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Project
code:
PN-II-PT-PCCA-2013-4-1159
Contract number: 164 / 2014
Program name: Partnerships in priority areas
Funding source: state budget
Project title:
ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES BY USING RADIO-FREQUENCY TECHNIQUES IN FOOD
PROCESSING FOR REDUCING CONSUMER HEALTH RISKS (RAFSIG)
PROJECT DETAILS
The unconventional processing technologies have
developed lately as a consequence of producers but especially
consumers demands, becoming more aware and more concerned about the
quality of food that they consume, maintaining product quality and
freshness by reducing synthesis additives, minimizing nutrient
losses during processing and storage time as well as obtaining some
products with increased shelf-life using a lower content of
synthesis additives. All these demands will allow a safe
distribution of the food products towards consumers, with minimum
nutritive and sensory changes.
In the same context, heating with radio frequency
waves (RF) for pasteurization and sterilization is preferred to
conventional heating, first of all for the rapidity and the short
time of action necessary in order to reach the desired temperature.
This is especially true for solid and semi-solid foods which depend
on the slow process of thermal diffusion under conventional heating.
These complex systems require high temperature – short time
processing, which has the effect of destroying the degradation
microflora while reducing thermal degradation of the nutritional
components. Other radio frequency (RF) heating systems advantages
are that these systems can be instantly turned on or turned off
(energy economy) and the product can be thermal treated after
packaging (eliminating the possibility of recontamination after
treatment). Radio frequency (RF) processing systems can be more
efficient in terms of energy.
Romanian industrial
producers (bakery) faced with a dilemma in recent
years: on one hand, the continuous demand for increasing products
shelf-life from supermarket chains and retailers, which means
constant use of preservatives in production and in most cases the
use of synthesis additives, and consumers orientation towards
natural products or with lower content of synthesis additives,
preferred by consumers increasingly concerned over the link between
diet and health on the other hand. This concern plays an important
role in the strategy of most companies, who really understand the
current orientation of the market and therefore categorical
necessity to reduce and eventually replace synthesis additives in
final products.
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Objectives |
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Responding to these demands, and coming to meet
long-term research strategies and sustainable development, the
RAFSIG project aims to achieve demonstrative models for RF treatment
technologies and equipment of bakery products,
with lower content of synthesis additives, to increase shelf-life
and food safety. By achieving the proposed goals, RAFSIG project
also contribute to the solving of some problems related to
environment protection, reducing energy costs and obtaining some
safe food products from economic, environmental and nutritional
point of view. The technical solutions proposed by RAFSIG are
original and innovative and creates the following premises:
- new and powerful market position, as industrial producers
concerned by consumers health and with a better communication of
sustainable development policy ;
- competitive differentiation;
- creation of a new brand of trust – clean label products, that will
enhance the corporate image of producing companies of such products.
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