An improved electroporator with continuous liquid flow and double-exponential waveform for liquid food pasteurization

Abstract

Pulsed electric field (PEF) pasteurisation keeps treated liquid food fresh and nutritious compared to traditional thermal pasteurisation. However, PEF adoption is still limited on an industrial scale due to a lack of practical systems. As a result, a great deal of research has gone into overcoming the limitations of the existing systems. Keeping this in mind, the current study contributes to the improvement of the electroporator. The heterogeneous electric field's distribution raises the temperature of the treated food samples. Liquid laminar flow is a reason for heterogeneous electric field's distribution in continuous treatment. Hotspots may also be created by using an inefficient high-voltage waveform in addition to the heterogeneous electric field distribution. This study rectifies the heterogeneous distribution by proposing an improved coaxial treatment chamber and double-exponential waveform to replace the exponential-decaying waveform. A static mixer provides an increased mixing, i.e. disrupting the laminar flow, inside the treatment zone. COMSOL based computational model was developed to study flow behaviour and corresponding temperature distribution in the proposed coaxial treatment chamber with sieves. Based on the model, it has been concluded that coaxial electrodes with sieves provide more homogeneous flow properties inside the treatment chamber. The effectiveness of the double-exponential (DE) waveform was validated using MATLAB. A three-stage Marx generator giving the DE waveform was designed and constructed. The performance of the improved treatment chamber together with the DE waveform, known as the electroporator, was studied using chemical and microbial analysis. Untreated, PEF treated, and thermal treated orange samples were stored at 4°C for 9 days before being examined. The lowest microbial growth was observed in both the PEF treated with sieves and thermally treated food samples than the untreated sample. However, treated juices' visual and chemical colour analysis showed that the PEF-treated sample acquired a brighter appearance than a thermally processed sample. Thus, this study provides significant findings in developing and utilising an electroporator to inactivate microorganisms.