Substantiation of criteria and methods for estimating efficiency of the electric impulse process of plant material

Abstract

One of the most effective ways to prepare for extracting or removing intracellular fluid from plant material is its electric impulse treatment at initial processing stage before squeezing juice, dehydrating raw materials, drying materials, etc. As the parameters and modes that determine this process can be identified only experimentally, a device including a high-voltage impulse generator was designed. Plant tissue damage degree was assessed by changing resistance and phase shift. Intensive juice extraction was observed when high-voltage impulses in the amount of up to 100 units were supplied to plant material. With continued processing and increase in the number of impact impulses, the intensity of juice yield decreased, and the expended energy was spent on heating the plant material. The evaluation method based on quantitative analysis of pulse shape of flowing measuring current is proposed. The designed digital control device allows confirming the dependence of measured electrophysical parameters on changes occurring in plant material caused by electric impulse processing. The designed algorithm can be used as the basis of automatic control system operation for electroimpulse processing of plant materials before pressing.

Automatizing process of electroimpulse treatment of plant raw materials

“…The complex resistance of plant raw materials should decrease due to an increase in free liquid in raw materials. Since the basic electrical circuit of plant cell substitution is series-connected and parallel-connected components whose prototypes are resistors and capacitors [8][9], the released intracellular fluid should affect decrease in the capacity of "biological capacitors" and, as a consequence, increase in the phase shift angle due to reducing the capacitive component.…”

“…Evaluation of the viability or damage of plant materials based on the measurement of complex resistance is not new and occurs in different variations, such as the polarization coefficient, the degree of damage and the degree of destructuring [8][9][10]. These methods for assessing plant tissue damage have been proven and are an effective indicator for assessing the depth of damage.…”

Influence of Factors Determining Weeds’ Plant Tissue Reaction to the Electric Pulse Damage Impact

“…[18][19][20]. As a quantitative indicator characterizing the "destruction" of intercellular and intracellular structures of plant tissues, research scientists use such an indicator as the degree of disintegration [9,[21][22][23], the value and change of which directly depend on the electric field intensity, duration of exposure, pulse form, and the quantity of energy absorbed by the processed object [9,10,12,[24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…The authors of the paper proposed assessing the susceptibility of plant tissue of weeds to damaging electrical effects using such a quantitative indicator as its lesion level, which is understood as the value Sn. The numerical value of this indicator is determined by the ratio of the total electrical tolerance of the plant tissue or its active component, recorded before the start of processing, to the tolerance of the same tissue, which changes during processing, at the particular measuring current frequency, in this case at the frequency of f = 10 kHz [5,24,30,31].…”