COLD CHAIN Extending the shelf life of cold or frozen products is an ongoing evolution as new technology continually raises the bar.
CO2’s critical role in extending shelf life Dry ice has been used in the cold chain with great success but the other variations of carbon dioxide – liquid and gas – also provide viable cold chain applications. Adam McCleery discovered.
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he applications for Carbon Dioxide (CO2) across the food and beverage industry are numerous, particularly because the chemical compound can be used in three ways, solid, gas, or liquid. When it comes to the cold chain, the flexible nature of CO2 makes it an ideal application for storage and transportation. Supagas, a supplier of LPG, industrial, specialty and hospitality gases, supplies CO2 specific to the food and beverage industry for various uses. David Petroff, Supagas’ national industrial bulk manager, expressed the use of CO2 as a cooling tool, whether as dry ice or otherwise, was already successfully used within the food and beverage sector, particularly in food preservation. The concept around the use of CO2 and dry ice for cold chain supply and storage is about extending shelf life, which gives the product a greater chance of sale before spoiling, mitigating the risks of recall and
food waste. Food waste is of key focus and a major issue in the food and beverage industry, on a global scale it costs the economy billions of dollars a year, so a strong cold chain is a critical factor in helping to reduce those figures. “For example, some of the cold chain uses of dry ice include meat processing manufacturers who take big meat carcasses and bone them,” said Petroff. “When they move on to somewhere else that uses this meat, they cut the meat up and put it into containers and layer it with meat and snow. The CO2 snow comes from an on-site cryogenic liquid tank, that is usually outside the plant building that is piped into the boning rooms with equipment converting liquid CO2 into snow. “It’s basically uncompressed dry ice and it provides affordable mobile refrigeration for their meat cuts, so nothing spoils during transit.” As another example, the use of CO2 in the cold chain is also a factor in huge food chains, such as the meat
38 Food&Beverage Industry News | April 2022 | www.foodmag.com.au
patties of many burger franchises, the CO2 is used help create the uniform meat patties which are well known throughout the fast-food industry. It’s a big selling point for food chains to provide consistently uniform product no matter the location, this in turn aided by the temperature control of the mince, and it becomes easier to work with.
“The way that happens is they get their meat cuts and then mince and process the meat, using specialised mixing machines to form the meat patties,” said Petroff. “Mince isn’t cold, then it sticks and is hard to keep it consistent, so we have CO2 on site that clients inject into the machinery to provide temperature control. This injection of CO2 in liquid
Carbon dioxide is a versatile tool for cold storage because it can be used in gas, liquid and solid forms.
