THE EFFECTS OF OPERATING CONDITIONS DURING THE OHMIC HEATING PROCESS

The ohmic heating system which was designed and fabricated for the static ohmic heating operation effectively performed and showed the potential for practical applications in such processes as pasteurization or sterilization of the fruit juice. It is obvious that the variables, namely temperature, system current and applied voltage which were read from PLC could be read with sufficient accuracy when compared with the reference values. The main advantages of static ohmic heating are simple construction, easy operation, rapid and uniform heating and less quality deteriorations. During the ohmic heating process, the coefficients of voltage gradients were significantly and statistically different (P<0.05) during the varying of voltage gradients. Thus, it can be concluded that voltage gradients have influence on the electrical conductivity of pomegranate juice. The electrical conductivity values of pomegranate juice were highly correlated to the corresponding temperature and total soluble solid.