ABSTRACT
Industrial plate freezers have been used extensively to
freeze a wide variety of food products. The basic system
consists of flat hollow plates; refrigeration coils run
through these plates to cool the surface in contact with
the food product. The food products are placed between
stacked parallel plates and then pressure is applied to the
overall stack to minimize the thermal contact resistance
between the plates and the product, as shown in Fig. 1.
Thus, the product is restricted to having a planar geometry;
and therefore, unpackaged meat and fish products such as
fish fillets, ground beef patties, and boned meat are well
suited for this method. The method is also used to harden
ice cream packaged in brick containers.[1]
