INNFOO-01152; No of Pages 10

Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

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Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ifset

The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination

Wassama Engchuan, Weerachet Jittanit , Wunwiboon Garnjanagoonchorn
Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agro-Industry, Kasetsart University, 50 Ngam Wong Wan Road, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, Thailand

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 14 May 2013
Accepted 17 February 2014
Available online xxxx
Editor Proof Receive Date 07 April 2014
Keywords:
Electrical conductivity
Mathematical model
Meat ball
Ohmic heating
Physical property

a b s t r a c t
In this study, the mixtures of pork meat ball and water were cooked using a static ohmic heater. The sample
temperatures during heating were recorded and compared with model predictions. Furthermore, some
attributes of ohmically-heated meat balls were compared with those of conventionally-heated samples. The
main objectives were (1) to determine the proper models for estimating the sample temperatures during
ohmic heating and (2) to investigate the effects of ohmic heating on the meat ball qualities. The results indicated
that Sukprasert's model was the most precise; however, the accuracy of nite difference model would be
comparable if the model was added with empirical terms. The electrically generated heat and the convective
heat transferred between phases were inuential to the sample temperatures during ohmic heating. The
ohmically heated meat balls were signicantly rmer and more uniform in microstructure, and brighter in colors
than their counterparts whereas their moisture contents were lower.
Industrial relevance: In the present study, an innovative method, ohmic heating, was applied for cooking the pork
meat balls because it has potential to cook the meat ball products within the shorter time and with more uniform
temperature distribution than the traditional method applied in the food industry. Some mathematical models
were developed and validated in this work for the industry to apply them for predicting the temperature
variations of the meat ball and surrounding water during ohmic heating. This work also showed that the quality
attributes of ohmically-cooked meat balls were better than those of conventionally-cooked samples in many
aspects.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Cooking is an essential step for the production of meat balls. Generally, the meat balls are cooked by boiling them in hot water (Huda, Shen,
Huey, Ahmad, & Mardiah, 2010; Shirsat, Lyng, Brunton, & McKenna,
2004c); however, this method cannot raise the core temperature of
the meat ball to the required level within the short time due to the
low thermal conductivity of the meat ball. Subsequently, the quality of
the meat ball was deteriorated especially at the surface due to long
heat exposure time at high temperature. Furthermore, it would be impossible to produce premium-quality sterile mixture of the meat balls
and water using a conventional heating process. Eliot-Godereaux,
Zuber, and Goullieux (2001) stated that the application of aseptic and
high temperature short time technologies, relying on conductive and
convective heat transfer mechanisms to particulate foods is limited by
the time required to conduct heat into the core of large particles to ensure sterilization.
Ohmic heating is deemed as an innovative food processing techniques that have potential to cook the meat ball products within the
shorter time than the traditional method. It is because the electrical conductivities of the meat balls were found to be rather high. Engchuan and
Corresponding author. Tel.: +66 2 562 5026; fax: +66 2 562 5021.
E-mail address: fagiwcj@ku.ac.th (W. Jittanit).

Jittanit (2013) indicated that the electrical conductivities of the meat

ball samples were in the range between 0.677 and 3.156 S/m. They
also afrmed that the addition of salt and sodium tripolyphosphate
(STPP) led to the obvious increase in the electrical conductivities of
the meat balls. On the other hand, the escalating of proportions of tapioca starch, sugar, pepper powder and garlic in meat balls caused the fall
of electrical conductivities. Moreover, Shirsat et al. (2004c) showed that
at the temperature range of 1580 C the meat emulsion batters had the
electrical conductivities between 1.0 and 5.5 S/m that were considered
high enough for ohmic heating. Also, they claimed that ohmic heating
has potential to provide better qualities of meat batter products than
the conventional heating particularly in aspects of product integrity, avor and nutrient retention.
Although the meat balls can be heated up within a short time by
ohmic method because of their high electrical conductivities, the applications of ohmic heating for cooking meat balls have not yet been
widespread. One of the reasons is that the calculations of the meat
ball temperature and subsequently required heating-up time for the
ohmic heating process are complex and not completely understood.
On the other hand, the calculation methods for the conventional heating
process of liquid-particulate foods have been thoroughly studied and
somewhat fully developed. Salengke and Sastry (2007) pointed out
that the development of mathematical models for predicting the temperatures is a pre-requisite to success in applying the ohmic heating

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014
1466-8564/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
Emerging Technologies (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014

W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

Nomenclature
a
Specic surface of solid (m2solid/m3mixture)
Am,m + 1 Surface area at the boundary between control volumes
of node m and node m + 1 (m2)
As
Surface area of solid (m2)
cp
Specic heat (J/kgC)
d
Diameter of solid particle (m)
D
Diameter of ohmic cell (m)
hfp
Average convective heat transfer coefcient between
uid and particle (W/m2C)
I
Electrical current (Amp)
k
Thermal conductivity (W/mC)
L
Length (m)
Lh
Length of ohmic cell (m)
Ls
Length of solid particle (m)
qcond
Heat transferred by conduction (W)
qconv
Heat transferred by convection (W)
Qgen
Heat generated inside the control volume (W)
Qin
Heat transferred into the control volume (W)
Qout
Heat transferred out of the control volume (W)
rm
Radius distance from center to node m (m)
R
Electrical resistance (Ohm)
Rpl,f
Electrical resistance of the liquid in parallel zone (Ohm)
Rpl,s
Electrical resistance of the solid particle in parallel zone
(Ohm)
Rsr,f1
Electrical resistance of the series zone in front of the
solid particle (Ohm)
Rsr,f2
Electrical resistance of the series zone at the back of the
solid particle (Ohm)
Tn
Temperature of sample at time step of n (C)
Tn + 1
Temperature of sample at time step of n + 1 (C)
Tnm
Temperature of node m at time step of n (C)
t
Interval for each time step (s)
U
Change of internal energy within the control volume
(W)
X
Weight ratio between the ingredient (as specied by
subscript) and the meat
l
Volume of liquid (m3)
m
Control volume of node m (m3)
Vtot
Voltage between electrodes (V)
|V|
Electrical eld strength (V/m)

Density (kg/m3)

Electrical conductivity (S/m)

Volume fraction of solid in mixture (dimensionless)

Subscripts
l
Surrounding liquid
pl
Parallel resistance zone
s
Solid particle
sr
Series resistance zone

technique for food processing. Until now, there have been some
researchers proposing the mathematical models for estimating the temperatures of solidliquid mixture foods during ohmic heating such as de
Alwis and Fryer (1990), Sastry and Palaniappan (1992), Sukprasert
(1998), Benabderrahmane and Pain (2000), Salengke and Sastry
(2007) and Jiang, Li, Shen, and Zhou (2010); however, there has been
no effort dedicated to the model development including validation specically for the meat ball product. Moreover, the inuence of related factors on the temperatures of solidliquid mixtures during ohmic heating
process remains ambiguous.

The quality of ohmically-heated meat balls compared with those of

conventionally-heated products is another aspect that is imperative
and interesting for both food industry and researchers prior to applying
ohmic method commercially. So far, there have been limited published
papers investigating the quality of ohmically-heated meat products.
Some of them are Ozkan, Ho, and Farid (2004), Shirsat, Brunton, Lyng,
and McKenna (2004a) and Zell, Lyng, Cronin, and Morgan (2009) that
studied about the qualities of ohmically-heated hamburger patties,
meat emulsion batters and meat pieces, respectively. The ndings of
these researches are rather diverse. Zell et al. (2009) compared some
quality parameters of the ohmically-cooked meat pieces with those of
the steam-cooked specimens applying the comparable cooked values
for both cooking techniques. It was found that the ohmically-cooked
meat had a signicantly uniform lighter and less red color, and a lesser
amount of cook loss but tougher texture than its counterpart. Shirsat,
Brunton, et al. (2004a) pointed out that there were greater levels of
physical disruption in ohmically-cooked meat emulsion batter than
those of conventionally-cooked samples leading to the lower ability of
emulsion to bind water and fat. Furthermore, Ozkan et al. (2004)
cooked hamburger patties until their center temperatures reached 70
C by placing the frozen raw meat patties between the heated plates
of the grill for conventional method whereas for the ohmic-assisted
cooking method they applied the electrical current across the two heated plates in order to utilize the principles of ohmic heating plus the plate
heating. Their results illustrated that there were insignicant differences in the mechanical properties, oil and moisture contents of hamburger patties cooked by these two methods.
In this study, a static ohmic heating system was applied for
cooking pork meat ball. The temperatures of the meat ball and surrounding water were recorded and compared with the predictions
of a number of models. In addition, the attributes of ohmicallyheated and conventionally-heated meat balls were compared in aspects
of moisture content, yield strength, microstructure and color. The main
objectives were (1) to determine the accurate mathematical models for
estimating the temperature proles of the meat ball during ohmic
heating and (2) to investigate the effects of applying ohmic heating to
the properties of the cooked meat ball products. The result of this
study would be useful particularly for both industry and academics
that desire to apply the ohmic method to the thermal processing of
meat ball products.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Sample preparation
The meat ball preparation procedure of Engchuan and Jittanit (2013)
was used in this work. The Betagro lean pork rump (Betagro group,
Bangkok, Thailand) purchased from supermarket was minced by a
Robot Coupe food processor model R201 Ultra (Robot-Coupe
Australia Pty Ltd., NSW, Australia) for 1 min and then added with salt
(NaCl) at 1.5% of the pork weight. Then the mixture was minced again
for 2 min before putting additional salt at 1% of the pork weight and
mincing another time for 2 min. Afterward, the sugar, STPP, tapioca
starch, pepper powder and garlic were poured into the mixture before
2 min mincing at the quantities of 2, 0.2, 3, 0.5 and 0.5% of the pork
weight, respectively. The well-mixed meat emulsion was kept at temperature of 4 C for 30 min before shaping the meat balls to spheres
with a radius of 1.4 cm (weight of 14.6 g each). It is noted that for the
meat ball preparation the salt was added in two stages in order to
make it uniformly distributed. The uniform distribution of salt inside
the minced sample was essential because it affected the amount of protein extracted from the meat structure that would act as the emulsier
of the meat ball. Fig. 1 illustrates the thorough procedure from the
sample preparation to both the accuracy testing of the mathematical
models and quality determinations.

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
Emerging Technologies (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014

W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

Fig. 1. All over steps from the meat ball preparation to both the accuracy testing of the mathematical models and quality determinations.

2.2. Ohmic heating apparatus

The ohmic heating device was assembled at the Department of Food
Science and Technology, Kasetsart University. The ohmic cell was made
from acrylic tube with the thickness of 0.0034 m while the electrodes
were stainless steel grade 316L. The diameter of electrodes was
0.043 m while the distance between electrodes was 0.036 m. The electrical voltage was supplied by a variable transformer at a frequency of
50 Hz. The temperatures of the meat ball core and surrounding water
during ohmic heating were measured applying type-T thermocouples.
The measured temperature data were recorded at a 1 s time interval
by a Yokogawa data logger model DX 1012 (Yokogawa Electric Corporation, Tokyo, Japan). The applied voltage and current were measured
by a Fluke digital multimeter model 8808A (Fluke Corporation, WA,
USA) that was connected to a computer with a RS-232 cable. The schematic diagram of ohmic heating circuit is depicted in Fig. 2. Although the
ohmic heating system in this work was static type, the outcome of this
research would provide background knowledge for further studies in
the commercially continuous system.
2.3. Accuracy testing of mathematical models
In order to test the accuracy of mathematical models in predicting
the temperatures of the meat ball and surrounding water during
ohmic heating, a number of experiments were conducted. For each experimental run, a fresh meat ball was placed into a static ohmic heating

device before fullling the ohmic cell with distilled water. The meat ball
was centered in the ohmic cell by locking the position of the thermocouple that was probed into the core of the meat ball. Although the distilled
water was non-conductive liquid, its electrical conductivity rose after
the diffusion of some ions from meat balls to water. The electrical voltage applied between electrodes was 72 V. The samples were heated
from approximately 30 to 80 C. The recorded temperatures were
used to compare with the mathematical model prediction.
2.3.1. Mathematical models
There were three numerical models which were applied in this
study consisting of basic model, Sukprasert's model and nite difference
model. The time interval for each calculation step was specied at 1 s for
all models. The heat losses via electrodes and ohmic cell were considered little and negligible. It is because the back ends of the electrodes
contacted to Teon that is a thermal insulating material whereas the
ohmic cell was made of acrylic. The description of each model was
discussed as follows.
2.3.1.1. Basic model. According to many published papers such as Halden,
de Alwis, and Fryer (1990), Marra, Zell, Lyng, Morgan, and Cronin
(2009) and Jiang et al. (2010), the basic model was applied to calculate
the temperatures of samples during ohmic heating by assuming that the
electrical eld was uniformly distributed inside the sample. In this work,
the basic model was used in cases of excluding and including the convective heat transferred between the meat ball and surrounding uid

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
Emerging Technologies (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014

W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

in Eq. (5), |V|l, was specied to be equal to the electrical eld strength
applied between electrodes.
T n1 T n
t

l c p l

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the ohmic heating circuit.

by supposing that the electrical eld strength was uniformly distributed

inside the solidliquid mixture (|V|s = |V|l) although the electrical
conductivities of the meat ball and surrounding water were different.
It is because the testing result of this model would help disclose the
precision of the temperature prediction in the case that the effect of
non-uniform distribution of electrical eld within the mixture was not
included. Another assumption of this model is that the temperature
within each phase was uniform.
Case i) Excluding convective heat transferred between the meat ball
and water
For meat ball:
s cp s

T n1 T n
t

!
2

jV js s

T n1 T n
t

T
t

jV jl l

! 


4 l s
0:021

l
s
l

 2 
0:337 s

0:069
0:04 s
l
l

n1

T
t

2.3.1.3. Finite difference model. The nite difference model applied in the
present work is explicit nodal equation type. For the calculation using
this model, the temperature distribution within the meat ball would
be known; conversely, the two models previously described assumed
that the temperature was uniform throughout the meat ball. The meat
ball was deemed as a sphere with a radius of 1.4 cm. The distance increment was set at 1 mm; therefore, there were 15 nodes specied within
the meat ball samples as shown in Fig. 3. The volumetric boundary
of each node was determined by assuming that the temperature was
uniform within each boundary. The volumetric boundary of node 2 is
also illustrated by the dash line in Fig. 3.
The energy balance equation as expressed in Eq. (7) was applied for
the control volumes of all nodes and surrounding water. The detail of
each term is different in some nodes shown as follows.
Q in Q out Q gen U

For node 1 (convection boundary node):

Q in qcond ks A1;2

 n

T 2 T n1
r2 r 1

 n
n
Q out qconv hfp As T 1 T l

For surrounding water:

l c p l

n1

!
2

jV jl l

Case ii) Including convective heat transferred between the meat ball
and water
For meat ball:

 T n1 T n
s cp s
t

 n
2
n
jV js s a hfp T s T l

For surrounding water:


 T n1 T n
1 l cp l
t

 n
2
n
1jV jl l a hfp T s T l :
l

2.3.1.2. Sukprasert's model. The semi-empirical equation proposed by

Sukprasert (1998) is a model that was developed for estimating the temperatures of solidliquid mixture during ohmic heating. Although for the
model development of Sukprasert (1998) the sample was a potato in salt
solution, the sizes of particles in this work and Sukprasert (1998) were
somewhat similar. The temperature of surrounding water was calculated
in Eq. (5) and then the calculated result was applied to determine the
meat ball temperature by using Eq. (6). It was assumed that the temperature within each phase was homogeneous. The electrical eld strength

Fig. 3. Cross section of meat ball and the specied nodes.

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
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W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx
2

Q gen s jV js 1

 T n1 T n
1
1
U s cp s 1
t

For node 2 to 14 (interior node, m):

Q in qcond ks Am;m1

 n

T m1 T nm
r m1 r m


Q out qcond ks Am1;m

T nm T nm1
r m r m1

series and parallel zones, showing the regions identied as front, back
and sides, is depicted in Fig. 4 while the analogous electrical circuit is illustrated in Fig. 5. The uniform electrical eld strength was estimated
for each zone at a given time by using Eqs. (8) and (9). The electrical
eld strength of the solid phase (|V|s) was equal to that of the parallel
resistance zone (|V|pl) whereas the electrical eld strengths of the liquid phase (|V|l) at the front & back of the solid particle and that at the
side around the solid particle were equivalent to those of the series resistance zone (|V|sr) and parallel resistance zone (|V|pl), respectively.
jV jsr

IRsr
Lsr

jV jpl

IRpl
Lpl

Q gen s jV js m

Where


 T n1 T n
m
m
U s cp s m
t

For node 15 (node at center);

V tot
Rsr Rpl

Rsr Rsr; f 1 Rsr; f 2

Q in 0

Q out qcond

Q gen

 n

T T n14
ks A14;15 15
r 15 r 14

For surrounding water:

Q in qconv

Rpl;s  Rpl; f
Rpl;s Rpl; f

Rpl;s

2
s jV js 15


 T n1 T n
15
15
U s cp s 15
t

Rpl

n
n
hfp As T 1 T l

Q out 0

Q gen l jV jl l

4Lh Ls
D2 l

4Ls
d2 s

4L
Rpl; f  2 s 2 
D d l

2.3.2. Physical properties

The physical properties of the meat ball and surrounding water that
were needed for the calculation of sample temperatures during ohmic
heating were summarized in Table 1. The density of the meat ball was
calculated using the values of the meat ball with a diameter of 28 mm
and weight of 14.6 g each. The properties of the meat ball and convective heat transfer coefcient were referred from Engchuan and Jittanit
(2013) due to the same shape and composition of the pork meat balls
whereas the electrical conductivities of surrounding water were measured in this study by using the water separated from the meat ball

!

 T n1 T n
l
l
U l cp l l
:
t
For the estimation of sample temperatures using the nite difference
model, the values of |V|s and |V|l were calculated by the circuit analogy method proposed by Sastry and Palaniappan (1992) and Salengke
and Sastry (2007). For a static ohmic heater with a single meat ball located at the center of the heater, the heater could be divided into series
and parallel zones along its longitudinal direction. Furthermore, in order
to simplify the calculation and be similar to Salengke and Sastry (2007),
the spherical meat ball was supposed to be cylindrical in shape with
28 mm length and 23 mm diameter that has a volume identical to
that of the real meat ball sample. The circuit analogy method would
be too complicated if the meat ball was considered as spherical in
shape due to the change of its cross sectional area along the length of
ohmic cell. The schematic diagram of the ohmic cell separated into

Fig. 4. The ohmic cell separated into series and parallel zones, showing the regions identied as front, back and sides.

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
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W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

was not more than 2 mg (Jittanit, Niti-Att, & TechanuntachaikulSinija,

2010, 2011). The weight loss after drying in the oven was used to calculate the moisture content that was expressed in wet basis (wb).
2.4.2. Yield strength
The determination of yield strength of the meat ball samples in the
present work was adapted from Tseng, Liu, and Chen (2000). The
meat ball samples were cut to cylindrical shape with 25 mm diameter
and 25 mm height prior to measuring their yield strength by the Stable
Micro Systems texture analyzer model TA.XT Plus (Stable Micro Systems Ltd, Surrey, UK). The yield strength was the maximum force measured during the plunger penetrated into the sample until the breaking
of sample happened. The yield strength values represent the rmness of
the meat ball structure. This test was performed in triplicate by applying
a spherical plunger diameter of 5 mm. The test speed was constant at
1.5 mm/s while the trigger force was set at 50 g.

Fig. 5. Electrical circuit analogous to the ohmic heating system in this study.

water mixture specimen after heated in ohmic cell. The method for
measurement was identical to that of Engchuan and Jittanit (2013).
The other properties of surrounding water were referred to those values
of normal water published in Cengel (1998). Furthermore, if the amount
of each composition in meat ball was adjusted, its electrical conductivity
could be estimated by the last equation in Table 1 (Engchuan & Jittanit,
2013).
2.4. Comparison between ohmically-heated and conventionally-heated
meat balls
The attributes of the meat ball specimens that were cooked by (1)
conventional method, (2) ohmic method at a heating rate of 4.9 C/min
and (3) ohmic method at a heating rate of 24.5 C/min were determined
and compared in aspects of moisture content, yield strength, microstructure and color. For the conventional heating (mean heating rate of
4.9 C/min), a FISHER hot plate stirrer model 210T (Fisher Scientic
(M) Sdn Bhd, Malaysia) was used for boiling water. In order to achieve
the average heating rate of the meat ball at 24.5 C/min for ohmic
heating, the electrical eld strength of 20 V cm 1 at a frequency of
50 Hz was applied whereas the mean heating rate of 4.9 C/min was
managed by controlling the meat ball temperature proles to be similar
to that of the conventional heating experiment by manually adjusting
the applied electrical eld strength using the voltage variable transformer.
2.4.1. Moisture content
The moisture contents of samples were determined in three replications by the oven method using 2 g of the meat ball and 105 C drying air
temperature for 24 h. Thereafter, the sample was cooled down in a
desiccator, weighed and re-dried for 2 h. The process was repeated
until a change in weight between the successive dryings at 2 h intervals

Table 1
Properties of meat ball and surrounding water.
Property

Value or equation

s
cps
s
ks
l
cpl
l
hfp
s

1270 kg/m3
2712.25 J/kg C
s = 0.028T + 0.013
0.456 W/m C
1000 kg/m3
4185.5 J/kg C
l = 0.007T + 0.191
hfp = 127.2 |Ts Tl|0.2526
s = 1.23 + 0.036T + 0.920Xsalt 2.070Xpepper 0.412Xour
0.477Xsugar 0.840Xgarlic

2.4.3. Microstructure
The specimens were cut from the interior of the meat balls to be the
W L H dimension of 0.5 0.5 0.1 cm, mounted on aluminum specimen stubs using an electrically conductive double-sided adhesive tape
prior to the microstructure observation by the Hitachi scanning electron microscope (SEM) model SU-1500 (Hitachi High-Technologies
Corporation, Japan). The magnication of 200 times and accelerating
voltage of 15 kV were applied using the signals of secondary and
backscattered electrons (Totosaus & Perez-Chabela, 2009).
2.4.4. Color
The colors of specimens cut from the interior of the meat balls
were measured by a Hunter Laboratory MiniScan XE colorimeter
(Hunter Associates, Reston, VA) in the L*, a*, b* scale. L* represents
lightness (0 L 100), while a*(+), a*(), b*(+) and b*() denote
redness, greenness, yellowness, and blueness, correspondingly. The
colorimeter was calibrated with a standard white tile using illuminant
D65 and the 10 standard observer. The measurement was carried out
in three replications. The values of hue angle and chroma were also
calculated (Zell et al., 2009).
2.5. Statistical analysis
The software package of SPSS version 12.0 was used for the analysis
of variance (ANOVA) and a Duncan's multiple range test in the statistical
analysis.
3. Results and discussion
The comparisons between the temperatures of the meat ball and
surrounding water measured during the ohmic heating experiments
and those predicted by the mathematical models are shown in Fig. 6.
It appeared that Sukprasert's model could predict the core temperatures
of the meat ball most precisely whereas the other models overestimated
the meat ball temperatures especially basic model cases i) and ii). Regarding the prediction of surrounding water temperatures, the nite
difference model was the most accurate model. It was slightly more precise than Sukprasert's model and basic model case i). The results of
water temperature estimation of Sukprasert's model and basic model
case i) were equal because Eqs. (2) and (5) were the same. According
to these results, Sukprasert's model was deemed as the best model for
forecasting the temperatures of the meat ballwater mixture. The reason for its accuracy is that Sukprasert's model is the semi-empirical
equation that includes many factors that are inuential to the temperatures of solidliquid mixture during ohmic heating. Although for the
semi-empirical model development of Sukprasert (1998) the sample
was a potato in salt solution, it was proved in this work that his model
is efciently applicable for the different samples such as meat ball in
water. It might be due to the somewhat similar sizes of particle and

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
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W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

450

Temperature (C)

400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0

20

40

60

80

100

80

100

Time (second)

100

Temperature (C)

80

60

40

20

0
0

20

40

60

Time (second)
Fig. 6. The comparison between the measured and predicted values of sample temperatures
during ohmic heating: a) core temperature of meat ball; b) surrounding water; (,
experimental;
, basic model case i;
, basic model case ii;
, Sukprasert's
model;
, nite difference model).

One of the obvious advantages of the nite difference model is that it

can estimate the temperatures of all specied nodes inside the meat ball
while the other models cannot. The temperature distribution inside the
meat ball calculated by the nite difference model is presented in Fig. 8.
It appeared that the temperatures at the surface of the meat ball were apparently lower than those of node 4 (r = 0.011 m), node 8 (r = 0.007 m)
and node 15 (r = 0 m). The explanation is that the surface of the meat ball
lost the heat to the surrounding water by convection in the period that
the surface temperatures were higher than the water. The temperatures
of node 4 were lower than those of nodes 8 and 15 because the heat
from node 4 was transferred by conduction to the outer layer due to the
existence of temperature gradient between nodes. However, the amounts
of conducted heats were not large because the thermal conductivity of the
meat ball was merely 0.456 W/m C; as a consequence, the temperatures

Temperature (C)

ohmic cell between this work and Sukprasert (1998). The basic model
cases i) and ii) could not provide the accurate temperature forecast
meaning that the electrical eld was not uniformly distributed inside
the solidliquid mixture leading to the subsequently signicant effect
on the temperature of each phase. Sastry and Palaniappan (1992) and
Salengke and Sastry (2007) pointed out that the deviation of electrical
eld normally occurred in the solidliquid mixtures due to inequality
of their electrical conductivities. This electrical eld deviation signicantly affected the temperature change of mixture food during ohmic
heating. Similarly, Davies, Kemp, and Fryer (1999) indicated that insulators divert the electric eld and consequently resulted in lower heat
generation whereas regions with higher electrical conductivity tended
to draw electric eld and thus formed higher heat generation zones.
The nite difference model was not the most accurate model in this
study even though it was developed by considering the effect of nonuniform distribution of electrical eld caused by the dissimilarity between the electrical conductivities of the meat ball and surrounding
water. This implies that for this model the method to calculate the inuence of electrical eld deviation in solid and liquid phases was still not
perfect. Furthermore, another reason for the non-perfect estimation of
the nite difference model is that the meat ball structure apparently
changed during cooking; as a result, the electrical conductivities of the
meat ball would decrease leading to the less amount of generated
heat inside the meat ball and subsequently overestimation of the meat
ball temperatures by these models. The main structural change of the
meat ball that caused the fall of the electrical conductivity was the volume
expansion due to the increases of vapor and air pressures within the meat
ball. This volume expansion resulted in more porosity that is usually electrical insulator. Engchuan and Jittanit (2013) proved that the cooked meat
balls have signicantly lower electrical conductivities than the fresh meat
balls. Sarang, Sastry, and Knipe (2008) pointed out that more porosity and
subsequent larger amount of air within their samples were the causes of
low electrical conductivities of their specimens.
The temperature proles in Fig. 6 also indicate that the temperatures
of the meat balls and water obviously increased with the higher rate
along the ohmic heating time. It is because the electrical conductivities
of samples were linear function of temperature as shown in Table 1
and the rate of electrical heat generation in ohmic heating is directly
proportional to the electrical conductivity and the square of electrical
eld strength (Sastry & Palaniappan, 1992; Marra et al., 2009). These
temperature proles were opposite to those of the conventional heating
in which the temperatures of the meat balls normally increase at a fast
rate in the beginning period and then slower rate along the subsequent
times due to the decreasing temperature gradients that perform as a
driving force for heat conduction and convection.
The recorded temperature proles of the meat ball sample and
surrounding water were presented in Fig. 7. It appeared that although
the electrical conductivities of both phases were not identical as
shown in Table 1, their temperatures were not much different. It
might be due to the fact that the electrical conductivities of surrounding
water were not low as a result of the diffusion of NaCl from the meat ball
to the surrounding water. If considering the electrical circuit in Fig. 5, it
is obvious that the electrical current that passed through the uid resistances Rsr,f1 and Rsr,f2 and that of total resistances of Rpl,s and Rpl,f should
be in the same amount; as a result, the heat generation inside the liquid
and solid phases is not much different. The generated heat of the surrounding water at the front and back of the meat ball (Rsr,f1 and Rsr,f2)
was expected to be slightly more than that of the meat ball although
the meat ball has higher electrical conductivity than surrounding
water because the amount of electrical current ow was not different
between the meat ball and surrounding water at the front and back of
the meat ball whereas the electrical resistances of surrounding water
was somewhat higher than meat ball. Nevertheless, the convective
heat transfer between the surrounding water and the surface of the
meat ball also helped equilibrating the temperatures between both
phases as the temperature proles illustrated in Fig. 7.

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Time (second)
Fig. 7. The comparison between the measured values of core temperature of meat ball ()
and surrounding water (+) during ohmic heating.

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
Emerging Technologies (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014

W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

of nodes inside the meat ball were not much different especially for the
nodes closer to the center as shown in Fig. 8. This result demonstrated
that the temperatures inside the meat ball excluding the surface temperature were rather uniform during ohmic heating. The nding in this work
was in line with Shirsat, Lyng, et al. (2004c) and Marra et al. (2009) who
stated that ohmic heating offered some advantages over conventional
methods with respect to shorter processing time and uniformity of
heating. Moreover, the temperatures within the meat ball can be higher
than the surface region during ohmic heating; on the other hand, this
phenomenon cannot occur during the conventional heating that mainly
relies on the heat convection, conduction or radiation. Zareifard,
Ramaswamy, Trigui, and Marcott (2003) found that the solid phase
could be heated faster than the liquid phase if ohmic heating method
was applied. However, it depended on various factors such as electrical
conductivity of each phase, particle size and particle orientation in the
ohmic cell. Furthermore, they showed that the temperatures of liquid
phase at different positions in their static ohmic cells were quite similar
during heating.
From the calculation using the nite difference model, it was
found that the sum of the heat generated inside surrounding water
by electrical eld, that of the heat generated inside the meat ball by
electrical eld and that of the heat transferred between phases by
convection during the ohmic heating process were 8741 J, 5610 J
and 720 J. These gures indicate that the major heat inuencing
the sample temperatures during ohmic heating is the heat internally
generated by electrical eld; however, the convective heat transfer
between the meat ball and surrounding liquid is also vital. According
to Sastry and Palaniappan (1992), Benabderrahmane and Pain
(2000) and Salengke and Sastry (2007), the convective heat transfer
between solid and liquid was considered as an important heat affecting on the mixture temperatures.
Due to the fact that Sukprasert's model is a semi-empirical equation that could precisely predict the sample temperatures in the
present work; therefore, the nite difference model was amended
by adding some terms in order to improve the prediction of temperatures at the core of the meat ball. These additional terms did not
have any theoretical background but they were determined by
tting the differences between measured and predicted values into
them. After adding the empirical terms, Eq. (7) for node 15 of the
meat ball would become Eq. (10). Furthermore, the comparisons
between the core temperatures of the meat ball measured during
the experiments and those predicted by both Sukprasert's model
and the amended nite difference model are illustrated in Fig. 9.
The root mean square errors of Sukprasert's model were 2.4 C and
2.7 C for the predictions of the meat ball temperatures and water
temperatures, respectively whereas those of the amended nite difference model were 1.3 C and 1.8 C, correspondingly. This means



2 1=2
Q in Q out Q gen 76:95 l s 10:56 U

150

100

120

80

90
60
30
0

10

The values of moisture content, yield strength and color of the meat
ball specimens that were cooked by (1) conventional method, (2)
ohmic method at heating rate of 4.9 C/min and (3) ohmic method at
heating rate of 24.5 C/min are presented in Table 2. Ozkan et al.
(2004) stated that the moisture content in cooked meat product has
signicant inuence on taste. The moisture contents of the meat ball
samples produced in this research are close to those of the Indonesian
meat balls measured by Purnomo and Rahardiyan (2008). Additionally,
it appeared that the moisture contents of the meat ball samples cooked
by conventional method were slightly higher than those cooked
by ohmic method. This result is similar to that of Shirsat, Brunton,
Lyng, McKenna, and Scannell (2004b) which indicated that the
conventionally-cooked meat emulsion batter contained more moisture
content than the ohmically-cooked counterparts if all of them were
cooked to the similar end point temperature of 73 C. Furthermore,
two different heating rates by ohmic method did not result in the significant difference between moisture contents of samples. The higher
moisture was contained by the conventionally-heated meat balls because the conventional heating relied on the heat convection from the
hot water to the sample surface and heat conduction from the outer to
the center of sample; so, the surface of the meat balls was exposed to
heat from the boiling water since the beginning until the end of heating
process. Accordingly, the sample surface would be harder than the other
parts of the sample and blocked the movement of the evaporated moisture from the inner of the meat ball to the outside part. On the other
hand, for the ohmic method the heat was uniformly generated all over
the sample; as a consequence, the moisture loss from the meat ball during ohmic heating process was more than that of conventional heating
since the sample surface was not as hard as the conventionally-cooked
sample surface.
Barbut, Gordon, and Smith (1996) stated that the rigid structure of
meat batter is formed when the proteins initiate to denature and contribute in proteinprotein interactions. The yield strengths of cooked
meat balls in this work were in the range between 9.73 and 13.53 N
which are higher than those of cooked surimi gels measured by
Alvarez, Couso, Solas, and Tejada (1997) that fell between 1 and 5 N. It
is obvious that the texture of ohmically-heated meat ball (at heating
rate of 4.9 C/min) was stronger than that of ohmically-heated (at
heating rate of 24.5 C/min) and conventionally-heated meat balls.
The conventionally-cooked meat balls had the softer texture because
they contained more amount of moisture inside them; so, the strength
of protein matrix inside the samples would be less. Moreover, the larger
pores within the samples could be another cause of the less strength of

Temperature (C)

Temperature (C)

180

that the amended nite difference model provided the better temperature forecast than Sukprasert's model.

60
40
20
0

20

40

60

80

100

Time (second)
Fig. 8. The temperatures at various positions within meat ball during ohmic heating
estimated by the nite difference model:
, at surface (r = 0.014 m);
at
r = 0.011 m;
at r = 0.007 m;
at center (r = 0 m).

20

40

60

80

100

Time (second)
Fig. 9. The comparison between the measured and predicted values of core temperatures
of meat ball during ohmic heating: , experimental;, Sukprasert's model;,
amended nite difference model.

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
Emerging Technologies (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014

W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

Table 2
The moisture content, yield strength and color of the meat ball samples cooked by different processes.
Cooking method

MC (%wb)

Yield strength (N)

Color
L*

Conventional heating
Ohmic heating (4.9 C/min)
Ohmic heating (24.5 C/min)

73.1 0.27
72.5b 0.31
72.4b 0.20

9.73 0.56
13.53c 0.92
12.02b 1.05

a*
a

67.78 0.67
69.82b 0.98
68.18a 0.48

b*
a

1.72 0.17
0.28b 0.03
0.29b 0.15

Hue angle
a

14.97 0.35
15.19a 0.42
15.74a 0.05

83.44 0.52
88.96b 0.10
88.94b 0.54

Chroma
15.07a 0.36
15.19a 0.42
15.75a 0.04

Note: MC = moisture content, L* = lightness, a* = redness, b* = yellowness. Moisture content, yield strength and color are expressed in mean standard deviation. Means with the
same superscript within same column are insignicantly different (P N 0.05).

conventionally-heated meat batter product (Barbut et al., 1996). Shirsat,

Brunton, et al. (2004a) stated that the textural properties of cooked meat
emulsion batters are inuenced by the product's ability to bind water.
They also pointed out that the different rates and methods of heating
could affect on the water binding in meats. Carballo, Cofrades, Solas,
and Jimenez-Colmenero (2000) claimed that the condition of thermal
treatment affected on the texture of meat batters. The results in this
study indicated that the meat balls cooked by ohmic method at a slower
rate were signicantly rmer than those cooked at a faster heating rate. It
is because the slower heating rate provided the longer time for the protein inside the meat balls to develop rmer gel structure and subsequent
protein matrix (Camou, Sebranek, & Olson, 1989; Barbut & Mittal, 1990;
Lan et al., 1995). It must be noted that the strength of the meat ball structure is a crucial characteristic that can have signicant effect on the
consumer acceptance. Hsu and Chung (1998) and Hsu and Yu (1999)
pointed out that consumers prefer a hard texture meat ball. Therefore,
the texture of ohmically-cooked meat balls should be more desirable
than that of conventionally-cooked samples.
The color is another attribute of meat ball product that consumers
usually consider before consumption. Hsu and Chung (1998) and Hsu
and Yu (1999) asserted that consumers favor a brightly colored meat
ball. According to the results of color measurement, the color parameters of the meat balls heated by ohmic method at heating rate of
4.9 C/min were insignicantly different from those of ohmically heated
at the rate of 24.5 C/min except for the lightness that was slightly
higher in case of applying the slower heating rate. Pongviratchai and
Park (2007) and Zell, Lyng, Cronin, and Morgan (2010) found that the
meat samples that were heated by ohmic method at different heating
rates would expose to heat for a dissimilar period of time leading to the
dissimilarities of protein gel occurred inside the meat ball and the reection of the product surface. The redness and hue angle of conventionallycooked meat balls were signicantly higher than those heated by ohmic
method. This result resembles to the nding of Zell et al. (2009) that
compared between the colors of ohmically-cooked and conventionallycooked beef muscle specimens. It implies that the browning reactions especially maillard reaction occurred in conventionally-cooked meat balls
more than ohmically-cooked samples. It is because for the ohmic heating
the temperature distribution within the sample was rather uniform due
to its heat generation mechanism whereas for the conventional heating
that relied on the heat convection and conduction, the outer layer of the
meat balls would be hotter than the core area since the beginning until
the end of heating process. As a result, the browning reactions would be
accelerated at the outer layer of the conventionally-cooked meat balls
due to the high temperatures. It must be noted that although in the present work the sample temperature changes during ohmic heating in case
of slower rate (4.9 C/min) were controlled to be almost identical to
those of conventional cooking, these temperatures were measured at
the center of the meat balls. Therefore, the temperatures at the other positions inside the meat balls could be dissimilar between two heating
methods.
The micrographs of samples observed by SEM were illustrated in
Fig. 10 (a) to (c). These gures show that the microstructure of the
conventionally-cooked meat ball had the looser and less uniform structure and had more quantity of cracks than that of the ohmically-cooked
samples. The explanation is that for the ohmic heating, the heat was

generated within the samples rather homogeneously; as a result, the

protein network was developed simultaneously throughout the sample
resulting in the uniform microstructure of samples. On the other hand,
during the boiling of meat balls in the hot water, the heat was transferred from the hot water to the sample core via convection and
conduction mechanisms; hence, the apparent temperature gradients

Fig. 10. Scanning electron microscopy at 200x magnication of cooked meat balls:
a) conventional; b) ohmic (4.9 C/min); c) ohmic (24.5 C/min).

Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
Emerging Technologies (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014

10

W. Engchuan et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies xxx (2014) xxxxxx

within the sample must occur leading to non-uniform microstructure,

mechanical stress and subsequent cracks inside the sample. Furthermore, the less temperature gradient inside the samples during ohmic
heating caused the rapid and uniform moisture evaporation inside the
sample resulting in the small and somewhat consistent pores throughout the samples. Conversely, the moisture evaporation from the inner of
sample and the expansion of air volume during conventional cooking
were slower and less uniform; thus, the larger and inconsistent pores
appeared.
4. Conclusion
Ohmic heating can be employed as an alternative heating method
for rapid cooking of meat ball. Sukprasert's model and adjusted nite
difference model applied in this work could precisely predict the temperature variations of the meat ball and surrounding water during
ohmic heating. The heat generated by electrical eld and the convective
heat transferred between meat ball and water were inuential to the
sample temperatures during ohmic heating. Both non-uniform distribution of electrical eld within the mixture and the structural changes of
meat ball during ohmic cooking were expected to be crucial causes of
the prediction error of the theoretical models. Moreover, the differences
in heating method and heating rate caused the dissimilarities of some
features of meat balls. The uniformity of temperatures inside the samples during ohmic heating is the key reason for the differences between
the attributes of conventionally and ohmically cooked meat balls.
Acknowledgment
This research was nancially supported by Kasetsart University Research and Development Institute, Bangkok, Thailand.
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Please cite this article as: Engchuan, W., et al., The ohmic heating of meat ball: Modeling and quality determination, Innovative Food Science and
Emerging Technologies (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.02.014