Alternative Pressing/Ultrafiltration Process for Sugar Beet Valorization: Impact of Pulsed Electric Field and Cossettes Preheating on the Qualitative Characteristics of Juices

Alternative process of sugar beet transformation is investigated by tuning experimental conditions. A three-step process has been set-up: (1) sugar beet cossettes pretreatment by pulsed electric field (PEF) and (or) short preheating to different temperatures; (2) extraction of juice from pre-treated cossettes by pressing; and (3) purification of the expressed juice by ultrafiltration. The PEF treatment was applied to cold (10 °C) and preheated (to 20, 50, 60, 70, and 80 °C) sugar beet cossettes with intensity of E?=?600 V cm^?1 using rectangular monopolar pulses of 100 μs during t _PEF?=?5–20 ms. Experiments were performed with cossettes of three sizes. Control experiments were done without PEF treatment using cold (10 °C) and preheated (to 20–80 °C) cossettes. PEF-treated and (or) preheated cossettes were pressed at 5 bars during 15 min. Afterward, expressed juices obtained from the PEF-treated cossettes at 20 °C and from the untreated ones at 80 °C were purified by dead-end ultrafiltration with stirring (500 rpm) at the temperature of 20 °C by using polyethersulfone membrane with MWCO of 30 kDa. Application of PEF (E?=?600 V cm^?1, t _PEF?=?10 ms, T?=?20 °C) with following pressing of cossettes at 5 bars during 15 min permits to obtain the juice yield Y?=?66,5 %, which is equivalent to that obtained from cossettes preheated to 80 °C and untreated electrically (Y?=?64 %). The energy consumption of cold PEF treatment (≈2–3 Wh/kg) is very attractive as compared to preheating at high temperatures (≈138–194 Wh/kg). Combination of thermal and electrical pretreatments leads to additional softening of sugar beet tissue and to a slightly higher (on 5–10 %) juice yield, but the electroporation of preheated cossettes is more energetically costly. The raw juice expressed from PEF-treated cossettes at 20 °C has higher purity (93.5 %) than juices expressed at 50 °C (92.9 %) and at 80 °C (92.3 %). The temperature increasing from 20 to 80 °C results in a higher juice coloration (5680 IU at 20 °C and 7820 IU at 80 °C) and leads to a higher (on about 35 %) colloids concentration in the expressed juice. The filtrate obtained from the juice expressed at 20 °C with PEF treatment has a higher purity (96 %) than the filtrate obtained from the juice expressed at 80 °C (95.3 %) and its coloration is considerably lower (330 IU versus 1930 IU). In addition, the quantity of proteins and colloids in the filtrate of juice expressed at 20 °C is lower than that in the filtrate of juice expressed at 80 °C