Portable and Cost Effective Supercooling Storage of Fish

Supercooling is a decent technology that preserves food materials at below-freezing temperatures without formation of ice crystals. Foods are maintained in their natural state for weeks with the same taste, texture, nutrition, and moisture content they had before being supercooled. This technology can offer a radically new food preservation method for consumers, retailers, and food industries. However, supercooling of fish, of which perishability remains the biggest challenge for storage, is new and unprecedented. Annually, $25B of seafood retail revenue has been lost due to spoilage/wastage. Freshly caught fish is generally put on ice while at sea, and must be consumed immediately, or preserved in order to reduce the risk spoilage. Frozen fish can be stored longer; however, texture and overall quality is degraded with freezing/thawing processes. The proposed project is aimed to develop and validate the transportable supercooling storage container of fish which can be integrated into a pilot cold chain from a seafood port to a retail store. The company would need to develop cost effective supercool-enabled container variants that can be installed in trucks, storage facilities/warehouses/walk-in freezers, and others in the cold chain. This project includes design and optimization of the portable, low cost supercooling unit as well as food packaging equipped with pulsed electric field (PEF) and oscillating magnetic field (OMF). The developed prototyped unit will be tested with collaborating partners for future Phase II funding. The market opportunity goes way beyond seafood and includes opportunities to reduce wastage/costs across meats/produce/flowers/etc. to optimize operations/supply chain levers.