Design of a Pulsed Electric Field Treatment Chamber for a Liquid Foods Pasteurization Process

Abstract

In this paper, a coaxial treatment chamber for a liquid foods pasteurization process usingpulsed electric field was designed and numerical studied. A computational model of the treatment chamberwas developed to investigate the behavior of flow and electric field distributions in this study. The incompressibleNavier-Stokes equation and the Laplace’s equation are numerically calculated with a commercialcomputational fluid dynamic software package, CFDRCTM for the flow and electric fields, respectively.The software was based on finite volume method. It was found from the calculations that the maximum ofelectric field strength inside the chamber was about 1.845 × 106, 3.689 × 106 and 5.534 × 106 V/m for theinner electrode voltage of 10, 20 and 30 kV, respectively. For the maximum of flow velocity, it was about1.451, 4.214 and 6.975 m/s for the food flow rate of 1, 3 and 5 L/min, respectively. Prediction of flow andelectric field profiles was particularly useful in the design and modify of a coaxial treatment chamber fora liquid foods pasteurization process using pulsed electric field.

Keywords : Liquid Foods / Pasteurization / Pulsed Electric Field / Numerical Simulation / HighVoltage