History of High Pressure Food Processing

High pressure processing is a technique with the potential to preserve food without the use of the high temperature normally employed in conventional thermal processing and therefore with considerable retention of quality attributes.

Studies of the effects of high pressures on foods date back over a century. In 1899, Bert Hite of the Agriculture Research Stations in Morganstown, West Virginia, USA, designed and constructed a high pressure unit to pasteurize milk and other food products.

It was the first time demonstrated in the destruction bacteria. He reported that the high pressure processing of food involves the application of hydrostatic pressure typically in the order of 100 MPa and above.

High pressure processing or pascalization is named after Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French scientist who describe how contained fluids are affected by pressure.

The draw back of this method it is costly to implement.

Scientists reactivated research on high pressure processing from the end of the 1980’s. This high pressure process consists of applying an isostatic pressure to a food place in a high pressure vessel.

Today, with advances in computational stress analysis and new raw material, high capacity pressure systems can be manufactured to allow reliable high pressure treatment at even high pressures.
History of High Pressure Food Processing