REVIEW article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Sustainable Food Processing
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1585467
This article is part of the Research TopicSustainable Synergy: Balancing Food, Energy, and Water for Improving SustainabilityView all 3 articles
Carbon footprint and cost analysis of non-thermal food processing technologies: a review with a case study on orange juice
Provisionally accepted
Minliang Yang1,2*
Qingyang Wang3*- 1North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States
- 2Berkeley Lab (DOE), Berkeley, California, United States
- 3Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Accelerating decarbonization in the food and beverage industry is critical to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as this sector accounts for approximately one-third of total emissions globally. Electrified, non-thermal food processing technologies offer promising alternatives to conventional thermal methods by improving energy efficiency and enabling crosssectoral decarbonization. However, direct comparisons of their costs and environmental impacts remain limited due to the early-stage development of some technologies and variability in system configurations. This study provides a comprehensive review of four key non-thermal food processing technologies: high-pressure processing (HPP), pulsed electric fields (PEF), cold plasma, and ultraviolet light (UV). Using orange juice production as an illustrative case study, their industrial sustainability was evaluated through life cycle assessment (LCA) and technoeconomic analysis (TEA). Our LCA/TEA results show that, compared to conventional thermal pasteurization, orange juice processed with non-thermal technologies has slightly higher selling prices, with HPP being the most expensive. The carbon footprints of non-thermal processes are comparable to or lower than those of thermal pasteurization. This review offers valuable insights into the sustainability of various non-thermal food technologies, identifies key environmental and economic hotspots for industrial application, and serves as a guide for advancing sustainable practices in the food industry.
Keywords: food sustainability, Life-cycle assessment (LCA), Technoeconomic analysis (TEA), Non-thermal processing, Decarbonization, Juice processing
Received: 28 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Minliang Yang, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States
Qingyang Wang, Oregon State University, Corvallis, 97331, Oregon, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.