Sustainable Electroporator for Continuous Pasteurisation: Design and Performance Evaluation with Orange Juice

Rai Naveed Arshad, Zulkurnain Abdul-Malek, Yanti M. M. Jusoh, Emanuele Radicetti, Paola Tedeschi, Roberto Mancinelli, Jose M. Lorenzo and Rana Muhammad Aadil
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Rai Naveed Arshad: Institute of High Voltage and High Current (IVAT), School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
Zulkurnain Abdul-Malek: Institute of High Voltage and High Current (IVAT), School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
Yanti M. M. Jusoh: Food and Biomaterial Engineering Research Group, School of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
Emanuele Radicetti: Department of Chemical, Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Sciences (DOCPAS), University of Ferrara, 44121 Ferrara, Italy
Paola Tedeschi: Department of Chemical, Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Sciences (DOCPAS), University of Ferrara, 44121 Ferrara, Italy
Roberto Mancinelli: Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences (DAFNE), University of Tuscia, Via S. Camillo de Lellis snc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy
Jose M. Lorenzo: Centro Tecnológico de la Carne de Galicia, Rúa Galicia No 4, Parque Tecnológico de Galicia, 32900 Ourense, Spain
Rana Muhammad Aadil: National Institute of Food Science and Technology, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Electroporation is a simple but effective and sustainable food processing way of treating cell membranes with an electric field. It is employed in a variety of ways in the food industry, ranging from shelf-life extension to green extraction. Despite its wide range of applications, electroporators are out of reach for many labs due to their high development costs, and different electroporators have been tailored to specific applications. The designing sequence of an electroporator that takes the geometry of a treatment chamber and its electrical resistance into account for the design of a pulse generator has not been addressed in published literature. To meet this demand, this study presents a straightforward way to develop a simple, affordable, and portable electroporator for liquid food pasteurisation. The proposed electroporator comprises a coaxial treatment chamber with static mixers and a high-voltage Marx bank based on insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). The generator has a 4.5 kV output voltage and a peak current rating of 1 kA; however, the modular design allows for a wide range of voltage and current ratings. Treated orange juice using thermal pasteurisation (65 °C, 30 min) was also used for comparison. The performance of the electroporator was studied using chemical and microbial tests. A significant log reduction (5.4 CFU·mL −1 ) was observed in both the PEF-treated samples with sieves. Additionally, the treated juice visual and chemical color analysis showed that the PEF-treated sample extended the shelf-life after 9 days of storage at 4 °C. This research also examines the energy conversion in these two processing steps. This study assists in developing further electroporators for other food applications with different treatment chambers without compromising the product’s quality.

Keywords: pulsed electric field; sustainable technology; nonthermal pasteurisation; solid-state marx generator; energy efficient; food safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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