Paper No 025 – Electrochemical inerting (oxygen control) for food preservation – 13th IEA Heat Pump Conference, Jeju, Korea
One of the primary applications for heat pumps is for refrigeration as part of the food chain. Despite widescale adoption, approximately 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted per year around the world [1], leading to excess energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions. An alternate approach to food preservation is to decrease the oxygen levels in a container to deter spoilage. Decreasing the oxygen levels by merely 3% improves the shelf life of meats and other foods from several days to upwards of weeks. In this paper we describe a solidstate method of oxygen control based on an electrolysis cell, a derivative technology of fuel cells. This technology is quiet, requires no maintenance, and takes up very little space in a refrigerator, making it superior to current pressure/membrane swing adsorption (PSA/MSA) systems employing compressors. This low energy system can be used in conjunction with heat pumps for refrigeration, and in some cases replace heat pumps completely. This paper provides real life, in situ operational data.