Energy Conservation in PHT

1. Dr. R. T. Patil,
Ex Director CIPHET, Ludhiana; Group Director, TIT-
MBA, and Director, Technocrats Institute of
Technology, Bhopal (MP)
Energy Conserving Technologies
for Post-Harvest Sector

2. IMPORTANCE
Energy-conserving postharvest technologies
must take into consideration
• Technologies developed in the industrialized
countries are not suitable for the developing
countries-for economic, social, and strictly
technical reasons and appropriate
technologies need to be developed.
• The policy-makers too should provide
incentives for energy saving and improved
efficiency technologies

3. Background
• The post-harvest system in developing
countries where the economies are primarily
agricultural,
• is a major single consumer of energy. There
is a need to give sufficiently high priority to
improving energy efficiency, especially in
traditional technologies that are responsible
for the processing and preservation of a
major portion of the food.
• Research efforts should be initiated to
upgrade existing technologies to reduce the
use, especially the waste, of energy, and also
to utilize nonconventional sources of energy
where possible.

4. Processing of Foodstuffs and Vegetables by
Energy-Saving Enzymatic Technologies.
• The utilization of different enzymes in food
processing technologies offer promising
potential for energy saving.
• Enzymes used in industry permit either limited
use of energy with identical output or an even
lower energy requirement.
• The enzymes and enzyme systems are mainly
pectolytic enzymes.
• The effects are quality improvement and
decreased energy utilization.

5. •The fermenting activity of microbes is extensively
utilized in the dairy industry, where different starter
cultures are used in the production of cheese,
butter, sour milk products, cottage cheese, etc.
•Starter cultures result in safer and more
controllable technology and decreased waste, and
they save labour and lower the amount of raw
materials required.
•The biological and nutritive values of the products
are also higher as addition of CITOPAN improves
bread quality

6. Microbiological processes are used in the meat
industry, in ripening, curing, brining, and all improve
product quality, making the products more reliable
technologically and safer.
The resulting pH decrease inhibits the propagation
of non-desirable bacteria and increases the water
evaporation of the product so that drying time is
shortened.
Mycelium offers the most promising potential for
production of valuable protein and as a flavouring
agent.

7. • The experience that the spoilage of fruit and
vegetable products at pH 4.5 is caused by
moulds and yeast and that spoilage by spores
occurs only in cases of extremely high
contamination of the raw material.
• Accordingly, a hot filling system that would not
require aseptic conditions in filling and sealing
operations may be adopted.
• The optimum heating conditions for destroying
undesirable microflora and inactivating enzyme
systems at commercial production level reduces
production costs without changing product
quality.
• As heating and cooling temperatures are crucial,
this is an important contribution to energy
management.

8. The Japanese experience in energy conservation
food processing indicates that
• controlling the balancing water in pans in sugar
refineries,
• the introduction of a non-cooking fermentation
process in alcohol production (enzymes are
used for saccharization of raw starch,
technologies using membranes in concentration
of liquids, and isolation of solutes effectively
save the energy.
• Simple solutions such as the insertion of a heat
pipe into the centre of brewing tanks are
frequently very effective.

9. • The use of crop residues has made the oil palm
mills in Malaysia self-sufficient in energy.
• The additional use of the oil palm mill effluent, as
a pollution control method through biogas
generation, presents a potential for turning these
mills into net exporters of energy.
• The dryer combining a solar collector and a
diesel burner for a heat energy source along with
electricity for air circulation within the dryer is
cheaper for most crops.

10. • Starch, an important food-industry product, is
obtained from potatoes, corn, and rice.
• The change from a wet milling process for corn
to the use of ensiled corn is energy-intensive
process without deterioration of product quality.
• The potatoes undergo lactic acid bacterial
culture fermentation. This solves the problem of
storage in silos. This method of starch
production from potatoes means less capital
investment, less energy use, and no loss in
quality.

11. In recent years in India we have worked on three
such low energy processes,
• Mechanical expression water from Onion and
drying low moisture pomace for getting onion
powder,
• Mechanical crushing of green chillies and
expressing puree to get dried green chilli powder
from low moisture pulp and
• Use of extrusion as a pre-treatment to potato
paste to produce collets which are dried further with
less energy compared to whole potato and
powdered to get the potato flour.
Hence there is a need to work on such out of the
box processes which while saving energy also
provide newer products for consumers.

12. Thanks