ARTICLE IN PRESS

Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2009) xxxxxx

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Journal of Food Engineering

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Review

Designs of pulsed electric elds treatment chambers for liquid foods pasteurization process: A review
Kang Huang, Jianping Wang *
College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University, 268 Kaixuan Road, Hangzhou 310029, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
As a non-thermal pasteurization process, pulsed electric elds (PEF) technology has been receiving wide attention. This rapid process can provide consumers with microbiologically safe, minimally processed, fresh-like products. The treatment chamber, which houses electrodes and delivers a high voltage to a food material, is one of the key components in the PEF pasteurization process. This paper mentions the current designs of the PEF treatment chambers, reviewing various congurations of static and continuous-ow treatment chambers, the effect of basic design parameters, and the performance of the optimized treatment system based on the existent chambers. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 16 January 2009 Received in revised form 4 June 2009 Accepted 8 June 2009 Available online xxxx Keywords: Pulsed electric eld Treatment chamber Non-thermal process

Contents 1. 2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Static treatment chambers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1. U-shaped static treatment chamber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Parallel plate static treatment chamber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3. Disk-shaped static treatment chamber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4. Wirecylinder static treatment chamber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5. Rodrod static treatment chamber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6. A sealed static treatment chamber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Continuous-flow treatment chambers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. Electric-field strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2. Treatment time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3. Treatment temperature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4. The effective area of flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5. Cooling system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6. Coaxial treatment chambers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7. The flow rate and commercial PEF treatment plant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

3.

4.

1. Introduction In recent years, there has been an increasing consumer demand for fresh-like food products, especially liquid foods, such as vegetable juice, fruit juice, and milk, which are rich in antioxidant vita* Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +86 571 86971713. E-mail address: jpwang@zju.edu.cn (J. Wang). 0260-8774/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2009.06.013

mins, for example vitamins C and E, phenolic compounds, and carotenes (Torregrosa et al., 2006; Burns et al., 2003; John et al., 2002; McCall and Frei, 1999; Sanchez-Moreno et al., 2003; Williamson, 1996). Therefore, keeping original avor and color characteristics as well as a high nutritive value during the food processing is of growing importance. Traditionally, the inactivation of microorganisms is carried out by thermal treatment, but heat produces alterations to avor and taste in addition to nutrient loss (Martin

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et al., 1997). As an alternative to the conventional methods, PEF has been studied as a non-thermal food preservation method for food pasteurization process (Yeom et al., 2000; Hoover, 1997). In general, PEF treatment systems consist of a pulse generator, treatment chambers, a uid-handing system, and monitoring systems (Min et al., 2007), in which a PEF treatment chamber is used to house electrodes and deliver a high voltage to the food material and the chamber, generally, is composed of two electrodes held in position by insulating material, which forms an enclosure containing food material. Thus, the design of the treatment chamber is one of the pivotal factors in the development of the PEF treatment for non-thermal pasteurization technology (Alkhafaji and Farid, 2007), because it should impart uniform electric eld to foods with a minimum increase of the temperature and the electrodes should be designed to minimize the effect of electrolysis (Buta and Tauscher, 2002). The PEF technology is desirable for liquid food to increase its shelf life while maintaining its organoleptic characteristics. In order to meet these requirements, various laboratory and pilot scale PEF treatment chambers, developed by a number of universities, research groups and private industries, have been designed, constructed, manufactured and used for non-thermal treatment on microbial inactivation of liquid foods. During the past ve decades, a signicant effort has been made to use the technologies on a commercial scale for pasteurization of food, including some recent industrial scale PEF treatment systems available, involving both treatment chambers and power supply equipment (Buta and Tauscher, 2002). The PEF treatment process may be either static or continuous. While in the static processing, discrete portions of uid foodstuff are treated as a unit by subjecting all of the uid to a PEF treatment chamber, in which uniform eld strength substantially is applied to all elements of foodstuff to be treated, in the continuous processing, the treated foodstuff is owing into and emitted from the PEF treatment system in a steady stream by a pump (Dunn and Pearlman, 1987), and the design of the treatment chamber is a gradual development from static treatment chambers to continuous treatment chambers. 2. Static treatment chambers 2.1. U-shaped static treatment chamber The earliest chambers, designed in 1960s to treat food in a conned, static volume was rst studied by Sale and Hamilton for the inactivation of microorganism in a static PEF chamber, which contains two carbon electrodes backed with brass blocks hollowed out

Fig. 2. Cut-away cross-section of the static treatment chamber designed by Dunn and Pearlman (1987).

for coolant ow with a U-shaped polythene spacer placed between the electrodes to form the chamber (Fig. 1). Maximum electric eld of 30 kV/cm can be applied due to the electrical breakdown caused by the air above the food (Alkhafaji, 2006). A maximum of 10 kV pseudosquare wave pulses with 220 ls pulsewidth were tested, in which with 10 pulses of 20 kV/cm peak eld and 20 ls pulsewidth, an Escherichia coli survival rate of less than 1% was obtained (Sale and Hamilton, 1967a). Using this treatment chamber, the temperature rise of the suspension was small and did not cause the lethal effect. Sale and Hamilton proposed that death of the organisms was not because of the products of electrolysis, but because of the electric eld causing an irreversible loss of the membranes function as the semipermeable barrier between the bacterial cell and its environment, ending in cell death (Sale and Hamilton, 1967b). 2.2. Parallel plate static treatment chamber Some of the rst designs incorporated parallel plate geometry using at electrodes separated by an insulating spacer (Dunn, 2001), where uniform electric-eld strength can be achieved by parallel plate-electrodes with a gap sufciently smaller than the electrode surface dimension. One apparent disadvantage in this design, however, is its inherent eld strength limitation due to surface tracking on the uid or insulator that leads to arcing. A laboratory scale PEF treatment static test apparatus, designed by Dunn and Pearlman (1987), as presented in Fig. 2, consisted of two substantially parallel stainless steel electrodes with a gap of 5 mm and an acrylic Plexiglas electrode spacer. The chamber had an effective electrode area of 20 cm2 with a height of 2 cm and an inner diameter of 10 cm, with a small hole in one of the electrodes, through which a liquid foodstuff to be treated was injected to ll the chamber completely. Applied peak eld strength ranged

Fig. 1. Static PEF treatment chamber designed by Sale and Hamilton (1967a,b). (a) Cut-away view showing the alignment of three parts. (b) U-shaped spacer and coolant connection.

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from 5 to 25 kV/cm. Once electric-eld strength was greater than 30 kV/cm, sparks were observed. Similar to the treatment chamber by Sale and Hamilton, the PEF treatment chamber designed by Grahl and Markl (1996), was comprised of two rectangular carbonbrass electrodes separated by a rectangular Plexiglas frame with a thickness of 0.5 or 1.2 cm. The effective area of the electrode was 50 cm2 and the maximum voltage ranged from 5 to 15 kV. So the maximum electric-eld strength could reach 30 kV/cm without cooling the electrodes. Treatment chambers with parallel plate-electrodes provide a uniform electrical-eld distribution along the gap axes and electrode surfaces, but create a eld enhancement problem at the edge of the electrodes. 2.3. Disk-shaped static treatment chamber It is important that the PEF treatment chamber should be designed to provide a high, relatively spatially uniform electric eld in the treatment zone, while minimizing the capacity or conditions for electrical breakdown and is also important that the electrode surface should be designed to minimize eld enhancement that increases the local electric eld and results in electrical breakdown (Bushnell et al., 1993). To minimize the potential for electrical breakdown at the insulator, proposed were principles which are instrumental to successful processing at high electric-eld strengths (Bushnell et al., 1993). Such principles are (1) removing the insulator from the region of high electric eld, (2) removing the triple point (i.e., the interface between the electrode, insulator, and liquid or pumpable food) from the high eld region, (3) increasing the length of the insulator, (4) placing the insulator at an angle to the electric eld, and/or (5) reducing electric eld enhancement by appropriate design of the shape of the electrodes. In accordance with the principle (5) mentioned above, the design of disk-shaped, round-edged electrodes can reduce electric eld enhancement and the possibility of electric breakdown of the uid foods (Dunn and Pearlman, 1987). Washington State University (WSU) designed a disk-shaped static chamber (Fig. 3), where two round-edged disk-shaped stainless steel electrodes polished to mirror surfaces were held in position by insulting material that also formed an enclosure containing the food (Qin et al., 1994). Because the disk-shaped, round-edged electrodes minimized electric eld enhancement and reduced the possibility of dielectric breakdown of the uid foods and polysulfone or Plexiglas was selected as insulating materials. The appearance of space charge in the food would modify the electric eld from the ideal no-space-charge situation. Accordingly, the gap between the two electrodes and the volume of the chamber were 0.51 cm and 13.8 ml or 0.95 cm and 25.7 ml, and the maximum electric-eld strength reached 75 kV/cm. There was also a cooling system in this chamber, which was provided by circulating water at pre-selected temperatures through jackets built into the electrodes.

Fig. 4. Static treatment chamber designed by Amiali et al. (2004).

To investigate inactivation of E. coli O157:H7 suspended in dialyzed liquid egg products, Amiali et al. (2004) developed a static treatment chamber, in which the 0.23 ml treatment chamber consisted of two parallel stainless electrodes and polypropylene spacer with 0.15 cm gap and 1.53 cm2 surface areas (Fig. 4), with a cooling system used to maintain constant temperature during the PEF treatment (Amiali et al., 2004). A three log reduction in counts of E. coli O157:H7 in liquid egg yolk was obtained at 0 C using PEF treatment of 15 kV/cm, 500 pulses and 200 ls pulsewidth. 2.4. Wirecylinder static treatment chamber As showed in Fig. 5a, a wirecylinder electrode system was used in the experiment, where the inner diameter of the cylinder electrode was 20 mm, and the wire diameter was 1 mm, and the length of the treatment chamber was 110 mm, which could contain 38 cm3 of liquid (Matsumoto et al., 1991). The wire electrode was held by Plexiglas cap at the top of the center of the cylinder, with this treatment chamber mounted on the stirrer at the bottom of the cylinder. It became obvious from a solid line r in Fig. 6 that destruction performance markedly deteriorated with decrease of survivability. To improve this performance deterioration, a stirrer was used to promote the agitation of the liquid, so that once the liquid in the cylinder was effectively agitated, the survivability linearly decreased 104105 with increase of energy input, but the agitation of the liquid would cause another problem: the electric eld was essentially distributed inside the wirecylinder electrode. Because the electric eld near the cylinder wall was much lower than that near the wire electrode, destruction performance in this area would be low. 2.5. Rodrod static treatment chamber A rodrod treatment chamber, in which a pair of rod electrodes were screwed to the Teon chamber and held at the center of the chamber (Fig. 5b), was made to study the cell destruction by an intense shock wave generated by an underwater arc discharge. With a diameter of 4 mm for each rod electrodes, and the rod end in the shape of a semi-sphere, the distance between the two rod electrodes was 3 mm. The nylon lm was away from the discharge point by 15 mm, and the inner diameter and the length of the small vessel for sample liquid were 15 mm respectively (Matsumoto et al., 1991). 2.6. A sealed static treatment chamber Application of PEF processing is restricted to food products with no air bubbles (Ramaswamy et al., 2005), because in the treatment chambers, the uniformity of the electric eld can be easily inuenced due to the presence of gas-lled cavities such as gas bubbles (Gongora-Nieto et al., 2003), and the presence of a gas bubble inside the chamber will cause local dielectric breakdown, thus threatening the uniformity of the PEF treatment across the chamber gap, and even successive applications of PEF will result in a

Fig. 3. Schematic drawing of WSU static treatment chamber (Qin et al., 1994).

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Fig. 5. Static treatment system designed by Matsumoto et al. (1991). (a) Wirecylinder electrode and (b) rodrod electrode system.

spark (Alkhafaji and Farid, 2007). Based on theories describing dielectric breakdown in liquid dielectrics (Gallagher and Pearmain, 1983), entrapped gas bubbles in liquid food owing through the gap of a PEF treatment chamber were considered to be the reason for local dielectric breakdown and discharge of the system, a limiting factor in PEF technology (Gongora-Nieto et al., 2003). Considering the potential trigger of dielectric breakdown, the lling port should facilitate the complete expelling of air during the lling process. When the food product experiences a spark in a sealed static treatment chamber, high pressure develops rapidly and the chamber may break apart. Thus, a degassing unit is desirable to ensure safety of the operation, eliminating the possibility of dielectric breakdown within the treated liquid to the minimum during processing (Zhang et al., 1995; Alkhafaji and Farid, 2007). This static treatment chamber held a volume of 60 60 3 mm3 (Fig. 7). Two parallel electrodes, whose thickness was 1 mm here, were made of stainless steel. High temperature resisting material PTFE (polytetrauoroethylene) was used for the discharging chamber. In order to prevent the bacteria inuencing the result of the experiment, the static treatment chamber was

Fig. 7. Sketch map of static treatment chamber designed by Zhang (2005).

completely sealed, and sample liquids were taken using a medical syringe. Owing to relatively larger volume of the chamber, waveform of high voltage pulse, to a large extent, was affected by the equivalent circuit parameters of the chamber. The actual pulse voltage was lower than voltage produced by capacitor discharge. Accordingly, the inactivation of microorganism was less effective (Fang et al., 2006; Zhang, 2005). Based on this design, Bazhal et al. (2006) used a batch treatment chamber with a cooling system to study the efciency of the combined thermal and PEF inactivation of E. coli O157:H7. In line with the above viewpoint, relatively lower electric eld intensities, ranging from 9 to 15 kV/cm, were obtained in this chamber. In addition, materials of the PEF treatment chamber should be washable and autoclavable. Usually, satisfactory results will be obtained from some food stuffs at some voltage levels, while the apparatus may be constructed using stainless steel electrodes and polysulfone insulation (Hofmann, 1984), while in other environment more inert electrode materials, such as gold, platinum, carbon and metal oxides, may provide improved performance (Bushnell et al., 1993). Static chambers are mainly suitable for laboratory use, to nd out the relevant factors parameters, while for large scale operations, continuous chambers are more efcient. Thus in the initial stage of the researches, the establishment of static treatment chamber is indispensable. 3. Continuous-ow treatment chambers

Fig. 6. Effect of agitation on the survivability of S. cerevisiae (Matsumoto et al., 1991).

Actually, most continuous-ow treatment chambers borrow ideas from the static chamber designs, or more exact, a number

Please cite this article in press as: Huang, K., Wang, J. Designs of pulsed electric elds treatment chambers for liquid foods pasteurization process: A review. Journal of Food Engineering (2009), doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2009.06.013

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K. Huang, J. Wang / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2009) xxxxxx Table 1 The factors determining the efciency of the microbial inhibition by PEF. Factors Treatment parameters Parameters Electric-eld strength PEF treatment time Treatment temperature Pulsewidth Pulse shape Electric conductivity Density Viscosity pH Water activity Microbial cell size and sharp Gram-positive bacteria or gramnegative bacteria Growth stage of microorganisms References Ortega-Rivas et al. (1998) Odriozola-Serrano et al. (2006) Lebovka et al. (2004) Wu et al. (2005) Fox et al. (2007) Vega-Mercado et al. (1996) Beebe et al. (2002) Ruhlman et al. (2001) Garcia et al. (2005) Min et al. (2007) Wouters et al. (2001) Lado and Yousef (2002) Pothakamury et al. (1996) Fig. 8. Inactivation of E. coli HB5a in response to high intensity pulsed electric eld treatment in a continuous-ow system (Heinz and Knorr, 2000). 5

Product parameters

Microbial characteristics

of continuous-ow treatment chambers were modied from some similar static treatment chambers, in which PEF treatments performed more effectively using continuous treatment chambers, due to the great treatment uniformity in the continuous systems (Martin et al., 1997). The proper design of the treatment chamber is essential for the efciency of the PEF technology (Narsetti et al., 2006), as the efciency of the microbial inactivation by PEF is determined by three factors that are classied with treatment parameters, product parameters, and microbial characteristics, as shown in Table 1 (Min et al., 2007). Of these factors, only treatment parameters can be modulated in treatment chambers. The main treatment parameters that inuence the inactivation rate of microorganisms by PEF include electric-eld strength, PEF treatment time, pulsewidth, pulse shape, treatment temperature, and inlet temperature (Knorr et al., 1994; Hulsheger and Niemann, 1980). Generally, as the intensity of each of these parameters increases in a certain range, the microbial inactivation by PEF also increases. The attempts, which have been made by studies on the optimization of the treatment parameters to obtain better performance of the PEF processing, are classied as below. 3.1. Electric-eld strength Electric-eld strength and treatment time are the most important treatment parameters affecting the performance of microbial inactivation by PEF (Castro et al., 1993). Of all the factors inuencing microbial inactivation by PEF, the effect of electric-eld strength is the most obvious. Once the applied electric eld exceeds a critical value for sufcient time, transmembrane potential is induced which results in cell death (Alkhafaji, 2006). A loglinear relationship between electric-eld strength and microbial inactivation was reported (Hulsheger and Niemann, 1980; Reina et al., 1998; Bruhn et al., 1997; Qin et al., 1998), obviously indicating that the efciency of pulse treatment strongly depends on the eld strength applied, as presented in Fig. 8, left (Heinz et al., 2003). The higher the eld strength at constant energy levels, the higher is the lethality of the treatment, with the studies on the effect of PEF treating uid foodstuff showing that the killing power increases more with electric-eld strength than with pulse duration (Schoenbach et al., 2000). An interesting design for a treatment chamber which provides higher electric elds in a small volume without increasing the voltage at the electrodes was proposed by Matsumoto et al. (1991) to obtain higher electric-eld strength in a Converged Electric Field

type treatment chamber, in which the insulating plate (Teon) with small holes was placed between the parallel disc electrodes (Fig. 9). The inner diameter of the vessel was 20 mm, and the distance between the disc electrodes was also 20 mm, with the standard thickness of Teon plate of 10 mm, but the diameter and number of the hole being varied. Though the liquid was continuously introduced into the vessel through the hole of the disc electrodes, only the uid inside the holes of the insulating plate was subjected to the PEF treatment. Since the cross-section area of the holes was very small, the electric eld lines were mainly concentrated at the hole part, where the cell suspension owed. At the moment, the uid at both sides of the small holes actually acted as electrodes, and the length of the small holes corresponded to the distance between the two electrodes. The current density at the electrodeliquid interface was held low to minimize electrolysis and reduce possibility of bubble formation. Compared with the wirecylinder static treatment chamber, in the Converge Electric Field type treatment chamber, performance was improved and survivability decreased, as showed in Fig. 10, but with a disadvantage that in this design the stagnant zones in the 90 corners of the cell, where microbes could build up and liquid food might overheat undesirably, would cause sparking (Alkhafaji, 2006). Compared with the larger electrode surface, the treatment area and gap between the electrodes should be small in order to have a uniform and strong electric eld (Qin et al., 1994), accordingly, a continuous co-eld PEF treatment chamber was designed and constructed by Sensoy et al. (1997), as shown in Fig. 11, the actual treatment volume was the small orice volume. The volume of

Fig. 9. Structure and equivalent circuit of converged electric eld type treatment chamber (Matsumoto et al., 1991).

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Fig. 12. Cross sectional view of the PEF treatment chamber designed by Alkhafaji and Farid (2007).

Fig. 10. Electrode type and survivability of S. cerevisiae (Matsumoto et al., 1991).

steel mesh electrodes isolated from each other by an insulator element designed to from an orice where the voltage across the orice is close to the supplied voltage (Fig. 12), where the liquid food was introduced from the openings of the two mesh electrodes and through the orice between them where the electric eld lines were concentrated. The treatment volume in the chamber was 0.06 cm3, and the unit was designed for ow rate of 2.5 cm3/s, to provide a residence time of 0.026 s in the treatment zone, so that the problem of the stagnant zone where microbes could build up and the liquid food might overheat was minimized in the present design. 3.2. Treatment time As the PEF treatment time increases, the inactivation rate of microbes was rapid incipiently, and then gently, gradually attening, nally, no signicant change even treated with more time (Jayaram et al., 1992), with the microbial killing highest during the rst 10 20 pulses and gradually decreasing (Alkhafaji and Farid, 2007). The treatment time is calculated by multiplying the number of pulses applied by the pulsewidth, because the pulsewidth and/or the number of pulses increase, the PEF treatment time will also increase, which results in an increased microbial inactivation. Nevertheless, it is necessary to avoid increasing pulsewidth to a fault, because it will cause food temperature to rise to an undesirable level, so, the pulsewidth must be controlled in the range that does not cause overheat (Zhang et al., 1995). Dunn and Pearlman (1987) described a PEF unit in which a continuous-ow effectively switches on and off the electric eld (Fig. 13), where uid foodstuff was subjected to a sequential plurality of high electric eld pulses. The chamber included a plurality of cylindrical shape electrode reservoir zones, which were electrically isolated from each other by intervening dielectric separating elements so that only the current will pass through the uid foodstuff itself. Typical operating conditions for the system were electric-eld strengths from 5 to 25 kV/cm with square or exponentially decaying pulse shapes, typical duration between 1 and 100 ms, and repetition rates between 0.1 and 100 Hz. As indicated, it is important that a substantially uniform electric eld be provided throughout the liquid foodstuff treatment zone. Otherwise, current laments or the formation of streamer arcs may develop within the treatment zone, but the present design could not provide uniform treatment so that the product had the trend to produce current laments or arcs. Washington State University (WSU) PEF research group designed, constructed and tested a bench scale continuous-ow chamber, which was modied from the above-mentioned WSU static treatment chamber. To increase the residence time of the li-

Fig. 11. Side view of the treatment chamber designed by Sensoy et al. (1997).

the orice and the conical regions were designed so that the voltage across the orice would be high enough for inactivation, with electric-eld strengths of 2540 kV/cm being tested. The special conical shaped electrodes and insulators were designed to eliminate gas deposits within the treatment volume, resulting in increasing the electric-eld strength which increases the inactivation rate logarithmically, consistent with the conclusion by Hulsheger and Niemann (1980), Reina et al. (1998), Bruhn et al. (1997) and Qin et al. (1998). The problem of stagnant zone in the previous design was prevented, but again, the liquid in the center of the cell would receive less electric pulses, while the treatment outside the disc electrode was important. Similar to the previous design, presented by Alkhafaji and Farid (2007), another design to concentrate the electric eld in a small region consisting of a treatment chamber includes two stainless

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Fig. 13. A continuous current, high electric eld treatment chamber (Dunn and Pearlman, 1987). (a) Chamber and (b) electric eld versus time or position as uid switching.

Fig. 14. WSU continuous treatment chamber with bafes. (a) Cross-section view. (b) Top view (Zhang et al., 1995).

quid food inside the treatment chamber, bafed ow channels were added inside the chamber, providing a tortuous path of liquid food in the treatment zone (Fig. 14). Cooling of the chamber was provided by circulating water at a selected temperature through jackets built in the two stainless steel electrodes. The designed operating conditions were chamber volume 20 or 8 cm3; electrode gap 0.95 or 0.51 cm; PEF strength 35 or 70 kV/cm; pulsewidth 2 15 ls; pulse repetition rate of 1 Hz; and food ow rate of 1200 or 600 cm3/min. 3.3. Treatment temperature The treatment temperature also plays an important role in microbial inactivation (Floury et al., 2006). Application of PEF at mild temperatures has been suggested as a way to enhance the effectiveness of PEF as a preservation method (Sepulveda et al., 2005), but the effect of the temperature on inactivation is complicated. On the one hand, higher temperature will induce damage in organoleptic qualities of food, while on the other hand, numerous researches have been made, nding that increasing the inlet temperature (from 22 to 50 C) would lead high killing rate (Sensoy et al., 1997; Reina et al., 1998; Calderon-Miranda et al., 1999). Preferred temperature for the treatment chamber and electrodes are in the range of approximately 065 C, preferably 1045 C, even more preferably 1525 C (Qin et al., 2000). Moreover, it was suggested that PEF treatment be combined with thermal treatment (Hulsheger et al., 1981; Mertens and Knorr, 1992; Lebovka et al., 2004), because if the food temperature was raised before a PEF treatment, the food product would get less thermal load in this way compared with the product undergoing a PEF treatment without preheating (Heinz et al., 2003). Using synergistic effects of ele-

Fig. 15. Line drawing of the CPSI chamber and the LP treatment chamber (Mcdonald et al., 2000).

vated treatment temperature on microbial inactivation, the energy input could also be reduced from above 100 to less than 40 kJ/kg, leading to a drastic reduction in operation costs (Heinz et al., 2003). Zhang et al. (1995) found that increasing the inlet temperature from 7 to 20 C signicantly increased the PEF inactivation of E. coli in simulated milk ultra ltrate, but the additional increase in temperature from 20 to 33 C did not result in an increase in PEF inactivation. Thus, the inlet temperature plays a second role in microbial inactivation (Floury et al., 2006). Mcdonald et al. (2000) developed two continuous-ow CoolPure PEF systems, namely the pilot PEF system (CPSI) and the
TM

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Fig. 16. A schematic illustration of the PEF system for extending the shelf life of liquid products (Yin et al., 1997).

PurePulse Laboratory Prototype PEF system (LP), as presented in Fig. 15. In both the CPSI and LP systems, product was heated and cooled using tube-in-tube heat exchangers, in which directly before the product was pumped into the PEF treatment chamber, it was heated to 30 C, and the cooling heat exchangers after the PEF treatment chamber decreased product temperature to between 4 and 7 C, with the product reaching the cooling heat exchangers about 13 s after treatment. Overall, the PEF treatment combining heat processing has signicant and sometimes damaging effects upon the taste, color, and other properties of the resultant food products (Qin et al., 2000). Since thermal damage to freshly squeeze fruit juice is minimal at temperature below 50 C (Innings, 1998), process conditions should be maintained at or below this temperature. In the PEF treatment system designed by Yin et al. (1997), an extension of the number of treatment chambers in series was mentioned (Fig. 16). The heat exchangers, as shown in Fig. 17, are in physical connection with PEF treatment devices, so that the three heat exchangers were located before each treatment chamber respectively, and different combinations involving more or less heat exchangers and PEF treatment devices were possible, where the heat exchangers primarily served as temperature regulators for the PEF treatment system. Intermediate cooling was applied to remove the heat deposited in the product after each treatment, so that the temperature increment across each individual treatment chamber in this system was of less importance. However, the non-uniformity of the electrical-eld distribution remained (Mastwijk and Bartels, 2001). 3.4. The effective area of ow Morshuis et al. (2002) outlined an apparatus for preserving food products in a pulsed electric eld comprising a treatment chamber with an inlet for food products to be treated and an outlet for treated food products as well as a larger effective area of ow (Fig. 18). Consisting of a circular tube, the treatment chamber was fabricated from an electrically nonconductive material and was provided with a group of electrodes which were distributed, spaced regularly with respect to one another, over a rst section of the inside of the chamber, and with another group of electrodes which were distributed, spaced as the same as the rst group, over a second of the inside of the chamber. All the electrodes, insulated from each other, extended parallel to the longitudinal center line of the treatment chamber. As shown in Fig. 18, the electrodes had a crescentshaped (half-moon) cross-section, of which one side had a radius of curvature which was equal to the radius of the internal perimeter of the treatment chamber, said side forming part of the internal perimeter of the chamber. The treatment chamber therefore had a smooth inner surface, thus without perturbing on the ow of a

Fig. 17. Heat exchangers of pilot plant scale PEF system manufactured by OSU (<http://fst.osu.edu/pef>).

Fig. 18. PEF treatment chamber (Morshuis et al., 2002).

product to be treated. In this treatment chamber design, the electrodes were installed in such a way that the eld lines of the electric eld ran parallel to one another and potential controller was of such a design that the electric eld in the effective area of ow was uniform, without the risk existing in a known apparatus, that undesirable contaminants, for example microbes would accumulate in the corners of the container (Geren, 1984). 3.5. Cooling system The change in temperature during the PEF processing should be monitored and controlled to achieve a non-thermal operation, because the unavoidable difference between the inlet and outlet tem-

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perature is due to heat dissipation in the product as a result of ohmic heating (Alkhafaji and Farid, 2007). High voltage pulses produced by capacitor discharge contain a nite amount of energy (Q pulse ) that reaches the treatment chamber, as dened (Sepulveda et al., 2005):

3.6. Coaxial treatment chambers The aim of the PEF treatment chamber design is to achieve a relatively uniform high voltage electric eld in the treatment region. Because of the shape of the electrodes, an uneven distribution of electric eld could occur, which may cause local electric eld enhancement (Ge, 2005). For medium-size volumes, coaxial treatment chambers can be easily manufactured and give well-dened electric eld distribution (Hofmann, 1989). The eld strength between coaxial electrodes is:

Q pulse

 RCh CV 2 RT 2

where C is the capacitance of the discharging capacitor, V is the charging voltage, RCh is the electrical resistance of the treatment chamber and RT is the total electrical resistance of the system through which the capacitor is being discharged. Repetitive application of high voltage pulses causes heating of the treated product (DT) as energy is released into the treated product as dened (Sepulveda et al., 2005):

r ln

V  
R2 R1

fQ pulse DT F qC p

where f is the pulsing frequency, F is the ow rate of the liquid product pumped through the treatment chamber, q is the density of the treated product, and C p is its specic heat. To maintain the uid within the designed temperature range during the PEF treatment processing, a cooling system is desirable, which, by a heat exchange, was located either in the treatment chamber itself, or between treatment chambers in the case of systems with more than one treatment chamber usually employed (Evrendilek and Zhang, 2005;. Sepulveda et al., 2005; Cserhalmi et al., 2006; Torregrosa et al., 2006). For example, a coaxial PEF treatment chamber was developed to treat uid products (Pizzichemi and Occhialini, 2007), concerning which a drawing is shown in Fig. 19, and with a movable internal electrode, the PEF treatment chamber could allow us to adapt to many values of resistivities. Moreover, particular attention was given to the design of an appropriate cooling system, in order to control the temperature inside the chamber, and to the sealing of the treatment zone.

where r is the radius at which electric eld is measured. R1 and R2 are the radius of the inner and outer electrode surface, respectively. Although the electric eld in coaxial chambers is not completely uniform, this kind of treatment chamber received extensive attention due to its simple conguration and homogeneous uid ow. Generally, the coaxial treatment chamber consisted of two cylindrical electrodes made of stainless steel, of which the inner electrode was connected to a high voltages supply and the outer electrode to the ground, and the spacer between the inner and the outer electrodes allowed liquid food to ow through (Esplugas et al., 2001). In coaxial treatment chambers, the uniformity of the electric eld can be easily altered due to protuberances on the chamber electrodes or due to the presence of gas-lled cavities such as gas bubbles. Based on theories proposed by Gallagher and Pearmain (1983), the gas bubbles in liquid food would cause local dis-

Fig. 19. PEF coaxial chamber designed by Pizzichemi and Occhialini (2007).

Fig. 20. Electric eld region between high voltage electrode and grounded electrode in the coaxial treatment chamber (Qin et al., 1997).

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charge and dielectric breakdown, and dielectric breakdown can further limit the effectiveness of process and lead to increased processing steps, processing time, processing energy needed in an effort to successfully inactivate microbes or enzymes contained in the food being treated (Qin et al., 2000). A continuous treatment chamber based on a modied coaxial cylinder arrangement was designed and manufactured (Qin et al., 1997), as illustrated in Fig. 20a, in which liquid food was continuously introduced into a treatment zone between two coaxial electrodes with an optimized conguration. Electric eld optimization technology was used to modify the conguration of the electrodes (Misaki et al., 1982). The nal electrode conguration in the treatment region is illustrated in Fig. 20b, where the shaded area represents a dielectric material (Plexiglas) used to form the liquid ow path (Qin et al., 1998). The protruded surface located at the outer electrode enhanced the electric eld within the treatment zone and reduced the eld intensity outside the treatment zone. Both the inner high voltage electrode and the outer grounded electrode contained circulating cooling uid for controlling the temperature of electrodes (Qin et al., 1995, 1998). In the treatment region, the electrical potential drop was nearly uniform and a strong electric eld was generated. Whats more, the coaxial treatment chamber may operate normally without dielectric breakdown even at an electric eld exceeding 70 kV/cm. Another advantage of this design was that the optimized conguration would reduce the risk of electrical discharge through the food product being treated signicantly. Remarkably resulting in reducing eld strength between the electrodes, however, it created a risk that microbes in the food product might not be inactivated adequately as they pass through the treatment zone (Qin et al., 2000). The intent of food pasteurization with PEF is to induce the dielectric breakdown of the cell membrane, rather than the dielectric breakdown of the uid food, or termed spark-over, which should be prevented in the PEF pasteurization (Zhang et al., 1995). To treat food products of high electric conductivity specially, a further preferred treatment chamber was built, different from the previous one with respect to the surface of the inner and outer electrodes in the treatment zone, where instead of the parallel annular faces used in previous chamber, the treatment faces of electrodes were specially contoured to provide a treatment zone in which the electrical-eld strength varied between relatively higher values and relatively lower values. The relatively higher electric eld was associated with the points of the primary treatment zone where

the complementary electrode faces were closely spaced. The relatively lower electric eld was associated with the points of the primary treatment zone where the complementary electrode faces were relatively further spaced. As shown in Fig. 21, the treatment zone complementary electrode faces were provided with a longitudinally scalloped face shape, so that the convoluted face shapes of each side were in complementary registration with the further extension of each face in axial alignment. The electrode conguration increased the effective electrical resistance across the treatment chamber without reducing the processed uid path length through the treatment zone, consequently reducing the power load on the circuitry used to drive the electrodes. Additionally, the undulating electrodes surfaces induced additional agitation in the uid being processed, believed to have benecial effects on microbial inactivation (Qin et al., 2000). Bushnell et al. (1993) designed a coaxial treatment chamber to provide a high, relatively spatially uniform electric eld in the treatment zone, minimizing its capacity for electrical breakdown. To accomplish this objective, the insulator separating electrodes of appropriate electrical polarity was removed from the high eld region to avoid breakdown produced by electrical tracking or ashover along the insulator surface. The electrode surfaces were designed to minimize eld enhancement, aiming to avoid the electric eld locally increasing and electrical breakdown. The design used an appropriate geometry to assure that all the pumpable food could pass through the electric eld treatment zone before exiting the treatment chamber. It is also important that in this design, except for the inclusion of an inlet or outlet port, one end of the coaxial arrangement was closed, so that eld fringing is reduced, which could be further reduced with the proper choice of materials. However, the major disadvantage of the chamber was the limited width of the annulus through which the liquid could ow and the relatively large electrode surfaces (Mastwijk and Bartels, 2001). To solve the above problem, Mastwijk and Bartels (2001) developed the treatment chamber (Fig. 22) with cylindrical cross-sections and consisting of four modules using three annular electrodes. Another difculty of non-uniform distribution of the electrical-eld in the treatment zone mentioned in the treatment chamber designed by Yin et al. (1997) was also overcome. In this design, although the electric eld distribution of a single module was not uniform, an array of properly coupled modules considered a uniform eld was obtained over the volume of each module. The disadvantage of this design was a slightly non-uniformity of the electric eld distribution of the rst and the last cell owing to the fact that translation symmetry in the electrode array was absent. 3.7. The ow rate and commercial PEF treatment plant For commercial PEF treatment plant, as one of the major factors affecting PEF system design, ow rate of uid foodstuff determines

Fig. 21. Across sectional view of modied coaxial treatment chambers (Qin et al., 2000).

Fig. 22. Modular design of PEF treatment chamber (Mastwijk and Bartels, 2001).

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K. Huang, J. Wang / Journal of Food Engineering xxx (2009) xxxxxx Table 2 The different uid-handling capacity of three PEF units designed by OSU (<http://fst.osu.edu/pef>). PEF system Pipe diameter (mm) Flow rate (L/h) Bench top PEF system (OSU-4) 3 3.636 Pilot plant scale PEF system (OSU-5) 10 80200 Commercial scale PEF system (OSU-6) 1012 4002000 11

several major PEF system characteristics, such as the pipe diameter, the average power required for a given uid and protocol, and it should be increased while the eld strength is maintained. Only in that way will the PEF treatment protocols transit from laboratory and pilot scale to commercial scale operations. For example, doubling the pipe diameter allows four times the ow at a given pressure, but requires twice the peak voltage to maintain the same eld strength. A laboratory system typically processes liters per hour (or less), and a pilot plant typically operates at ten to hundreds of liters per hour, while commercial systems, however, must be capable of processing thousands to tens of thousands of liters per hour (Kempkes et al., 2008). As shown in Table 2, Ohio State University (OSU) has designed three series of PEF units that differ primarily in their uid-handling capacity. Larger pipe diameters support higher ow rates, which, however, require proportionally higher pulse voltages to maintain the same eld strength. Diversied Technologies Inc. (DTI) is one of the manufacturers that sell PEF systems. It has developed solidstate high voltage pulsed power systems, which providing the reliability and the process consistency required for commercial PEF systems, which have treatment chamber of a co-eld ow chamber design, developed and patented by Ohio State University (OSU). As shown in Fig. 23, this design provided an optimal balance between the ow and eld requirements, capable of maintaining consistent eld strengths, the gap over which the eld is applied must be proportional to the pipe diameter. This design is best utilized at 5 cm pipe diameters and below, which translates to 200 kV pulses (at 40 kV/cm) (Kempkes et al., 2008). For sterilizing and pasteurizing foods, packaging, and other purposes, advanced systems are developed and commercialized by Maxwells PurePulse Technologies Inc. subsidiary, whose CoolPure PEF system is used for reduced-temperature pasteurization
TM

of liquid food such as milk, orange juice, wine, and beer, as well as cheese, treatment costs usually at less than $0.04 per liter. Both CPSI and LP were developed by PurePulse, whose treatment velocity was 10 and 200 L/h, respectively. To obtain a high-capacity system, PurePulse is working with US military organizations and other industry groups to further research and develop advanced preservation applications for this technology. In the United States, the Natick Soldier Center, part of the US Army Soldier Systems Center (Natick), in cooperation with industry and academia, is capable of producing high-quality meals with long shelf life. They mainly work at the study of treatment process and treatment efciency. Electric Power Research Institute Inc. (EPRI) and Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) also set up research groups to promote the PEF researches and provide the convenience for obtaining information. To meet the strict microbiological requirement of Pure Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Genesis Juice Corporation successfully pioneered PEF patented technology into the commercially treatment in 2004. The PEF treatment preserved the color, the avor and the concentration of nutrients. Genesis used an OSU-5 running at about 200 L/h (Clark, 2006). PEF offered a ve-log reduction of most pathogens, and the shelf life of the products was said to be 4 weeks. However, the electrodes of existing commercial PEF systems need replacement about every 100 h of operation (Clark, 2006). DTI, OSU, and others are investigating electrodes with longer lifetimes. Besides, vegetable juices such as carrot with particles have difculty in passing through the small clearances of the treatment chambers. 4. Conclusions Presented in this paper, various designs of the PEF treatment chambers are described rst commenting that static chambers are suitable for mainly laboratory use, but for commercial scale operations, continuous chambers are more efcient. For the sake of efcient treatment, a large number of the basic design parameters should be considered, such as electric-eld strength, treatment time, treatment temperature, electric eld distribution etc. Based on the previous designed treatment chambers, optimizations of the treatment parameters have been made to achieve better performance of the PEF processing. However, PEF treatment is not the answer for every food, as currently most of the treatment chambers are only used for uid food products. And the lethal effect of PEF treatment is not effective on all microbes and enzyme, currently only effective on the familiar microorganism such as E. coli and S. cerevisiae. Besides, current PEF equipment costs are high, in part because of the relatively small market for the electrical equipment, making the PEF technology only a limited success. There remain signicant engineering challenges, which is why numerous research groups are still exerting themselves in this area. Acknowledgements

Fig. 23. Commercial co-eld ow treatment chamber manufactured by DTI and OSU, with four treatment cells. Pipe diameter is approximately 1.5 cm (Kempkes et al., 2008).

The authors gratefully acknowledge the nancial support provided by National High Technology Research and Development Program (2007AA100405).

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Please cite this article in press as: Huang, K., Wang, J. Designs of pulsed electric elds treatment chambers for liquid foods pasteurization process: A review. Journal of Food Engineering (2009), doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2009.06.013