Food freezing is an important yet vital technology for shelf life extension of a wide range of fresh commodities. The scope and importance of this particular unit operation drive the global food supply chain. The innovations and technological improvements in the freezing avenue have tremendously increased in recent years, majorly directed towards improving the frozen quality parameters at the expense of lowering the energy consumption and following eco-friendly approaches. The electromagnetic wave-assisted freezing encapsulates the use of altering electric and magnetic fields in the form of radiowaves, microwaves, and infrared radiation. The interactive effects between the radiation, food matrix, and freezing process are governed by the material properties, thermodynamic principles, and food technological process operations all collectively aimed at producing a high quality frozen food. The novel technology shall project at maintaining the quality standards in post-freezing operations such as thawing, tempering, and subsequent cooking processes. The innovative and novel freezing technologies such as electromagnetic wave-assisted freezing shall benefit the food in all the stages of processing, with key focus on quality retention, safety assurance, and energy savings. Underscoring the due importance of this novel integration, the present review provides a basic understanding of the freezing mechanism and proceeds to discuss the interaction between electromagnetic waves and the food matrix in conjugation with the conventional freezing process. The novelty of this integration and its impact on food quality parameters are being discussed, and technological considerations with respect to equipment design and modeling aspects have been covered. Finally, the due importance gained by this technology over the conventional freezing methods is being appraised, with a future roadmap for research investigations.
Nagaraja et al. (Thu,) studied this question.