Enhancing food safety and quality through high-pressure processing and PEF technologies: Comparative analysis

The increase in demand for energy consumption and the continuous reduction of its resources in the world reveal the necessity of optimizing and saving energy consumption. Since the use of traditional extraction methods in the country is associated with high consumption of water and energy, the use of pulsed electric field (PEF) technology as a non-thermal and environmentally friendly method has received attention recently. The main method of PEF for treating biological tissues is due to its use as non-thermal. Increasing cell permeability is applicable in extracting complex organic molecules. In this study, the PEF method is introduced as a gentle (non-thermal) processing approach to open the cellular structure in enhancing the quality and safety of food and compares it with traditional and thermal methods. The results of the comparison exhibited that the amount of energy consumed in the thermal method is 722 times that of the pulse method, while the PEF uses short-term high voltage pulses to open the cell structure by a process called electroporation. Extraction efficiency is considered as a function of electric field power, time and applied pulses amounts, temperature, and pulse frequency of the generator. Using the PEF method compared to the thermal one significantly reduces the energy consumption and can improve the quality and durability of the ingredients up to 20% depending on the type of product.