A Performance Study of a Multi-Level Electrode Treatment Chamber for Food Processing

Use of pulsed electric field (PEF) is considered as one of the most promising non-thermal food treatment methods. One of the challenges in applying PEF technology is the scalability issue when treating large amounts of liquid food. In this paper, the effect of using multi-level electrodes on both the pulse shape and killing efficiency of PEF technology is addressed. It has been found that the pulse width reduced and the pulse shape changed from an RC decaying pulse to RLC type as the number of treatment zones increased. Such a change in the pulse characteristics is mainly attributed to the reduction in the impedance of the treatment chamber as the number of stages increased. The effect of such change in the pulse shape on the inactivation rate of PEF treated liquid foods is examined.