evolve. Now we’re generating those levels with an electrical discharge underwater.
“The meat is in a special kind of plastic packaging that can sustain the pressure. It goes on a conveyor belt into the water, then when it’s underneath the electrodes with a gap, we emit the electrical wave and it discharges across the gap, so it arcs, and then the meat continues along the conveyor,” McDonnell explains.
The goal at the moment is to tenderise tough cuts, or cuts that require extended ageing, to reduce storage needs and also get the product to market. McDonnell says the project is in its infancy and they are working on proving the concepts.
FEELING THE PRESSURE
High pressure processing (HPP) compresses pre-packaged food within a liquid-filled chamber using very high pressure. While the pressure is not as intense as with shockwaves (around 400-800 megapascals versus 1 gigapascal), the pressure is transmitted instantaneously and uniformly. It is also product specific depending on pH, RH, the type of food and so on.
One of the major benefits of HPP is it does not affect the
14 | Food&Drink business | August 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au