CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Microwave energy is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum and is defined by a wavelengthrange between 1 mm and 1 m and a frequency range between 300 MHz and300 GHz (Bhatt et al., 2020). The food industry uses only limited frequencies becauseof the interaction between microwaves and telecommunication devices. Generally,industrial and domestic microwave ovens use the 915 and 2450 MHz frequencies(Verma et al., 2020). Microwaves (MW) are nonionizing radiations that do have notenough energy to separate atomic bonds, but these radiations can cause physical harmdepending on distance, frequency of the radiation, power, and time.Early, the first major applications were finishing drying potato chips, precookingof poultry and bacon, tempering frozen food, and drying pasta (Decarau, 1985). Microwaveheating demonstrates significant advantages over conventional methods inreducing process time and improving food quality with the preservation of nutrients,vitamin contents, flavor, sensory characteristics, and color of the products (Bhatt etal., 2020). The reduction of process times is a consequence of the food-radiation interactionthrough the inner volumetric energy generation. Thermal processing traditionaltechniques use usually surface heating, where the heat is transferred to the restof the processed material from a heated surface by a conductive mechanism in solids,and by conduction and convection in liquids. Such techniques require the use of hotsurfaces, which may result in thermal damage to the product if an increase in processingrates is needed. Therefore, when these techniques are used, the heating rate maybe limited by this potential damage to the food surface. Volumetric heating (or thesimultaneous heating of the entire body of the material) is a technological term usedto describe heating produced throughout the volume of a material. This feature mayresult in significant benefits in the process and the final quality when applies to foodprocessing

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