Recent Advances in IQF Applied to Fruits and Vegetables: Fundamentals, Numerical Models and Process Innovations

Hernández-Sihuas L.; Palomino-Lozano I.; Yupanqui-Ormeño F.; Chávez-Llerena R.T.; Mojo-Quisani A.; Comettant-Rabanal R. · Food Engineering Reviews (2026) · DOI: 10.1007/s12393-025-09432-7

Resumen

Freezing is an essential unit operation for food preservation and gives rise to the industrial technique known as individual quick freezing (IQF), which uses high air flow rates, as well as some novel variants under two-phase immersion of the cooling medium and hybrid spray systems to quicken the process at lower cost. IQF applied to fruits and vegetables (F&V) is key to maintaining the nutrients and sensory properties of foods, reducing the formation of large ice crystals compared to conventional freezing. This review article highlights the performance of IQF and describes: (i) the individual quick freezing technique applied in F&V and its novel variants, (ii) explains its different systems, mechanisms and parameters for its application and (iii) evaluated numerical models based on the main transport phenomena based on Fourier’s law, Planck’s law and some previously established dimensionless numbers to determine the heat and mass transfer, as well as the freezing times in F&V using IQF technology. Finally, several applications are described together with their advantages. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2026.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco; Universidad Privada San Juan Bautista