More efficient mushroom canning through pinch and exergy analysis

- Sustainability of current canned mushroom production is compared with three new proposed scenarios.
- Exergy and pinch analysis, water use and the final product yield are used to assess sustainability.
- Pre-slicing mushroom before vacuum hydration decreases exergy loss and water use.
- Using blanch water in production increases the product yield and also decreases exergy loss and water use.

Conventional production of canned mushrooms involves multiple processing steps as vacuum hydration, blanching, sterilization, etc. that are intensive in energy and water usage. We analyzed the current mushroom processing technique plus three alternative scenarios via pinch and exergy analysis. The product yield, utility use, exergy loss, and water use are used as sustainability indicators. Whilst re-arrangement of the production process could maximally save up to 28% of the heat input and up to 25% of the water usage, the most important improvement is obtained by re-using blanch water, which improves the overall yield of the preservation and canning process by 9%, also saving water and exergy use in the production.