Operational experience of industrial scale electroporation devices

Summary form only given. The "cold" denaturation of large amounts of fruits, as for instance beets, apples, grapes etc., by means of electroporation is the goal of several cooperations between the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and industry. An important part of the operational procedure is the treatment of the fruits under water by applying a number of high-voltage pulses with field strengths of several kilovolts per centimeter and pulse lengths in the order of 1 to 2 microseconds. The feed-through capacity of fruits in the agricultural industry can be up to 10.000 tons a day. Appropriate pilot plants for electroporation are subject of development. The pilot plant KEA-ZAR (Karlsruhe Electroporation Plant - Cell Denaturation Reactor) started with the operation in the campaign 2003 to treat daily some tons of beets for experimental purposes. An essential constructive feature of the pilot plant with an electroporation capacity of about 8 tons per hour is the enforced transportation of whole fruits by means of a roll through an electrode area, connected to two Marx generators (350 kV, 6 kA, 1,4 /spl mu/s pulse length) each operating at 20 Hz repetition rate, where the fruits suffer cell denaturation.