Revolutionising fish processing with radio waves
Fast, safe packaging and freezing of fish food products are essential to delivering a high quality product to the consumer. Unfortunately, the autoclaves used in today's fish processing industry are both energy-intensive and time-consuming. Funding from the LIFE QUALITY Programme was set aside to explore viable alternatives. The Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV led an investigation into radio frequency (RF) technology in the context of the RF-FISH project. Working together with six partner organisations from northern Europe, Fraunhofer developed an RF water bath heater and tested it on fish vacuum-packed in plastic. The results were remarkable. Not only was the heating time reduced by an order of magnitude, but the energy requirements were cut by a factor of six. Furthermore, microbiological assays indicated that the RF heating process was better than the autoclave at killing off unwanted microorganisms. Importantly, all these benefits were achieved without raising the processing cost per kilogram of fish. Fraunhofer has also identified ways in which the process could be further improved with respect to heating uniformity and reproducibility. It should be noted that this technique can be extended to other media, such as glass and plastic jars and containers, as long as the packaging material is transparent to electrical fields. Research by Fraunhofer has revealed significant market potential for the RF heating technology within Europe.
