Study on the Efficiency of the Vegetables Freezing Process

Abstract

Changes taking place during the storage of the products of vegetable origin are inevitable. Products can deteriorate and change their shelf appearance, nutritional value, texture, taste and aroma. Freezing is one of the most appropriate technological operations for the product storage. By freezing products of vegetable origin, cleaner production technology can be used to consume less energy and to preserve quality of the product as well as valuable nutritional/ biologically active substances.

The study of vegetable freezing process was carried out by freezing red beets. Beetroot was frozen in a chamber with controlled climatic environment - the Feutron.

A portion of moisture content always evaporates from products of vegetable origin at freezing. Air flow velocity has a great influence on freezing rate of vegetables. Intensity of moisture evaporation also increases up to the moment of freezing-up of the surface layers.

Intensity of retardation of the evaporation process depends on a peel and on stomata on it. Moisture evaporation’s retardation rate of the red beet peel εevp.ap = 0,50 ± 0,02. When air velocity was 0,15 m/s - εevp varied from 0,47 to 0,53, whilst at the air flow velocity 0,65 m/s - εevp = 0,37 – 0,45.

Purpose of the study - to analyse the freezing process of vegetables (by the red beetroot example) under the influence of different environment factors.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.69.3.6064