Impact of the Treatment Media Conductivity on the Thermal Effects in Plant Cellular Materials During PEF Processing

The object of investigation in the present work are the thermal effects that occur in plant materials during the pulsed electric field treatment for assisting the process of extraction of specific oils. The aim of the study is to analyze the influence that the properties of the solution in which the material is being processed have on the thermal field configuration in the studied cell tissue. The distribution of the electric field, the currents and corresponding Joule losses, the temperatures and the temperature gradients are determined and compared for several solvents with different conductivity. The analysis of the coupled electric and thermal processes is carried out on the basis of fields modeling using the finite element method. Regions of special attention are the areas of neighborhood between two cells where the processes are modeled in two steps: before and after electroporation on the basis of corresponding changes in the size and conducting properties of the contact zone.