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A significant proportion of seafood is imported into the U.S. in the form of frozen blocks. Before these can be further processed, they must be thawed, traditionally by immersion in warm water. This requires large amounts of fresh water, that become wastewater. It is also slow and potentially compromises the quality of the food. Ohmic heating can be used to thaw blocks. The major concern of this method is `runaway heating.' This occurs because electrical conductivity of frozen food is about two orders of magnitude lower than that of thawed food. The purpose of this study was to design, build and test an automated, computer controlled prototype ohmic thawing unit. Control circuitry was designed and custom built. Performance was tested with shrimp blocks. |
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