Domínguez-Soberanes Julieta, Ruiz-Martinez Omar F, Davalos Hernandez Fernando
Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Panamericana, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, 101, Villa Bonaterra, Aguascalientes 20296, Mexico.
Foods. 2025 Jun 21;14(13):2177. doi: 10.3390/foods14132177.
The microbiological safety of milk can be ensured through heat processing; however, this method has a negative effect on the sensory profile of this food product. Emerging technologies could be used as an alternative process for guaranteeing innocuity and maintaining sensory changes. An alternative is to evaluate pulsed electric field (PEF) electroporation, which is a method of processing cells using short pulses of a strong electric field. PEF has the potential to be a type of alternative low-temperature pasteurization process that consists of high-frequency voltage pulsations. Specifically, the presented work is a proof of concept for the design of a converter capable of generating a PEF to feed a load that meets the impedance characteristics of milk. The proposed converter is simulated using PLECS software (4.9.6 version) under impedance change scenarios that emulate variations in milk throughout the entire process. This research proposes the modification of a classic Vienna rectifier (adding an MBC-Multilevel Boost Converter structure) to supply a pulsating signal that could be used for low-temperature processes of milk to guarantee proper pasteurization. The characteristics of the generated high-voltage pulse make it feasible to quickly process the real sample. The control law design considers a regulation loop to achieve a voltage in the range of kV and a switching-type control law that activates switches in MMC arrays. These switches are activated randomly to avoid transients that cause significant stress on them.
通过热处理可以确保牛奶的微生物安全性；然而，这种方法会对该食品的感官特性产生负面影响。新兴技术可作为一种替代工艺，用于保证无害性并维持感官变化。一种替代方法是评估脉冲电场（PEF）电穿孔，这是一种利用强电场短脉冲处理细胞的方法。PEF有潜力成为一种替代低温巴氏杀菌工艺，该工艺由高频电压脉动组成。具体而言，所展示的工作是关于设计一种转换器的概念验证，该转换器能够产生PEF以馈入符合牛奶阻抗特性的负载。所提出的转换器在模拟整个过程中牛奶变化的阻抗变化场景下，使用PLECS软件（4.9.6版本）进行了仿真。本研究提出对经典维也纳整流器进行修改（添加MBC - 多电平升压转换器结构），以提供可用于牛奶低温处理以确保适当巴氏杀菌的脉动信号。所产生的高压脉冲的特性使得快速处理实际样品成为可能。控制律设计考虑了一个调节回路，以实现千伏范围内的电压以及一种开关型控制律，该控制律可激活MMC阵列中的开关。这些开关被随机激活，以避免对它们造成显著应力的瞬态情况。
