Ultrasonic innovations in the food industry: From the laboratory to commercial production

High power ultrasound has only recently (<5 years) become an efficient toot for large scale commercial applications, such as emulsification, homogenization, extraction, crystallization, dewatering, low temperature pasteurization, degassing, defoaming, activation and inactivation of enzymes, particle size reduction and viscosity alteration. This can be attributed to improved equipment design and higher efficiencies of large scale continuous flow-through systems. Like most innovative food processing technologies, high power ultrasonics is not an off-the-shelf technology and therefore needs to be developed and scaled up for each application. The objective of the present paper is to present examples of ultrasonic applications that have made it to commercialization and to share some key learnings involving scale up of an innovative food technology in general. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.