Application of pulsed electric field for food preservation

Food treatment has been carried by thermal or non-thermal methods. In recent days, a possible method of microbial deactivation in food is carried out by application of Pulsed Electric Fields (PEF). In the present work, pulse forming network (PFN) for generating high voltage rectangular pulses has been designed and developed. Simulation has been carried out in PSPICE and the effect of last stage inductance on the overshoot of the output waveform is studied. A sterilisable food processing chamber was designed & fabricated. Estimation of electric field in the food chamber has been carried-out using ANSYS software. High voltage rectangular pulses of duration & magnitude 1.8μs, 15.2kV respectively are applied to the milk sample. A reduction of about 69% in microbial count was observed.