Pulsed Electric Field Food Processing
Customer Case
Pulsed Electric Field Food Processing is a continuous food processing system in which beverages (with a known conductivity) are pumped through a chamber containing an electrode. Pulses of high voltage electricity are passed across the electrode, thus through the liquid as well. It is a pasteurization technique being studied at Ohio State University.
The need is to be able to monitor, display, and record to hard drive storage, voltage and current waveforms. They need to be able to draw information about the pulse duration, peak voltage, etc. from the recorded waveforms. Waveforms must be sampled at 2 MS/s and the customer may want to sample at up to 10 MS/s or more in the future. The desired interface will be PCI.
Information about the signal:
Pulses
Square Waveform
Bipolar
up to 60 kV
Pulse Width: 1-300 microseconds (ms)
The customer will require a 20,000X voltage divider from another vendor. This will bring the 60 kV signal down to 3 V which can be accommodated by the ± 5 V input range of any GaGe CompuScope card.
Since the customer will be sampling at up to 10 MS/s, the required memory for a single record is 10 MS/s x 300 ms = 3 kS. The customer wants to acquire a record every minute or so. Since this is a continuous food processing system, they would like to be able to record data for up to 1 or 2 hours. The goal is to obtain a representative sample of the waveforms over the entire process. On average the process is fairly consistent, without much deviation. The need is to know what typical waveforms are, and if there is a deviation from that, to record it.
GaGe Case Solution
Being fairly low speed, a hardware solution that will sample into the KiloSample range is required. The high resolution will be an advantage when identifying deviations. CompuScope 1602 with basic memory is sufficient. A CompuScope 1450 would be better suited, but at the time it was still under development. A 10 MS/s upgrade is advised as it will enhance functionality for oversampling, and possibly narrower pulses in the future.
The customer’s unattended transient capture requirement is ideal for GaGeScope’s powerful AutoSave feature. AutoSave allows the customer to capture any number of records at precise time intervals (in this case, 1 minute) and store the results to numbered and time-stamped hard drive files. After acquisition, GaGeScope’s AutoSave PlayBack feature allows the customer to easily flip through sequential records and look for anomalies.
GaGe Case Recommended Products
- CS1602 with Possible 10 MS/s Upgrade
- GaGeScope Professional Edition
- Voltage Divider (from another Vendor)
Industrial Application Request
We encourage you to contact us and discuss your industrial application in more detail with our engineering team. GaGe can provide tailored custom data acquisition hardware and software solutions to meet specific application requirements.