Journal
RENEWABLE & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS
Volume 151, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2021.111621
Keywords
Isochoric freezing; Isochoric supercooling; Energy savings; Frozen food; Cold storage; Global cold-chain
Funding
- USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, AFRI project [2017-05031, 2018-67017-27826]
- NSF Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technologies for Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-Bio) NSF EEC [1941543]
- China Scholarship Council
- Directorate For Engineering
- Div Of Engineering Education and Centers [1941543] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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An efficient global cold food chain is crucial for the sustainable development of the growing world population. Altering the fundamental thermodynamics of the freezing process by preserving food under isochoric conditions can lead to significant energy savings and reduced carbon emissions. Isochoric freezing not only improves food quality and extends shelf life, but also has diverse applications in biopreservation.
An efficient global cold food chain is critical to the sustainability of the growing world population, and it is anticipated that the global frozen food market will reach $404.8 billion by 2027. Frozen foods are typically stored under conventional industry-standard isobaric (constant-pressure) conditions at sub-freezing temperatures, however, which can degrade the textural and nutritional quality of the food and comes at high energetic and carbon costs. While efforts to reduce this energetic toll have traditionally targeted the devices used to generate refrigeration, we herein identify that significant energy savings may be attainable by altering the fundamental thermodynamics of the freezing process itself. Here we show that preserving frozen food under isochoric (constant-volume) thermodynamic conditions, as opposed to conventional isobaric conditions, may theoretically reduce annual global energy consumption by as much as 6.49 billion kWh, with accompanying carbon emission savings of 4.59 billion kg. Importantly, these savings can be achieved rapidly and inexpensively, without any costly changes to the current global refrigeration infrastructure. Furthermore, early studies demonstrate that isochoric freezing results in substantially improved food quality, extends the preservable lifetime of fresh and otherwise delicate food products, and has cross-cutting biopreservation applications in domains as diverse as medicine, biology, and pharmaceuticals.
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