Cryogenic food freezing

Cryogenic freezing is here to stay, because consumers want the product quality, novelty and low prices that cryogenics make possible. Cryogenics can improve the quality of frozen food, and make novel products that are not possible with conventional freezing techniques. Cryogenic refrigeration uses expandable gaseous refrigerants at temperatures generally below -80 degrees C. Perhaps surprisingly to engineers brought up in the tradition of mechanical refrigeration, cryogen freezing is often the cheaper method, especially under the volatile business conditions of the frozen food market. Cryogenic refrigeration refers to the use of expandable gaseous refrigerants, typically liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees C or carbon dioxide at -79.8 degrees C, to generate very low temperatures. Using liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees C to freeze food at -40 degrees C is thermodynamically wasteful. So why does cryogenic freezing account for 8-12% of-current frozen food production, and why is this market share growing even faster than the frozen food market as a whole? This paper will show, first, that cryogenic freezing often makes business sense if not thermodynamic sense. Second, it will show that there is plenty of synergy between cryogenic and mechanical refrigeration. In short, cryogenic freezing is here to stay.