Analysis of global energy savings in the frozen food industry made possible by transitioning from conventional isobaric freezing to isochoric freezing

Abstract An efficient global cold food chain is critical to the sustainability of the growing world population, and it is anticipated that the global frozen food market will reach $404.8 billion by 2027. Frozen foods are typically stored under conventional industry-standard isobaric (constant-pressure) conditions at sub-freezing temperatures, however, which can degrade the textural and nutritional quality of the food and comes at high energetic and carbon costs. While efforts to reduce this energetic toll have traditionally targeted the devices used to generate refrigeration, we herein identify that significant energy savings may be attainable by altering the fundamental thermodynamics of the freezing process itself. Here we show that preserving frozen food under isochoric (constant-volume) thermodynamic conditions, as opposed to conventional isobaric conditions, may theoretically reduce annual global energy consumption by as much as 6.49 billion kWh, with accompanying carbon emission savings of 4.59 billion kg. Importantly, these savings can be achieved rapidly and inexpensively, without any costly changes to the current global refrigeration infrastructure. Furthermore, early studies demonstrate that isochoric freezing results in substantially improved food quality, extends the preservable lifetime of fresh and otherwise delicate food products, and has cross-cutting biopreservation applications in domains as diverse as medicine, biology, and pharmaceuticals.