Proceedings of the 2nd Thermal and Fluid Engineering Conference, TFEC2017

4th International Workshop on Heat Transfer, IWHT2017

April 2-5, 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA

TFEC-IWHT2017-xxxxx

SIMULATION OF OHMIC STERILIZATION MANGO PULP

Calderón-Ramírez, M.1*,Gómez-Náfate3, J.A., Bravo-Sánchez, M.2,Alcaraz-Caracheo3, L.A., Botello-

Álvarez2, E., Rico-Martínez Ramiro2
1
Departamento de Ciencias Básicas, Instituto Tecnológico de Celaya, Av. Tecnológico y A. García Cubas
S/N, Celaya, Guanajuato, 38010, MEXICO, mario.calderon@itcelaya.edu.mx
2
Departamento de Ingeniería Química-Bioquímica, Instituto Tecnológico de Celaya, Av. Tecnológico y A.
García Cubas S/N, Celaya, Guanajuato, 38010, MEXICO.
3
Departamento de Ingeniería Química-Bioquímica, Instituto Tecnológico de Celaya, Av. Tecnológico y A.
García Cubas S/N, Celaya, Guanajuato, 38010, MEXICO.

ABSTRACT

The innovation in the use of new Technologies to increase the natural quality of food products is one of the most
important issues in the actual Alimentary industry and is the aim to optimize those processes. The pasteurization
with ohmic heating was proven to be a suitable alternative to keep the quality and improve the sensory
characteristics. The use of mathematical models and simulation is a common technic in the design of such
methods. This study carried out an ohmic heating simulation using mango pulp has food industry product in
Mexico, these results assistance and corroborate the designing of the ohmic process parameter to optimize the
overall quality and to guarantee the inocuity of the product to exportation. The simulation was performed in
Fluent (ANSYS) using experimental correlation of physicochemical properties by UDF to get realistic results;
the model has shown to be accurate enough with the real process, and demonstrate that temperature effect in the
ramping use of Amperage can be a common technic to increase the energy present in the food to reach inocuity
but with control enough to maintain homogeneity and precise temperatures levels.

KEY WORDS: Ohmic heating, ANSYS UDF simulation, inocuity, Mango pulp.

1. INTRODUCTION

Ohmic heating is an alternative thermal technology for inactivating pathogens in food because void the
excessive heat in the boundaries and retain the sensorial attributes, the factors that make this process so
attractive is the rapid and uniformity heating. This is why this methodology has extensively and applied in
food industry [1] and is employed to several products but the study of this technology depends of the rate of
heat generated, the conductivity properties of the system, the electrical field applied and the residence time.
To perfect this methodology is need perform simulations to try to understand the details in processing
specific products [2]. The main critical factor in the Ohmic heating is the electric conductivity, because the
ranges of this property portray the requirement to generate the amount of heat necessary for raising
temperature by the joules effect, if exist very large voltages or very large amperages could be an indicator of
products that in some cases will become prohibitive to this technic [3].

The Ohmic sterilization has been proved that can inactivate one of the most worry pathogens presents in the
environment, Escherichia Coli and Salmonella Typhimurium, even has been made comparative studies of the
conventional heating process against the ohmic proving to be efficient and faster in the inactivation
pathogens [4]. This process has been tested in the pasteurization of citrus juice showing that the high
temperatures reached with ohmic heating could substantially increase the organoleptic and nutritional quality
of acid carotenoid juices and has been proved to be a very good alternative to protecting carotenoids

*Corresponding Author: mario.calderon@itcelaya.edu.mx

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compared to conventional heating [5]. Indeed, high-short temperature treatments are known to be efficient in
destroying enzymes and bacteria while preserving the nutritional and organoleptic qualities, this could be
explained by the fact that the temperature dependency is higher for microorganism destruction that for
nutrient degradation. The interest in healthy food has been grown in recent years and this has make an
exponential grow in technologies that try to keep the natural characteristics of the foods, and the ohmic
process has shown that can preserve organic compounds that help to prevent diseases and promote the
consumption of raw fruits and even increase the shelf time [6]. The shelf time gives a product more
economical time of living, this ohmic technology has been tested and verified that increase substantially this
time, and maintain his stability even twice of the conventional pasteurization technic and also with a sensory
evaluating that shows no difference between fresh and ohmic heated in juice [7,8]. And is important to
consider that not only the heating process can affect the process even the electric field frequency is a factor
to consider, and the application of models to try to understand this effect [9], this is why the simulation can
elucidate a better understanding of the effects in heat transfer in this type of systems.

Mathematical modelling is the aid of understanding and validation of this thermal technologies, to ensure a
completely save ohmically cooked product the model should identify hot and cold spots to quantify the heat
losses and evaluate the variables as electrical field and the thermo physical properties specific of the product
to process. This kind of study has made before indicating good correlations in the experimental and the
modelled proposal with solid foodstuff as mashed potato that present uniform nature and homogenous
product [10]. The simulation can clarify the effect of non-linear correlation with ohmic temperatures and can
explain the effect of the thermal gelatinization that occurs in thermal treatment in solid food as carrots and
potatoes, and the importance of force convection of the surroundings flows that can reach and uniform
temperature [11]. Has been increasing the interest of modelling increasing the effect of coupling Ohmic with
microwave that can combine electric and magnetic field searching to increase the thermal applications in
more foodstuff, this indicate that this can of processing has been increase his availability in the marked of
food industry [12,13].

The aim of this study was to develop a model to identify the cascade effect of ohmic heating effects within a
model of mango pulp system to understand, validate and optimize the parameter of Amperage ramp that is
the main parameter used in this ohmic pasteurization process.

2. MODEL DEVELOPTMENT

2.1 Experimental Configuration

The model proposed was implemented to simulate a commercial process of ohmic pasteurization equipment
made of a pipe of stainless steel in food degree 316 and a glass pipe of 6.19 cm of internal diameter, made in
three sections, intercalated where the glass section is of 65 cm and the stainless steel of 45 cm. The process
was made with a ramp of heat to increase temperature proportionally, experimentally the ramps were applied
with Amperage of 20, 14 and 6 A, in each stage to generate uniform heat and then a section of homogeneity
of flux, The initial velocity is set as 0.2622 m/s and has been recorded the temperature each section, The inlet
temperature at the pasteurization equipment is 55 °C and the results of the physical system are presented in
Table 1.

Table 1 Measurement of the temperature in the physical configuration, in Celsius.

Hours 8:30 9:30 10:30 11:30 12:30 13:30 14:30 15:30 16:30 17:30 18:30
Section 1 77 76 77 76 76 78 78 82 85 77 79
Section 2 85 86 93 90 90 86 84 85 84 89 88
Section 3 91 90 92 90 91 91 92 90 90 92 91

This information was recorded in field and is proportionated by “Frozen Pulps de Mexico S.A de C.V”, of a patented
process that is confidential and there are no more details.

2.3 Thermophysical properties for the model

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The Thermopysical properties used for this analysis was made for mango pulp where the non-soluble fibers were
removed, The analyzed properties were Density, viscosity, specific heat, thermic conductivity and electrical
conductivity, all properties were measured dependent by temperature and taken from literature [14,15], and the
electrical conductivity due is importance were analyzed and correlated experimentally by the Equation:

G  0.0072e0.0274T 20  T  90 (1)

The unit of this equation is measured in Siemens and is related by temperature at °C. This experimental study is
intended to measure the conductivity in the most accurate possible and where taken from the Atanulfo variety, the rest
properties considered dependent of temperature are in Table 2 and Table 3.

Table 2 Properties of mango pulp (Density, specific heat, thermic conductivity) [14]
Thermic
Density Specific Heat
Temperature (°C) 3 conductivity
(kg/m ) (kJ/kg K)
(W/m K)
44 1166.5 2.816 0.392
55 1172.1 2.790 0.400
66 1169.5 2.782 0.407
77 1161.7 2.790 0.409
80 1183.0 2.738 0.419

Table 3 Properties of mango pulp (Viscosity) [15]

Viscosity
Temperature (°C)
(mPa*s)
20 2518.25
30 2064.25
40 1415.00
50 1516.75
60 1669.00

This properties temperature dependent where used to simulation in fluid dynamics (Fluent) with user defined
function (UDFs) for all thermophysical properties presented.

2.3 Mathematical Model

The model presented includes the Laplace equations that define the electrical field distribution in an ohmic
conductor [1] and is added in the fluent simulator as UDS.

  T  V   0 (2)

The fluid transport was considered the Navier-Stokes model using properties temperature dependent

 T  v  v  P   T   2 v   T  g y (3)

The Temperature distribution is represented by the equation

  T  C p  T  v  T  k  T   2 T    T   V
2
(4)

Where the internal energy source is coupled to the electrical field distribution as is mention in the literature
[1,10,11,12,13]. The CFD software Fluent (ANSYS) was used to obtain the distributions of temperature,
electrical field and velocity fluid, the treatment was made in 2D, the mesh generated was of 4168 nodes with

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3318 elements, in double precision and in a computer Dell Precision PWS690 Intel® Xeon® CPU E5345
@2.33 GHz 8GB RAM, Quad-core.
The equations are in steady state because the industrial process is continuous during the day in constant
operation by 9 hours, the rest of the time is maintenance, resting and cleaning time, and 15 minutes are the
starting time of the process so is negligible variation in time.

The Boundary conditions used for the electric field are at constant Voltage in each stage related by his amperage
entered, for the temperature profile it was considered insulated but the electric field are related to the heat
generation term, the fluid boundary is considered no slip with constant velocity inlet profile and zero pressure
outlet, but there are corners with fluid effects that are important to consider.

3. RESULTS

The numerical solution of the ohmic heating model is presented in parameters of temperature, indicating the
temperature inlet of 55 °C and an output of 87.6 °C (Fig 1) that is lower than the experimental result of 90.8
this difference can be attributed by the properties used in the simulation, because the conductivity was the
only property used by sample of pulp, the other properties were taken from the literature, even though, the
proximity was good enough to consider success simulation.

Fig. 1 Temperature profiles generated by the model and condition for the real process.

Another important characteristic was the conductivity, in the Figure 2 can be accounted the relation
with the temperature, this indicate that raising temperature increase conductivity, this is important
because the capacity of accumulating energy diminishes and this require an voltage growth, this
justify the needed a ramp in amperage, to create stages that will gradually increase the amount of
energy until reach the desired controlled temperature.

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Fig. 2 The conductivity property temperature dependent.

Each temperature ramp is related by the Amperage variation, and in Figure 3 it can be observed
how the incremental is similar to the experimental, in the first stage raise to 64 °C the second stage
increase to 70 °C and the third raise to 87.6 °C this simulation is lower in all cases to the real
process.

Fig. 3 Stages in the rise of the temperature dependent in the amperage, in the left is the first stage (20 A), the
middle is the second but in backward view (14 A) and the right is the last stage (4 A).

In the simulation is can be observed how exist a gradient in temperature from the center to the
boundaries it can explain that in the center the flow is faster and in the wall is stagnant fluid, this
can be remediated by larger stages and with turbulent flow, this can provoke a progression in
temperature profile completely uniform, another quotation is that conductive effects are larger and
this has repercussions in the amount of energy accumulated in the borders of the pipe, and is not
counted that in the real process the pipes are without insulation and with a slightly down
temperature near the boundaries, this can be a reason why in the real process its compensate the loss
of heat and maybe the temperature profile is more constant. In general this model has to be
modified and must to complete with the observations that can arise in subsequent analysis.

4. CONCLUSIONS

The simulation developed has shown the application of simulation in the analysis of thermic process in food
industry, this will help us to understand how the behaviors of the system are, and to use these strategies has
ramp amperage to control the temperature without destroy or overheat the food stuck, the model has shown
lower amount of temperature that its real counterpart but the learn hear will help us to understand the
changes that should be needed to perfect the simulation and amply considerations, this study is value to get
better simulations and more realistic results.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

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The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support to the CONACYT, and all the support of the
company “Frozen Pulps de Mexico S.A de C.V” that proportionate experimental data of its process.

NOMENCLATURE

 Electrical Conductivity (S m-1 ) k Thermal conductivity (W m-1 K-1)

T Temperature (°C) G Conductance (S)
V Voltage (Electrical field) (V)  Viscosity (mPa s)
v Velocity (m2 s-1)  Density (kg m-3)
P Pressure (Pa)
g Gravity ( m s-2 )
Cp Specific Heat (J kg-1 K-1)

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