Presentazioni e Articoli Tecnici

The food industry is responsible for 30% of global energy use (Corigliano & Algieri, 2024). To reduce its environmental impact, process operations are being electrified. This includes fractionation processes, which are usually performed using heat or pressure, or by adding solvents or salts, and may compromise the quality of the produced ingredients (Augustin et al., 2024). Instead, we aim to use electric fields and induce separation of differently charged compounds, without the addition of salts or altering the pH. A transversal electric field to the flow direction of a suspended food ingredient will cause differently charged ingredients to have different transversal electrophoretic translation. In laminar flow, this transversal position of the particles is maintained, and the ingredients can be collected at the bottom of the flow field, in different outflow channels. Considering the novelty of this method, experimentally prototyping and re-prototyping such a system is costly and time-consuming. To streamline the trial-and-error process of modifications, we utilize COMSOL Multiphysics for fundamental understanding , using the Particle Tracing module, the CFD module and the Optimization module. The homogeneity of the transversal electric field actuated by super-positioned electrodes was calculated by extracting the electric field norm in point evaluations (Figure 2) .The electrode distance and channel depth are critical for the design of homogeneous transversal electric fields, emphasizing the relevance of optimizing electrode placement, which is performed using the Optimization module’s Topology Optimization. The objective function maximizes the fractionation distance between the differently charged ingredients. The boundary conditions fix the electrode voltage to a maximum of 3 V to prevent large-scale electrolysis, and the amount of electrodes is fixed to 6 pairs to limit computation time. By starting with an optimized theoretical design, the experimental development of this novel electrophoresis-based fractionation device can be much more efficient. Thus, by utilizing mathematical optimization in COMSOL Multiphysics, this electrophoretic fractionation device may soon be an example of how to electrify food processing, contributing to a reduction of resource use and waste generation, and to a more sustainable use of renewable energy.