Performance of electrode materials during food processing by pulsed electric fields

摘要

Food processing by pulsed electric fields (PEFs) is a promising non-thermal method for increasing the shelf-life of liquid food products such as milk, juices and beer. Maintaining both the fresh-like taste and the original nutritional value makes PEF processing advantageous over conventional thermal pasteurization¹. However, physical contact between the liquid food and the metallic electrodes during the PEF process is unavoidable and causes some metallic ions to be released from the electrodes into the processed food. The released metallic ions represent a challenging problem for this technology because they may affect the taste of the processed food and/or they reduce the life-time of the electrodes².