Micro Nano Bubble Technology Transfer to Help Extend Lifetime and Increase Quality of Ready-to-Eat Pre-cut Phulae Pineapples to Support Exports
Thailand is renowned as a pineapple exporting country and the Thai canned pineapple products are Number 1 in the world that account for the export value of 20 billion Baht (January 2023 data). Currently, Phulae pineapples are considered the potential economic crops because of their distinctive characteristics in being small sizes, golden flesh, moderately sweet taste and crisp cores, thus, making them popular to consumers and, thus far, a great number of them have been exported to China nowadays eventually resulting in the productions to be insufficient to meet the demands. In additional, the pineapples are high in sugar elements therefore allowing microorganisms to grow well, so, the ready-to-eat pre-cut Phulae pineapple products are somewhat easily prone to spoilage and loss of quality during transportation before reaching consumers. So, this is a background that leads to the research and development of Micro Nano Bubble Technology or technology with small size air bubbles of micro and nano levels for use in extending the lifetime and preserve quality of ready-to-eat Phulae pineapple products for exports. In this regard, the Research Team received a funding support for transferring the technology and knowledge from National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT), Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESRI). It is a work achievement under the co-operations of King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) and Mae Fah Luang University (MFLU) to conduct research and transfer knowledge on the use of such technology to Phulae pineapple processing operators and farmers.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Natchai Phongprasert, KMUTT Faculty of Biological Resources and Technology Lecturer, as the Research Team Leader and Developer of Fruit and Vegetable Cleaner with Micro Nano Air Bubble Technology, said, the production process of the ready-to- eat pre-cut fruits and vegetables was extremely essential to ensure that those vegetables and fruits were clean and safe for consumptions, especially, safe from contamination of disease-causing microorganisms. Moreover, for the reason that such ready-to-eat cut salad vegetables would require to go through various processing steps, such as, tearing, slicing, and trimming, it was potentially possible that wounds could occur to the vegetables and various substances within the cells that came out from the wounds caused by cutting would stimulate and accelerate physiological and biochemical changes and the rapid growth of contaminating microorganisms as well as the rapid deterioration consequently resulting in a shorter shelf life and economic damage, especially, exports to foreign countries.
In adopting the Micro Nano Bubble Technology or the machine producing small size air bubbles of micro and nano levels for use with Phulae pineapple, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phongprasert said, because the ready-to-eat pre-cut vegetable or fruit products must not be contaminated with microorganisms or germs that cause disease exceeding the standards defined by FDA, such as, E.coli, yeast, salmonella, etc., and were something to be consumed immediately, therefore, they had to go through a very good cleaning process. The outstanding feature of micro-nano bubbles that were the air bubbles created from them were of very small size, stable and could be dispersed in water for a long time with an area per volume being high, thus, helping to increase the ability to dissolve any substance or gas, such as, chlorine compounds, ozone gas, etc., used for the disinfection which when putting into washing water, it would make the efficiency of washing and cleaning good and effective eventually helping to reduce the use of chemicals and eliminate wastage of washing water, as well.
On the matter that makes the fruit and vegetable washing machine with developed microbubble technology different, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phongprasert said, because KMUTT had an aptitude and expertise in the post-harvest technology innovation coupled with the fact that we had a lot of research works, so, we knew how to use and apply it to agricultural products, i. e. kind of chemicals or gases which should be used with such and such crops, type of gas which should be appropriate and effective in killing contaminants and maintaining vegetables and fruits with maximum quality.
The capacity of the developed prototype microbubble vegetable and fruit washing machine is 100 liters which is for use in demonstrating and testing the washing of ready-to-eat pre-cut Phulae pineapples at the pineapple processing factory of Better Fruits Company Limited which will be beneficial to the company and Mae Fah Luang University as a co-researcher who has a knowledge about the process of cutting ready-to-eat fruits and vegetables and is a node in technology transfer and provide an opportunity for groups of farmers in the area and nearby areas to come and try out this technology, as well.
The remarkably outstanding advantage of microbubble technology is that it can help reduce the production costs, the use of labors, the washing time, the amount of water from normal washing that needs to be changed every time, but the water using microbubble technology can be reused frequently, consequently resulting in the use of resources to be reduced. The use of chemicals can be reduced by a half from the original need to add chlorine to the water to kill microorganisms in the proportion of 100%. But, if microbubble technology should be used in conjunction therewith, just only 50% of chlorine would be used while the cost of microbubble technology is a fixed cost and when compared to an imported fruit and vegetable washing machines that does not use the microbubble technology, it would still be cheaper than importing a vegetable washing machine from foreign country by a half.
Once and for all, from the knowledge of Micro Nano Bubble Technology derived from continuous research of KMUTT for more than ten years, other than transferring such knowledge to agencies and interested people in various Regions, we have also developed the machines and the method on the use of microbubble technology for the private sector, such as, orchid export companies and companies engaged in washing pre-cut ready-to-eat vegetables for use in extending the freshness lifetime of the produces where the result of which has been found that the companies receiving the technology transfer can reduce the costs of cleaning process and the product loss by more than 1 million Baht per year. Nevertheless, our Research Team fully expects with hope that thereafter, this Micro Nano Bubble technology will be put to actual use in other industrial sectors in the future.
Source: King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT).
