Unique Refrigerating Machines with Supercooling Technology for High-Quality Food Preservation: Kuraban

Objective
Country
Japan

Freezer with Advanced Freezing Technology That Can Maintain Food Freshness 3 to 10 Times Longer Than Regular Refrigerators

Kuraban is a product with advanced freezing technology that can maintain food freshness 3 to 10 times longer than regular refrigerators. It is used for storing various kinds of food such as fishery products (sea food) that usually need to be frozen for longer storage. “Kuraban” is particularly beneficial for food that is easily damaged by normal unfreezing processes. “Kuraban” can significantly improve the quality of refrigerated food, by skipping the thawing process and avoiding cellular damage to food.

 

 

Major Features and Advantages

  • Freshness

    Enables to maintain freshness of products 3 to 10 times longer by keeping food refrigerated with -2℃
  • Speed and Sanitation

    Enables to reduce food loss by keeping food matured and sanitized
  • Defrosting

    Enables to maintain high quality by minimizing cell destruction and food drip with temperature control

    ※Food drip: Juice from the inside of food when it is thawed. Juice includes the original flavor and umami of the food.

 

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Fig. 1 Comparison of preserved states of foods between Kuraban and a conventional refrigerator

 

Technology Data

Possible applications

In the short term, we believe that “Kuraban” can contribute to accomplish the following three goals:

(1) To increase sales opportunities by decreasing the volume of food loss such as deteriorated fish and vegetables.

(2) To add value to fishery (sea food) and agricultural products.

(3) To expand exportable market and create new business opportunities.

In the medium term, it will increase the income level of fishermen, farmers and other people concerned including exporters.

In the long term, “Kuraban” will develop fishery and agricultural industry by strengthening their competitiveness, increasing the value of fishery and agricultural products and expanding the market.

 

Competitive advantage

“Kuraban” has a great advantage in the refrigeration technology which enables to keep fishery and agricultural products fresh in a long period of time. It reduces cost in freezing and defrosting by providing refrigeration technology.

By applying an electric field in the refrigerator using a N-Te-Fe (see Fig. 2) energy system, it is possible to carry out refrigeration storage for a long period of time without freezing food even under freezing point as well as performing antibacterial and oxidation control.

The effect of the system is to achieve 3 to 10 times longer-term preservation than conventional refrigerators.

 

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Fig. 2 Images of N-TeFe device

 

Performance

It enables to maintain freshness of products 3 times to 10 times longer than regular refrigerators.

 

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Fig. 3 Specification of Kuraban

 

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Table 1 Advantages of Kuraban

 

Technical maturity / Past record of introduction

FY18: 35 units (31 in Japan and 4 in foreign countries (Thai, New Zealand and Morocco)) as of January 2019

Application at installed sites:

Steak House: Long-term preservation of meat, provision of aged meat

Hotels: Maintenance of freshness of food, Compression of food loss

Butcher: Production of aged meat

Japanese restaurant: Long-term preservation of meat and Fish, production of aged meat

Soba Shop: Long-term storage of Soba to improve process efficiency

Sweets Shop: Keep purchase price by long-term preservation of strawberries

 

Information on patent related to this technology

Patent No. 3747218 (JP)

 

Contact person

CEO Masaki OHNO

E-mail:[email protected]

Collection
Technology owners

MARS Company