Industrial strategy to reduced hold time of pork shank in continuous freezing tunnel

This study evaluated industrial strategies to reduce the retention time of pork shank in a continuous freezing tunnel. The influence of the use of secondary packaging and the change in the supply method from horizontal to vertical in the freezing of pork shank was evaluated. This resulted in a reduction of 3.5 h in the retention time of the product to meet the critical freezing temperature of -18°C, and a 0.5% reduction in the percentage of reprocess. The temperature variation between the freezing levels was also evaluated, using the statistical process control tool. The temperature of the different freezing levels was monitored, and it was verified that the variations were caused by the defrosting process, due to mechanical problems in the ventilation system. With this work was possible to promote improvements in the freezing system to meet the critical temperature and to reduce the percentage of reprocessing of products.