Open AccessNumerical study of treatment chambers for single and multi‐stage pulsed electric field systems
Author(s) -
Araujo Eduardo J.,
Lopes Ivan J. S.,
Ramirez Jaime A.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
iet science, measurement and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.418
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1751-8830
pISSN - 1751-8822
DOI - 10.1049/smt2.12040
Subject(s) - electric field , stage (stratigraphy) , field (mathematics) , single stage , electrical engineering , materials science , nuclear engineering , acoustics , physics , engineering , aerospace engineering , mathematics , geology , paleontology , quantum mechanics , pure mathematics
Abstract Pulsed electric field (PEF) systems should be designed to be microbiologically and energy efficient for industrial applications applied to treatment of different types of liquid foods. A thorough numerical model for the design of PEF systems is presented. It takes into account two combined approaches, a field evaluation based on an electric‐thermal‐fluid dynamic analysis and a design of numerical experiment considering as variables the applied high voltage and the internal electrode radius of a coaxial geometry. Then, the survival ratio and the specific energy are solved as conflicting objectives for the PEF design, using the treatment time and pulse frequency from the coupled analysis. The formulation is applied for grape and orange juices with E. coli for single and multiple stages systems. The simulations with multiple stages for the grape juice showed that it is possible to reach a microbial inactivation of 3.1 (log10 scale of survival rate) with a specific energy of about 450kJ/kg lower in relation to a two stage system. It means an energy reduction of 92, 421kJ/h for a treatment system with a capacity of 163 L/h.