CHILLING AND FREEZING

• Chilling is the unit operation in which the temperature

of a food is reduced to between -1ºC and -8ºC.
• used to reduce the rate of biochemical and
microbiological changes,
• causes minimal changes to sensory characteristics and
nutritional properties of foods
• chilled foods are perceived by consumers as being
convenient, easy to prepare, high quality and ‘healthy’,
‘natural’ and ‘fresh’.
• often used in combination with other unit
operations (for example fermentation or
pasteurisation to extend the shelf life of mildly
processed foods.
• greater preservative effect when chilling is
combined with control of the composition of the
storage atmosphere
• not all foods can be chilled and tropical,
subtropical and some temperate fruits, for
example, suffer from chilling injury at 3–10ºC
above their freezing point.
• Chilled foods are grouped into three categories
according to their storage temperature range as
follows:
• -1ºC to +1ºC (fresh fish, meats, sausages and
ground meats, smoked meats ).
• 0ºC to +5ºC (pasteurised canned meat, milk,
cream, yoghurt, prepared salads,etc.)
• 0ºC to +8ºC (fully cooked meats and fish pies,
cooked or uncooked cured meats,butter,
margarine, hard cheese etc.).
 Theory
Fresh foods
• The rate of biochemical changes increases logarithmically with
temperature .
• Chilling therefore reduces the rate of enzymatic and microbiological
change and retards respiration of fresh foods.
• The factors that control the shelf life of fresh crops in chill storage
include:
• • the type of food and variety or cultivar
• • the part of the crop selected (the fastest growing parts have the
highest metabolic rates and the shortest storage lives )
• • the condition of the food at harvest (for example the presence of
mechanical damage or microbial contamination, and the degree of
maturity)
• • the temperature of harvest, storage, distribution and retail display
• • the relative humidity of the storage atmosphere, which influences
dehydration losses.
• Undesirable changes to some fruits and
vegetables occur when the temperature is
reduced below a specific optimum for the
individual fruit.
• termed chilling injury and results in various
physiological changes (for example internal or
external browning, failure to ripen and skin
blemishes).
• In animal tissues, aerobic respiration rapidly declines
when the supply of oxygenated blood is stopped at
slaughter.
• Anaerobic respiration of glycogen to lactic acid then
causes the pH of the meat to fall, and the onset of rigor
mortis, in which the muscle tissue becomes firm and
inextensible.
• Cooling during anaerobic respiration is necessary to
produce the required texture and colour of meat and
to reduce bacterial contamination.
• Undesirable changes, caused by cooling meat before
rigor mortis has occurred, are termed cold shortening.
• To chill fresh foods it is necessary to remove both sensible
heat (also known as field heat) and heat generated by
respiratory activity.
• Processed foods
• A reduction in temperature below the minimum necessary
for microbial growth extends the generation time of micro-
organisms and in effect prevents or retards reproduction.
• prevents the growth of thermophilic and many mesophilic
micro-organisms.
• The main microbiological concerns with chilled foods are a
number of pathogens that can grow during extended
refrigerated storage below 5ºC, or as a result of any
increase in temperature (temperature abuse) and thus
cause food poisoning
• The shelf life of chilled processed foods is
determined by:
• the type of food
• the degree of microbial destruction or enzyme
inactivation achieved by the process
• control of hygiene during processing and
packaging
• the barrier properties of the package
• temperatures during processing, distribution and
storage.
• The range of chilled foods can be characterised by the class of
microbial risk that they pose to consumers as follows:
• Class 1 foods containing raw or uncooked ingredients,
such as salad or cheese as ready-to-eat (RTE) foods
• Class 2 products made from a mixture of cooked and low
risk raw ingredients
• Class 3 cooked products that are then packaged
• Class 4 products that are cooked after packaging,
including ready-to-eat-products for-extended-durability
(REPFEDs) having a shelf life of 40+ days
 Equipment
• classified by the method used to remove heat, into:
• • mechanical refrigerators
• • cryogenic systems.
• Batch or continuous operation is possible with both
types of equipment, but all should lower the
temperature of the product as quickly as possible
through the critical warm zone (50–10ºC) where
maximum growth of micro-organisms occurs
• The chilling medium in mechanically cooled chillers
may be air, water or metal surfaces.
• Air chillers (for example blast chillers) use forced
convection thus reduce the thickness of boundary
films
• used in refrigerated vehicles, but food should be
adequately chilled when loaded onto the vehicle
 Cryogenic chilling
• A cryogen is a refrigerant that changes phase by
absorbing latent heat to cool the food.
• Cryogenic chillers use solid carbon dioxide, liquid
carbon dioxide or liquid nitrogen.
• Solid carbon dioxide can be used in the form of ‘dry-
ice’ pellets, or liquid carbon dioxide can be injected
into air to produce fine particles of solid carbon
dioxide ‘snow’, which rapidly sublime to gas.
• Both types are deposited onto, or mixed with, food
in combo bins, trays, cartons or on conveyors.
• A small excess of snow or pellets continues the
cooling during transportation or storage prior to
further processing
• Liquid nitrogen is used in both freezing and chilling
operations.
• The liquid nitrogen vaporises immediately and the
fans distribute the cold gas around the cabinet to
achieve a uniform reduction in product temperature.
 Chill storage
• Control of storage conditions
• The importance of maintaining temperatures below
5ºC to meet safety, quality and legal requirements
for high-risk products
• Fresh products may also require control of the
relative humidity in a storeroom, and in some cases
control over the composition of the storage
atmosphere
 Temperature monitoring
• Temperature monitoring is an integral part of
quality management and product safety
management throughout the production and
distribution chain.
 Freezing
• unit operation in which the temperature of a food is
reduced below its freezing point and a proportion of
the water undergoes a change in state to form ice
crystals.
• The immobilisation of water to ice and the resulting
concentration of dissolved solutes in unfrozen water
lower the water activity (aw) of the food
• Preservation is achieved by a combination of low
temperatures, reduced water activity and, in some
foods, pre-treatment by blanching.
• There are only small changes to nutritional or
sensory qualities of foods
• During freezing, sensible heat is first removed to lower the
temperature of a food to the freezing point.
• In fresh foods, heat produced by respiration is also removed
• This is termed the heat load, and is important in determining
the correct size of freezing equipment for a particular
production rate.
• Most foods contain a large proportion of water , which has a
high specific heat and a high latent heat of Crystallisation .
• A substantial amount of energy is therefore needed to
remove latent heat, form ice crystals and hence to freeze
foods.
• Energy for freezing is supplied as electrical energy, which is
used to compress gases (refrigerants) in mechanical freezing
equipment
 Ice crystal formation
• freezing point of a food may be described as ‘the temperature
at which a minute crystal of ice exists in equilibrium with the
surrounding water’.
• However, before an ice crystal can form, a nucleus of water
molecules must be present.
• Nucleation therefore precedes ice crystal formation.
• The rate of ice crystal growth is controlled by the rate of heat
transfer for the majority of the freezing plateau.
• The time taken for the temperature of a food to pass through
the critical zone therefore determines both the number and
the size of ice crystals.
 Solute concentration
• increase in solute concentration during freezing causes
changes in the pH, viscosity,surface tension and redox
potential of the unfrozen liquor.
• As the temperature falls, individual solutes reach saturation
point and crystallise out.
• The temperature at which a crystal of an individual solute
exists in equilibrium with the unfrozen liquor and ice is its
eutectic temperature
• Commercial foods are not frozen to such low temperatures
and unfrozen water is therefore always present.
 Volume changes
• The volume of ice is 9% greater than that of pure water, and
an expansion of foods after freezing would therefore be
expected.
• However, the degree of expansion varies considerably owing
to the following factors:
• • moisture content (higher moisture contents produce greater
changes in volume)
• • cell arrangement (plant materials have intercellular air
spaces which absorb internal increases in volume without
large changes in their overall size)
• The concentrations of solutes (high concentrations reduce the
freezing point and do not freeze – or expand – at commercial
freezing temperatures)
• • the freezer temperature (this determines the amount of
unfrozen water and hence the degree of expansion)
• • crystallised components, including ice, fats and solutes,
contract when they are cooled and this reduces the volume of
the food.
 Equipment
• Freezers are broadly categorised into:
• • mechanical refrigerators, which evaporate and compress a
refrigerant in a continuous cycle and use cooled air, cooled
liquid or cooled surfaces to remove heat from foods
• • cryogenic freezers, which use solid or liquid carbon dioxide,
liquid nitrogen directly in contact with the food.
• Cooled-air freezers : chest freezers food is frozen in stationary
(natural-circulation) air at between- 20ºC and -30ºC.
• blast freezers, air is recirculated over food at between 30ºC
and 40ºC at a velocity of 1.5–6.0 m /s
• Fluidised-bed freezers are modified blast freezers in which air
at between -25ºC and -35ºC is passed at a high velocity (2–6
m s1) through a 2–13 cm bed of food, contained on a
perforated tray or conveyor belt
• Cooled-liquid freezers: immersion freezers, packaged food is
passed through a bath of refrigerated propylene glycol, brine,
glycerol or calcium chloride solution on a submerged mesh
conveyor.
• Cooled-surface freezers : Plate freezers consist of a vertical or
horizontal stack of hollow plates, through which refrigerant is
pumped at -40ºC
• Scraped-surface freezers are used for liquid or semi-solid
foods (for example ice cream)
• In ice cream manufacture, the rotor scrapes frozen food from
the wall of the freezer barrel and simultaneously incorporates
air.
• The increase in volume of the product due to the air is
expressed as overrun
• Cryogenic freezers : Freezers of this type are characterised by
a change of state in the refrigerant (or cryogen) as heat is
absorbed from the freezing food.
• The heat from the food therefore provides the latent heat of
vaporisation or sublimation of the cryogen.
• The cryogen is in intimate contact with the food and rapidly
removes heat from all surfaces of the food to produce high
heat transfer coefficients and rapid freezing.
• The two most common refrigerants are liquid nitrogen and
solid or liquid carbon dioxide.
• In liquid-nitrogen freezers, packaged or unpackaged food
travels on a perforated belt through a tunnel , where it is
frozen by liquid-nitrogen sprays and by gaseous nitrogen.
Effect of freezing