| Summary: | High-pressure (HP) depresses the phase-transition point of water especially in the case of ice-I (down to -21°C at about 210 MPa). This phenomenon has several potential advantages in food processing applications, such as pressure shift freezing (PSF) and HP thawing. However, scientific knowledge available in this area is still relatively limited. The main objectives of this research were to investigate the phase-transition behavior of foods under pressure processing in the context of PSF and HP thawing techniques and to evaluate their impact on product quality. === Distilled water and fresh pork muscle were tested by a HP differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) using isothermal pressure scan (P-scan) and isobaric temperature scan (T-scan). P-scan tests showed that the phase-transition temperature (T) of pork was a function of the weighted-average pressure (P¯1--2): T = -1.17 - 0.102P¯1--2 - 0.00019 P&d1;21-2 (R2 = 0.99) that was much lower than that of pure ice. The phase-change latent heat of pork was estimated by P-scan. T-scan indicated the phase-transition point at a constant pressure, but it showed less accurate than P-scan. The ratio (Rice, %) of ice crystals formed by rapid release of pressure (P) was evaluated using the HP DSC: Rice-water = 0.115P + 0.00013P2 (R2 = 0.96) for water, and Rice-pork = 0.084P + 0.00012P2 (R2 = 0.95) for pork muscle. In the developed method, the pressure-dependent thermal properties of test materials are not required. === A preliminary study on ice-crystal formation was carried out using small gelatin gel samples frozen by conventional air freezing (CAF), liquid immersion freezing (LIF) and PSF at different pressures. The ovoid structure left from ice crystals was evaluated for area, equivalent diameter, roundness and elongation. The diameter (mean +/- S.D.) was 145 +/- 66, 84 +/- 26, 91 +/- 30, 73 +/- 29, and 44 +/- 16 mum for the treatments of CAF, LIF and PSF at 100, 150 and 200 MPa, respectively. Roundness and elongation did not show a clear trend with different freezing tests. Similar experiments using small-size Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) resulted in the diameter of 110 +/- 41, 17 +/- 8.4, 16 +/- 8.8, 8.2.5 and 5.0 +/- 2.1 mum for CAF, LIF and PSF at 100, 150 and 200 MPa, respectively. The roundness was 0.38 +/- 0.14, 0.55 +/- 0.21, 0.57 +/- 0.18, 0.63 +/- 0.14 and 0.71 +/- 0.14 for the above treatments, respectively. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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