This study aims to use ice nucleation proteins (INPs) as a novel approach to improve the efficiency of freeze drying process and investigate the related mechanism of ice morphology. Our results show that INPs can significantly improve freeze drying efficiency with increased primary drying rate under the increase of INP concentration from 0 to 10^− 2 mg/mL. Moreover, such improvement was more significant at higher subzero freezing temperatures with the addition of INPs, when the control samples were unable to freeze. Those improvements further lead to reduced total drying time, which suggests an estimated total energy saving of 28.5% by INPs. Our ice morphology results indicate the ability of INPs to alter ice morphology with lamellar ice structure and larger crystal size, which both show linear relationships with primary drying rate. The results further suggest that these ice morphology characteristics induced by INPs are very likely to facilitate the water vapor flow and improve the sublimation rate. Additionally, the increase of freeze drying efficiency can also be achieved by INPs in other food systems like coffee and milk with elevated primary drying rate. The results of this study suggest great potential of using INPs to improve the efficiency of freeze drying process for a wide range of food products and other related applications. This study also provides new insights into the relationship between process efficiency and ice morphology.

这项研究旨在利用冰核蛋白（INPs）作为一种提高冷冻干燥过程效率并研究冰形态相关机制的新方法。我们的结果表明，在INP浓度从0增加到10 ^{− 2的情况}下，INP可以显着提高冷冻干燥效率，同时提高初次干燥速率 毫克/毫升 此外，当对照样品无法冷冻时，在添加INP的情况下，在更高的零下冷冻温度下，这种改善更为显着。这些改进进一步减少了总干燥时间，这表明INP可以节省28.5％的总能源。我们的冰形态结果表明，INPs具有改变层状冰结构和较大晶体尺寸的冰形态的能力，两者均与初级干燥速率呈线性关系。结果进一步表明，由INPs诱导的这些冰形态特征很可能促进水蒸气流动并提高升华速率。此外，在其他食品系统（例如咖啡和牛奶）中，INPs可以提高冷冻干燥效率，而初级干燥速率也较高。这项研究的结果表明，使用INP来提高广泛食品和其他相关应用的冷冻干燥过程效率的巨大潜力。这项研究还提供了有关过程效率与冰形态之间关系的新见解。