SBIR Phase II: A Process to Extend the Shelf Life of Fruits, Vegetables, and Dairy at Ambient Temperature

SBIR 第二阶段：延长水果、蔬菜和乳制品在常温下保质期的过程

• 批准号: 2039218
• 负责人: Vipul Saran
• 金额: $ 99.14万
• 依托单位: Farther Farms, Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2039218&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Process; Extend

The broader impact/commercial potential of this SBIR Phase II project is to improve fruit and vegetable storage and dairy powder production in situations that currently require additives and carrier agents during the high-temperature processing techniques. The creation of novel, high-quality, shelf-stable food products is an important step toward increasing food system sustainability and accessibility. The team seeks to increase shelf-stability, reducing reliance on the expensive and limited cold chain. This technology has potential applications for pharmaceutical drug preservation. Additionally, global water shortages have increased reliance on desalination technologies that are expensive and environmentally taxing. With the potential cost, scalability, and portability benefits of the proposed separation technology, there is further potential for use in water treatment.This SBIR Phase II project seeks to further develop a hybrid separation technology combining supercritical fluids and sonication to instantly separate a solute and solvent at operational temperatures of 15-55 °C, with inputs as low as 1% solids. The technology results in products with particles sizes of 10um to 250um and varying crystallization without hardware changes. By creating a continuous separation effect using velocity (supersonic flow as the kinetic driving force for phase separation instead of heat), the technology overcomes the end-product quality limitations of traditional thermal drying techniques, and has the potential to scale with attractive unit economics,. This method is significantly more energy efficient than existing methodologies. Specifically, the technology can produce pure fruit, vegetable, and dairy powders without preprocessing concentration steps, additives, carrier agents, or thermal treatment. The method may also be used to develop drug formulations for aerosol delivery and/or enhanced bioavailability, streamline sugar manufacturing to create co-energy generation, and potentially offer cost effective compact desalination systems to make drinkable water. The Phase II research seeks to design, construct, and optimize a scalable pilot system through computational fluid dynamics modeling, custom fabrication, and analytical testing to validate the unit economics and end-product attributes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该SBIR II期项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是在当前需要添加剂和载体剂在高温加工技术中，在目前需要添加剂和载体剂的情况下改善水果和蔬菜储存和乳制品粉。创建新颖，高质量，货架稳定的食品是提高食品系统可持续性和可访问性的重要一步。该团队试图提高货架稳定性，减少对昂贵且有限的冷链的保留率。该技术在药物制备中具有潜在的应用。此外，全球水资源短缺增加了对昂贵且对环境征税的脱盐技术的依赖。凭借提出的分离技术的潜在成本，可伸缩性和可移植性益处，可以进一步使用水处理。该SBIR II期项目旨在进一步开发一种混合分离技术，将超临界流体和超声处理结合在一起，以在15-55°C的运行温度下立即分离固体和溶液，输入低至1％固体。该技术可导致颗粒尺寸为10UM至250UM的产品，并且没有硬件变化而变化。通过使用速度（超音速流作为相位分离而不是热量的动力学驱动力）创建连续的分离效应，该技术克服了传统热干燥技术的最终产物质量限制，并具有具有有吸引力的单位经济性扩展的潜力。与现有方法相比，该方法的能源效率要高得多。具体而言，该技术可以生产纯果，蔬菜和奶制粉末，而无需预处理浓度步骤，添加剂，载体剂或热处理。该方法还可以用于开发用于气溶胶输送和/或增强生物利用度的药物配方，简化糖制造以创建共同发电，并有可能提供具有成本效益的紧凑型目的地系统以制造可饮用的水。第二阶段的研究旨在通过计算流体动力学建模，定制制造和分析测试来设计，构建和优化可扩展的试点系统，以验证单位经济学和最终产品属性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用该基金会的智力功能和广泛影响来评估NSF的法定任务，并被认为是珍贵的支持。