Abstract
Food is one of the most energy and CO2-
intensive consumer goods. While environmental data on primary
agricultural products are increasingly becoming available, there
are large data gaps concerning food processing. Bridging these
gaps is important; for example, the food industry can use such
data to optimize processes from an environmental perspective,
and retailers may use this information for purchasing decisions.
Producers and retailers can then market sustainable products and
deliver the information demanded by governments and
consumers. Finally, consumers are increasingly interested in
the environmental information of foods in order to lower their
consumption impacts. This study provides estimation tools for
the energy demand of a representative set of food process unit
operations such as dehydration, evaporation, or pasteurization. These operations are used to manufacture a variety of foods and
can be combined, according to the product recipe, to quantify the heat and electricity demand during processing. In combination
with inventory data on the production of the primary ingredients, this toolbox will be a basis to perform life cycle assessment
studies of a large number of processed food products and to provide decision support to the stakeholders. Furthermore, a case
study is performed to illustrate the application of the tolos.
