Pasteurización de emulsiones lipídicas con CO2 supercrítico y ultrasonidos de potencia
- Autores: Ángela Gómez Gómez
- Directores de la Tesis: José Vicente García Pérez (dir. tes.), José Javier Benedito Fort (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de València ( España ) en 2021
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Olga Martín Belloso (presid.), Juan Andrés Carcel Carrión (secret.), Javier Raso Pueyo (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia, Tecnología y Gestión Alimentaria por la Universitat Politècnica de València
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: RiuNet
- Resumen
Thermal treatments are generally used for the sterilization of emulsions. However, heating has demonstrated its ability to induce the hydrolysis of lipids and lecithin. In this sense, non-thermal technologies are emerging in the industry with the aim of achieving microbial stability while avoiding the loss of quality related to heat. Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) and pulsed electric fields (PEF) are non-thermal technologies for microbial inactivation. However, these techniques have demonstrated to require high treatment intensities or long treatment times to guarantee the product's safety. Therefore, there is still room for the improvement in the use of these technologies. Literature has illustrated the capacity of high power ultrasound (HPU) for the intensification of mass and/or heat transfer phenomena. Therefore, its application to non-thermal technologies could be an interesting approach to enhance the microbial inactivation effectiveness.
In this context, the objective was to evaluate the effect of SC-CO2, PEF and HPU treatments, applied in individual and combined form, on the inactivation of different microorganisms in emulsions. In order to achieve this goal, on the one hand, the influence of the implementation of HPU to the SC-CO2 treatments was studied on different types of microorganisms and on media with different oil content. On the other hand, the effect of the individual and combined PEF and HPU treatments was assessed on different microorganisms.
Results showed that, generally, the application of HPU intensified the inactivation capacity of SC-CO2. HPU probably enhanced the solubilization of CO2 into the medium and provoked damages in the cells. In this regard, the microscopy analysis of the inactivated cells revealed important morphological changes, including damaged cell walls and an important loss of the cytoplasmic content. Nevertheless, HPU did not improved the SC-CO2 inactivation of A. niger spores in emulsion.
The increase of the pressure led to a higher inactivation, except for E. coli in water, where no effect of pressure was found. However, pressures above 350 bar did not seem to exert any additional inactivation. The increase of the temperature had a significant effect for all treatments and microorganisms.
Regarding the effect of the medium, the presence of oil is known to protect microorganisms, as was observed in the SC-CO2 inactivation of bacteria in water and in emulsions with different oil content. However, the application of HPU masked the protective effect exerted by the oil in the emulsions. On the contrary, for A. niger spores no effect of the media was found on the effectiveness of the treatments In relation to the effect of the SC-CO2 + HPU treatments on the quality of the treated emulsions, only a mild effect of the process conditions was found and by the selection of suitable SC-CO2 + HPU conditions, minimal changes on the quality of the emulsions and a satisfactory inactivation for all the microorganisms, except for G. stearothermophilus spores, can be obtained.
Regarding PEF and HPU treatments, the complete inactivation in the emulsions was not achieved with the individual treatments. However, when PEF (152.3-176.3 kJ/kg) was followed by HPU (3 min), inactivation levels of 8.2, 6.6 and 1.0 log-cycles were obtained for E. coli, A. niger and B. pumilus, respectively. Moreover, the inactivation achieved by the PEF-HPU treatment was higher than the sum of the individual treatments for all microorganisms. On the contrary, the inactivation achieved by HPU-PEF treatment was lower than that of the sum of the individual treatments. Thus, the most effective sequence for the combined treatment was the one in which PEF was followed by HPU.
It can be concluded that, the combination of HPU with SC-CO2 or PEF generally improved the microbial inactivation. Consequently, reasonable processing times and mild process conditions could be used.
