ABSTRACT
Commercial Ohmic heating systems are available from a number of suppliers including SPX (formerly APV, Crawley, UK), Raztek Corp. (Sunnyvale, CA, USA), Emmpiemme SRL (Piacenza, Italy), and Simaco (Piacenza, Italy). A number of companies are rumored to be investigating this technology, and it is estimated that there are at least 18 commercial plants in operation across Europe, the United States, and Japan (Ruan et al., 2004). In addition, Emmpiemme SRL equipment has been supplied to Mexico and the Ivory Coast for strawberry processing and tomato and mango processing, respectively (G. Tucker, personal communication). Products such as liquid egg and low-acid ready meals are also being produced (Giese, 1996). The uniform and rapid temperature increase that occurs with Ohmic heating can reduce “over cooking” of these products compared to that with conventional heat exchangers. Ohmic devices have also been investigated for other applications such as extraction or blanching in the food industry, these are also discussed later in the chapter.
