Pulsed electric fields treatment in food technology: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Pulsed electric field (PEF) technology has been recently introduced to a larger scale in the food industry with potato processing and juice preservation as major application areas. Although successful upscaling of the technology from lab to industrial scale has been achieved, the technology is still facing some limitations ranging from a lack of basic mechanistic insights to process integration aspects, and the science-based process optimization needs to be continued. On the other hand, the investigation of new areas of application will be crucial for a long-term technological success since numerous beneficial processing effects are not yet explored. The overview on challenges and opportunities offers some examples for further research as well as for process and product development opportunities.