Joanna Cosgrove11.25.10
The concept of dehydrating fruits and vegetables is an age-old and economical approach to lengthening the pantry shelf-life of produce while preserving beneficial vitamins and minerals. Dehydrated fruits in particular have enjoyed a popular resurgence in recent years in berry-dotted cereals and other breakfast foods. But over the years dehydrating technology had largely remained static, until the late 1990’s when the University of British Columbia (UBC) pioneered a breakthrough Radiant Energy Vacuum (REV) microwave technology. The commercial rights were eventually granted to Vancouver, BC-based EnWave Corporation, an industrial technology company that set out to developed broader commercial applications for the REV technology, not only for the food segment but also for the supplement and biomedical sectors.
EnWave’s patented technology combines microwave energy with vacuum pressure to control the temperature at which liquids boil and subsequently evaporate. This form of liquid evaporation is described as a major advancement in the dehydration of sensitive materials because it maintains product attributes that are easily damaged by extreme temperatures, including color, flavor, texture, nutrients, and live or active organisms.
Freeze drying is the current standard for dehydrating many liquid pharmaceuticals and food products. This process requires a lengthy, expensive procedure which can result in significant product loss due to a harsh processing environment and lack of accurate process controls. According to EnWave’s Jennifer Thompson, vice president of corporate development and investor relations, many products dehydrated using EnWave’s proprietary technology have shown similar or improved post-dehydration survival of live organisms or nutrients, with similar or better shelf-life than freeze drying.
The company has its sights firmly set on impacting the food industry for freeze drying equipment, where 400 fruits, vegetables and meats are freeze dried and used as ingredients for instant foods, snack foods, dry soup, cereals, commercial baking and fast food products. In fact, the current North American market for EnWave’s nutraREV technology are producers of dried food products including potatoes, onions, herbs, blueberries, cranberries, sour cherries, apples and strawberries—which, according to the company, represent an estimated combined market value of over $1 billion.
EnWave currently offers four REV technologies: nutraREV is used in the food industry to dry fruits, vegetables and seafood products more quickly and less expensively than conventional methods; powderREV bulk dehydrates food cultures, probiotics and fine biochemicals such as enzymes; and its bioREV and freezeREV technologies are promoted as methods to stabilize and dehydrate vaccines and antibodies, giving pharmaceuticals a longer shelf-life and potentially enabling worldwide shipment with less refrigeration.
Broad Industry Impact
For the food industry, nutraREV’s application-specific ability to produce shelf-stable products with a range of water activity levels and moisture contents is a real boon, especially for formulators with a need for snacks featuring chewy or crunchy textures. Products can also be “puffed” to create new products and to increase product volume in packaging.
All Natural Ingredients, LLC or Portland, OR, is currently test driving EnWave’s REV technology to determine firsthand if the technology provides a real cost and time saving benefit in comparison to conventional freeze drying. Craig Ferguson, a representative of All Natural Ingredients, told Nutraceuticals World that the company’s expectation is to replace freeze drying with EnWave technology to complete production of its as yet unnamed vegetable juice product. “A combination of vacuum and microwave energy is the key feature that is of interest,” he said. “Also, doing this as a continuous process will make it efficient.”
All Natural Ingredients’ juice is still in development and the company plans to begin select sampling in the first quarter of 2011.
Like All Natural Ingredients, other notable companies are showing interest in the technology too. In July, EnWave announced it had signed a confidential Research and Development Agreement with Nestec Ltd., a subsidiary of Nestlé S.A. of Vevey, Switzerland involving EnWave’s nutraREV food dehydration technology.
And just last week, EnWave announced it had entered into a Collaboration Agreement with Mexico City, Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo SA, the world’s largest producer of baked goods, and one of the largest global food companies (and parent company of Weston Foods Inc. and Sara Lee US). The Collaboration will focus on the development and testing of certain food products using EnWave’s nutraREVT dehydration technology.
On the supplement side, EnWave’s powderREV bulk material dehydration technology is of particular interest, especially as it relates to probiotics.
“Tests that we completed on a variety of different live or active organisms in our initial proof-of-concept and batch-scale powderREV machines have indicated that this technology could provide significant time savings over freeze drying in processing these materials, with at least comparable recovery of organism activity,” Ms. Thompson explained. “We also expect that there may be energy savings associated with powderREV, as well as reductions in labor cost and plant footprint.
Ms. Thompson also said EnWave is currently building a continuous pilot-scale version of its powderREV bulk material dehydration technology. “This is essentially a high-speed microwave-assisted freeze drying or lyophilization process, involving the application of low levels of microwave heating energy in a very low pressure or vacuum environment,” she said. “We expect to begin testing the technology in Q1, 2011 with probiotics and food culture products supplied by our research collaboration partner, Danisco AS of Copenhagen, Denmark. If we are able to test this new technology successfully at our own facilities, we will then ship the machine to a Danisco pilot facility in Q2, 2011. After that time (and, again, assuming this stage of testing is successful), we hope to negotiate an agreement with Danisco to begin building the commercial version of this machine in the latter part of 2011.”
She went on to note that aforementioned testing will also enable the collection of variables data using Danisco’s probiotic and food culture materials, but stated at this point it’s too early to provide a materials-specific prediction on organism recovery, processing speed or other savings.
