Applications of Pulsed Electric Field Treatments for the Enhancement of Mass Transfer from Vegetable Tissue

In the last decades, several non-thermal technologies have been proposed as alternative to the traditional ones to improve the competitiveness of the food industry. The key to success was identified in offering to food industries the opportunity to improve food quality, to introduce new foods in the market, and to optimize the processing procedures while reducing energy costs. Pulsed electric fields (PEF) showed the potential to be one of the most promising novel technologies to reach these objectives. The application of PEF as a pretreatment of permeabilization of vegetable and animal tissue to enhance the efficiency of mass transfer of water or of valuable compounds from biological matrices demonstrated its efficiency in drying, extraction, and diffusion processes. This article reviews the basic mechanisms of electroporation of plant tissues, discusses the methods of detection of electrically induced cell damage, and analyses the influence of process parameters on the efficiency of the treatment. Furthermore, this article focuses on the applications of PEF, its advantages, and energy costs in different fields of food processing, such as juice expression, drying, and extraction, with special emphasis on the relevance of PEF to the winemaking industry.