Product & Process Improvement

Cell Disintegration of Solids

PEF for Product & Process Improvement

PEF treatment improves cut quality of potatoes and significantly reduces French fry breakage

The application of a pulsed electric field leads to cell disintegration in both plant and animal tissues, offering specific advantages for product quality and food production processes. PEF processing enhances mass transport processes during extraction, pressing, drying, brining, and marinating. PEF treatment improves the cut quality of potatoes and significantly reduces breakage in French fries.

Potato Processing

PEF treated and fried potato products contain less oil. The treatment can reduce frying oil absorption and fat content up to 50%.

In potato processing, PEF systems have significant advantages over traditional preheaters. PEF treatment not only improves cut quality but also substantially reduces breakage in French fries. It leads to reduced water and energy consumption; blanching, drying, and prefrying times are shortened. The treatment also improves the leaching of sugars, reduces frying oil absorption, and can decrease the fat content by up to 50%.

Enhanced Mass Transport

Electroporation of plant and animal raw materials enhances mass transport processes such as extraction, drying, freezing and pressing, saving time and money and increasing value.

Drying Processes

PEF technology accelerates the drying of food products, thereby reducing processing times and energy consumption. This is applicable to fruits, vegetables, potatoes, and meat.

Extraction and Pressing

Electroporation also enhances extraction processes. It increases yields in extraction and pressing, for example in fruit juice, vegetable oil, and algae oil and protein production.

Freezing Processes

PEF technology expedites the freezing of food products, reducing processing times and energy consumption. The technology increases freezing rates through cell disintegration. Cellular water more easily exits the cell, and ice nucleation outside the cell begins sooner. As a result, smaller ice molecules form, improving the quality of frozen food.

Peeling and Cutting

Moreover, PEF enhances the peeling, cutting, and cut quality of fruits, vegetables, and potatoes.

Formation of Secondary Metabolites

A very mild PEF treatment can induce formation of secondary metabolites (bioactive components) in biological tissues such as vegetables and legumes.

Mild PEF treatment can induce the formation of secondary metabolites (bioactive components) in biological tissues like vegetables and legumes. This leads to enriched secondary metabolites, such as polyphenols and isoflavones, due to PEF stress induction on plant cells, increasing the yield.

Meat Processing

For meat processors electroporation improves brining, marinating and drying steps.

For meat processors, electroporation improves brining, marinating, and drying steps. It reduces tumbling times in cooked ham production and enhances the drying process in dry sausage production, thus shortening the required drying time.

Few Limitations

PEF treatment of plant or animal tissue aiming on cell disintegration has practically no size limitations. It can be applied to whole fruits, vegetables, potato tubers and sugar beets.

Treatment aimed at cell disintegration of plant or animal tissue has virtually no size limitations. It can be applied to whole fruits, vegetables, and potato tubers, as well as to pieces and mashes of fruits or vegetables, prior to separation processes. However, the maximum size of the plant or animal tissue must be smaller than the gap of the treatment chamber.

Processing Line

Pulsemaster Conditioner

For cell disintegration applications, a typical processing line consists of a treatment tank unit and a pulse generator unit. The Pulsemaster Conditioner represents a complete cell disintegration system.