PEF INCREASEs PRODUCTION, REDUCEs ENERGY CONSUMPTION, IMPROVEs PRODUCT QUALITY

Challenges

Dehydrating vegetables on an industrial scale presents several challenges that affect efficiency, product quality, and profitability. Vegetables have a high moisture content (~70-90%), which requires significant energy to remove moisture during dehydration. Furthermore, heat-sensitive nutrients like beta-carotene and vitamin C can degrade during drying. Texture and flavor are also negatively affected.

With short growing seasons and limited dryer capacity, this processor had no way of increasing throughput without replacing their existing convective hot air dryer. This would have meant a huge investment in new drying equipment, as well as making the space available for a new dryer’s large footprint.

Increasing costs of natural gas and energy combined with customers’ increasing demand for sustainable, high-quality ingredients left this processor looking for an innovative solution to address these issues.

Solutions

After in-depth product and process testing, FPS and OptiCept installed a SD7 pulsed electric field (PEF) system at the processor’s site in 2024. Designed with hygiene and efficiency in mind, the SD7 comfortably handled up to 15,000kg/hr of raw vegetables, delivering considerable improvements in energy usage, processing throughput and product quality. Placed after the wash step and before the slicers, the SD7 improved cutting, blanching, and drying.