Photo by Tom Campbell

Nelson demonstrates the revolutionary bag-in-box technology to graduate students in Purdue’s food science pilot lab recently.

Aseptic processing is a way to sterilize a product and maintain that sterility — without refrigeration — through storage, further processing and/or packaging.

Phil Nelson's research at Purdue has centered on the aseptic processing of bulk quantities of food. His successes include developing a majority of the bulk aseptic processing system: from tanks and linings to filters and valves; from processing to storage; and from storage to packaging.

In aseptic processing, food is stored at ambient temperatures in sterilized containers free of spoilage organisms and pathogens. Aseptic containers may range in size from 300-gallon plastic bags (bag-in-box technology that allows shipping of the bags in plastic or cardboard boxes) to a 1.8-million-gallon aseptic tank on an ocean-going ship.

Nelson's research made practical the worldwide export and import of new, economical and safe food products. Others had applied aseptic packaging in consumer-scale packages, but it was Nelson who succeeded in creating the bulk aseptic system.

In 1991, the Institute of Food Technologists rated the top 10 innovations in food technology. Aseptic processing and packaging ranked No. 1, ahead of juice concentrates, safe canning processes, freeze-drying and food fortification.

Enerfab, the company that produces the aseptic tanks and systems for 95 percent of the global orange juice market, estimates that nearly 500 million gallons of juice are processed annually using aseptic advances developed by Nelson.

More than 90 percent of the approximately 24 million tons of fresh tomatoes harvested globally each year are aseptically processed and packaged for year-round remanufacture into various food products, according to the World Food Prize Foundation.

Conservative estimates say companies utilizing Nelson's bag-in-box research package 19 billion gallons of foodstuffs annually.

Bag-in-box technology was used in 2004 and 2005 to ship more than 5.5 million gallons of potable water to victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf States of the U.S.