Cold Storage Rooms

Ozone in Cold Storage Rooms

Cold storage rooms hold various types of foods including vegetables, fruits, meats, sea foods, etc. The temperatures vary from low cool to way below freezing. All food products, being highly degradable, start breeding bacteria. At low temperatures, bacterial activity is slowed down, bacteria may be inactivated, but not destroyed. Atmospheric bacteria anchor on the surfaces of foods and attack them releasing acids which slowly spreads further inside decaying the food products. At low temperatures, this process is slowed down. Controlling or destroying these bacteria helps in maintaining the foods fresher for far longer. Using disinfectants helps in controlling the bacterial activity, but the disinfectant used should not become a part of the food when consumed. Ozone has been found to be of tremendous advantage in such cold storage rooms for better maintenance of stored foods. Injecting ozone in the air inside the cold storage rooms maintains the environment inside bacteria free.

As a result the bacterial activity on the surfaces of foods under storage is minimal. It has also been found that vegetables, fruits, meats, sea foods, even eggs washed in ozonised water increases the shelf life of these products. This is because ozone destroys the surface bacteria which are present on all the foods, thus reducing the bacterial activity on the surfaces of the foods. This further helps in reducing the decaying process while increasing the shelf life. The same principle holds good in applying ozone in the environment inside the cold storage rooms. The foods stay fresher and longer with ozone than without it inside the cold storage rooms. The safe factor is that since ozone has a very short half life, there is no toxicity either in the foods or in the environment.