[Progress in food technology: sterilization processes (author's transl)].

The results of the investigations on the behaviour of micro-organisms begun in about 1920 and deepened in more recent years, together with a better knowledge of the mechanism of heat, penetration, have been the basis for the conception and the realization of a large number of sterilization processes, sterilizers and containers allowing a quicker heat exchange to be obtained and higher sterilization temperatures to be used, with the manufacture of preserved food of better quality as a result. Aseptic filling processes, continuous sterilizers with the a can kept rotating or agitated by different means, heat exchangers with mixing of heating medium and food, scraped-surface heat exchangers and containers made of aluminium plastics laminates are being used more and more extensively. The improvement of heat sterilization processes has enabled the use of chemical preservatives to be reduced and to be limited to those surely fase for the health of the consumer. Sterilization by ionizing radiation, which seemed to be so promising at birth, has marked time in these last years and because of the doubts raised as to the harmlessness of radiation-treated foods and other drawbacks it has a present no prospects of application on a commercial scale.