Continuous ohmic heating of solid foods

The project will develop a technology that makes it possible to cook solid foods e.g., meat products quickly, energy efficiently and without affecting the product safety and quality. In ohmic heating, an electric current is applied directly to the food item, and the resistance created by the electric current heats the product. The treatment time is a few minutes, and only approx. 5% of the energy is lost. Currently, meat products are cooked in steam cabinets for several hours with an energy loss of approx. 60% using fossil fuels.

Therefore, a large potential for savings in energy and time can be obtained if the project succeeds in cooking with ohmic heating.

Ohmic heating has already been developed and commercialized for liquid foods where stirring is possible. For solid foods, no equipment suppliers have yet succeeded in developing ohmic heating. The Danish Technological Institute has, in a small static ohmic equipment, shown that it is possible to cook meat products and achieve good product quality, whereas it was challenging to achieve the homogeneous heat distribution, which is essential for food safety.

The project team consists of an equipment supplier Alflow, a knowledge provider Danish Technological Institute and an end-user Danish Crown to ensure that the requirements of all stakeholders are considered. By demonstrating the feasibility in a pilot scale model, the incentive for a technology change at the meat producers will be increased, thereby creating an incentive for the equipment suppliers to develop and offer ohmic heating for solid foods on a commercial scale.