ABSTRACT
Thermal processing of canned foods has been one of the most widely used methods of food preservation during the twentieth century and has contributed significantly to the nutritional well-being of much of the world’s population. This chapter describes commercial equipment systems used in the food canning industry to accomplish thermal process sterilization of canned foods on a production scale. For convection-heating products that benefit from mechanical agitation during processing, agitating batch retorts are available. The Steriflamme process is primarily used for optimal quality on canned vegetables requiring minimum liquid brine. The preponderance of thermally processed shelf-stable foods in the marketplace today continues to be processed in batch retorts that must be repeatedly loaded and unloaded between each process cycle throughout the workday. Thin-bodied liquid products packed in cans, such as milk, soups, sauces, and gravies, will heat by either natural or forced convection heat transfer, depending on the use of mechanical agitation during processing.
