RADIO FREQUENCY SANITISATION OF SPICES, MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC HERBS Keep the functional and sensorial properties, extend the shelf life Food and Pharma industries are nowadays dealing with the increasing attention of consumers to natural taste, flavour and functional properties preservation, together with ever stricter food safety and hygiene regulations imposed by local and international authorities. With the purpose of serving the needs of these industries, STALAM has developed the “RF” series equipment for the batch sanitisation of spices, aromatic herbs and medical plants. The use of Radio Frequency fields at 27.12 MHz represents today a much better alternative to conventional thermal processing methods for disinfestation, disinfection and pasteurisation. In the STALAM “RF” sanitisation system the inactivation of the required species (pests, molds, yeasts, bacteria, etc.) is achieved by means of a gentle dielectric heating treatment, at temperatures that may range from 60-70°C to 100-110°C according to the target species, which combines synergetically thermal and cell membrane electroporation effects. This dual action of the RF field is lethal for the biological entities contaminating the substrate, thus providing a valuable sanitisation and shelf-life extension technique. Significant reduction of the contaminating species can therefore be achieved without using chemicals or applying drastic thermal treatments which would have detrimental effects on the physical, functional and sensorial characteristics of the product. “RF 7 kW” batc

How it works The treatment consists in a rapid exposure of the product to an electromagnetic field generated between a set of electrodes inverting their polarity at 27.12 MHz frequency, inside a temperature-controlled process chamber. The chamber temperature, the RF voltage between electrodes and the treatment time are the process parameters to be set according to the contaminating species and the inactivation level required. The treatment ensures that the product is brought quickly and uniformly to the target temperature which is generally low enough to avoid alterations of its physical, chemical...