The Study of Thawing Characteristics and Mechanism of Frozen Beef in High Voltage Electric Field

Yaming Zhang,Changjiang Ding

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3010948

Abstract

The aim is to comprehensively and further explore the thawing characteristics and mechanism of frozen beef in high voltage electric field (HVEF). In this paper, the frozen beef was thawed under blocking ionic wind and changing voltage, electrode distance in the high voltage electric field system. The thawing characteristics, quality parameters and microstructure of beef during thawing were measured. The results showed that compared with the control, high voltage electric field could significantly shorten the thawing time of beef. During the thawing process, the influence of the high voltage electric field in the beef center temperature range from -5 °C to 0 °C on the thawing characteristics is larger than the control. Electrode distance and voltage have significant influence on color, loss rate and quality parameters. The experimental results of blocking ionic wind showed that ionic wind and non-uniform electric field have different effects on the characteristic parameters, quality parameters and microstructure of beef. Both the ionic wind and non-uniform electric field played a significant role in thawing process. This study provides theoretical basis and practical guidance for further understanding of the parameter characteristics and thawing mechanism of high voltage electric field thawing technology.

Highlights

Freezing is an important and convenient way to preserve meat and meat products, and plays a vital role in the meat industry [1], [2]
MEASUREMENT RESULTS OF LONIC WIND SPEED Ionic wind is a concomitant phenomenon arising from the discharge process under high voltage electric field
Lv et al found that increasing the voltage amplitude can increase the velocity of the ionic wind [23], which is consistent with our experimental results

Summary

Introduction

Freezing is an important and convenient way to preserve meat and meat products, and plays a vital role in the meat industry [1], [2]. Improper use of thawing technology will cause changes in the physical, chemical and biological properties of meat and damage the quality [4]. Traditional thawing technologies have a long thawing time, which will lead to quality deterioration, such as air thawing, water thawing and vacuum thawing, etc [5]–[7]. Some new thawing technologies have emerged, such as microwave thawing, ohmic thawing, refrigerator thawing and ultra-high pressure thawing, etc [8]–[13]. Ohmic thawing technology is easy to cause the deterioration of meat quality [10], [11]

Methods

Results

Conclusion