SBIR/STTR Award attributes
AbstractAs consumer demand for fresh produce continues to growso do concerns by the Food and Drug AdministrationFDAabout foodborne illnesses and foodborne disease outbreaksPostharvest wash is a critical control point in fresh produce processing for reducing or eliminating pathogens and other field acquired contaminants that can result in such outbreaksCurrent methods of post harvest washing typically rely on chlorine based sanitizerswhich provide less thanefficacy in removing pathogens and are generally acknowledged to have negative environmental and worker safety impactsDue to such concernscertain European countries have banned the use of chlorine as a sanitizing technique for fresh produceOne alternative sanitizing agent being adopted with greater frequency is ozone gasOzonein both its gaseous and aqueous phasesis generally recognized as safe by the FDA and has been shown to effectively reduce microbial contamination and pesticide residuehoweverworker safety and environmental concerns still exist when ozone is not properly managedAdditionallyozone s poor solubility and the high cost of ozone generators have contributed to its limited adoption by the agriculture industryEn Soluci n is developing a novel method which utilizes unique cavitation nozzles and air to generate nano sized bubbles of ozone gas at the point of postharvest washUnlike traditional macro sized bubbles from existing technologiesthe nanobubbles produced by the En Soluci n methodology have the remarkable ability to remain stable in high concentrations for months at a timeWorker safety is greatly improved as the ozone does not outgas to the environmentbut ratherreverts back to oxygen while in the solutionThis keeps more ozone in aqueous form and out of the worker environment than traditional generation methodsgreatly enhancing system efficiencyThe technology developed by En Soluci n also has implications on power and water managementas the automated method reduces the amount of water required in washing and facilitates the reuse of waterDuring the Phase I projectEn Soluci n will fully validate and further develop its technology for application in postharvest washing in consultation with a pilot farm partner and with experts in food safetynanotechnologyapplied scienceagricultural workplacehealth and safety and sustainable agriculture practicesIn Phase IIEn Soluci n will move forward with field testing of its technology to determine the degree to which the technology presents an improvement over existing sanitizers in terms of safety to workers and the environmentcostimpact on the productand consumer acceptability Project NarrativeExisting postharvest wash processes for fresh produce provide less thanefficacy in eliminating pathogens and pesticide residues that result in foodborne illnesses and are generally acknowledged to have negative environmental and worker safety impactsEn Soluci n s novel method of automated ozone nanobubble generation provides a chemical free postharvest sanitizing method that increases efficacy in pathogen and pesticide residue reduction while addressing shortcomings of the current methods
