Food Preservation: History,

Methods, Types
As early as the beginning of the 19th century, major
breakthroughs in food preservation had begun. Soldiers and
seamen, fighting in napoleons army were living off of saltpreserved meats. These poorly cured foods provided minimal
nutritional value, and frequent outbreaks of scurvy were
developing. It was napoleon who began the search for a better
mechanism of food preservation, and it was he who offered
12,000-franc pieces to the person who devised a safe and
dependable food-preservation process.
The winner was a French chemist named Nicolas Appert.
He observed that food heated in sealed containers was
preserved as long as the container remained unopened or the
seal did not leak. This became the turning point in food
preservation history. Fifty years following the discovery by
Nicolas Appert, another breakthrough had developed. Another
Frenchman, named louis Pasteur, noted the relationship
between microorganisms and food spoilage. This breakthrough
increased the dependability of the food canning process. As the
years passed new techniques assuring food preservation would
come and go, opening new doors to further research.
Today food processors provide a diet richer and more
varied than ever before by using six major methods. They are
spray drying, drum drying, dehydration, freezing, freeze-drying,
infrared radiation drying, and microwave vacuum drying.

Spray drying
The history of spray drying is traceable to a united states
patent issued in 1872. The patent no 125,406 entitled
improvement in drying and concentrating liquid substances by
atomizing. Samuel Percy was first described the principle of
spray drying and he is considered to be the inventor of spray
drying technology. It took nearly 50 years for the first

commercially successful spray dryer design to be developed

and operated on so-called heat sensitive products.
Since that time, the spray drying process has been developed
for use in a wide range of industrial applications including the
manufacture of powdered soaps and detergents, powdered
milk, instant coffee, corn starch, fertilizer production, powdered
polymer resins and the production of mineral ores and clays. It
has also been employed as a process technology to impart
unique functional attributes onto excipients such as lactose,
mannitol and micro-crystalline.
The big step forward in
spray drying technology was the invention of instantiation by
Peebles. Further innovations were the development of
membrane methods for concentrating and fractionating prior to
spray drying and the introduction of three stage drying
procedure.

Freeze-drying
In freeze-drying, water is evaporated in a frozen state in a
vacuum, by means of sublimation (the process of changing a
solid to a vapour without first changing it to a liquid). In 1811,
john Leslie had first caused freezing by means of the
evaporation and sublimation of ice. In 1813, William Wollaston
demonstrated this process to the royal society of London. It
does not seem to have occurred to either Leslie or Wollaston to
use sublimation for drying. That distinction goes to Richard
Altman, a German histologist, who dried pieces of frozen tissue
in 1890. Later, in 1903, vansteenberghe freeze-dried the rabies
virus.
In 1906, Jacques arsene darsonval removed water at a
low temperature for distillation. Since water removal is the
essence of drying, darsonval is often credited with the
discovery of freeze-drying, but the first clearly recorded use of
sublimation for preservation was by Leon shackell in 1909. His
work was widely recognized, and he freeze-dried a variety of
biological materials. The first patent for freeze-drying was
issued to henri tival, a French inventor, in 1927. In 1934,

William elser received patents for a modern freeze-drying

apparatus that supplied heat for sublimation. In 1933, earl w.
Flosdorf had freeze-dried human blood serum and plasma for
clinical use. The subsequent efforts of flosdorf led to
commercial freeze-drying applications in the united states.

Drum drying
Drum drying is a unique drying process in which both
cooking and drying take place. Drum dryers were introduced
into industries about 100 years ago, starting with the doubledrum dryer which featured the feeding by nipping between two
drums. John a. Just from united states was one of the first
inventors to receive patent rights on a drum dryer with two rolls
on 1902. It consists of applying pre-concentrated milk as a thin
film upon the smooth surface of a continuously rotating, steamheated metal drum. It rapidly became the predominant method
for producing dried dairy products, such as infant formula. The
top feeding single-drum dryer, which is more suitable for
viscous feed materials was introduced in 1945. Drum dryers
were used in drying almost all liquid food materials before
spray drying came into used.

Infrared radiation drying

German-British astronomer sir
William
Herschel is
credited with the discovery of infrared in 1800. The technique
offered much faster drying times than the fuel convection
ovens of the time. Production bottlenecks were mitigated and
military supplies to the armed forces were maintained. After
world war ii the adoption of infrared heating techniques
continued but on a much slower basis. In the mid-1950s the
motor vehicle industry began to show interest in the
capabilities of infrared for paint curing and a number of
production line infrared tunnels came into use.

Microwave-vacuum drying
Dr. Percy spencer invented this method in 1946 during a
radar-related research project. Use of microwave applied in a

vacuum for dehydration heats the product to cause water to

vaporize, without causing changes in composition. Microwave
energy penetrates deeply into the material and can reduce
process time phenomenally. It offers opportunity to process
material like food, rubber and pharmaceutical products, among
other things, in ways not possible by other means. Microwave
heating offers distinct benefits in dehydration because the
penetration of energy and uniform heating results in water
vaporizing from throughout the product. This induces an inner
pressure that maintains puffed character of the dried product
and preserves colour, flavour, and nutritional value.

Freezing
Although prehistoric humans stored meat in ice caves, the
food-freezing industry is more recent in origin than the canning
industry. The freezing process was used commercially for the
first time in 1842, but large-scale food preservation by freezing
began in the late 19th century with the advent of mechanical
refrigeration.
In America estates had icehouses built to store ice and
food on ice. Soon the icehouse became an icebox. In the
1800s mechanical refrigeration was invented and was quickly
put to use. Also in the late 1800s Clarence Birdseye
discovered that quick freezing at very low temperatures made
for better tasting meats and vegetables. After some time, he
perfected his quick freeze process and revolutionized this
method of food preservation.

Drying and Dehydration

In ancient times the sun and wind would have naturally
dried foods. Evidence shows that Middle East and oriental
cultures actively dried foods as early as 12,000 B.C. in the hot
sun. Later cultures left more evidence and each would have
methods and materials to reflect their food suppliesfish, wild
game, domestic animals, etc.

Vegetables and fruits were also dried from the earliest

times. The Romans were particularly fond of any dried fruit they
could make. In the Middle Ages purposely built still houses
were created to dry fruits, vegetables and herbs in areas that
did not have enough strong sunlight for drying. A fire was used
to create the heat needed to dry foods and in some cases
smoking them as well.

Irradiation
As early as 1895, a major breakthrough in the world of
science had arisen; the discovery of the X-ray by German
physicist
Wilhelm
von Roetengen.
This
technological
advancement, along with the soon to be discovered concept of
radioactivity by French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel,
became the focus of attention for many scientifically based
studies. Of most importance, to the field of food preservation,
these two discoveries began the now controversial process of
food irradiation.
Food irradiation employs an energy form termed ionizing
radiation. In short, this process exposes food particles too
alpha, beta and/or gamma rays. The rays cause whatever
material they strike to produce electrically charged particles
called ions. Ionizing radiation provides many attributes to
treating foods. It has the ability to penetrate deeply into a food
interacting with its atoms and molecules, and causing some
chemical and biological effects that could possibly decrease its
rate of decay. It also has the ability to sanitize foods by
destroying contaminants such as bacteria, yeasts, molds,
parasites and insects. Irradiation delays ripening of fruits and
vegetables; inhibits sprouting in bulbs and tubers; disinfests
grain, cereal products, fresh and dried fruits, and vegetables of
insects; and destroys bacteria in fresh meats. The irradiation of
fresh fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, and pork was
approved in 1986. In 1990 the FDA approved irradiation of
poultry to control salmonella and other disease-causing
microorganisms. Irradiated foods were used by U.S. astronauts

and by Soviet cosmonauts. Public concern over the safety of

irradiation, however, has limited its full-scale use.

References and Sources

http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Wine/wineintro.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eighteenth
life/v023/23.2eden.html

century

http://www.unc.edu/courses/rometech/public/content/survival/Li
ndsay_Mack/Food_Preservation.html
http://foodprocessinghistory.blogspot.in/2013/05/the-inventionof-spray-drying.html
http://what-when-how.com/inventions/freeze-drying-inventions/
Http://foodprocessinghistory.blogspot.in/2014/04/history-ofdrum-drying.html