Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 22 (2014) 8994

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Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies

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

Inactivating effect of pulsed electric eld on lipase in brown rice

Jian-Ya Qian a,b,, Yu-Ping Gu a, Wei Jiang c, Wei Chen d
a
School of Food Science & Engineering, Yangzhou University, Huayang Xilu 196, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225127, People's Republic of China
b
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Dairy Biotechnology & Safety Control, Huayang Xilu 196, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225127, People's Republic of China
c
School of Hydraulic, Energy & Power Engineering, Yangzhou University, Huayang Xilu 196, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225127, People's Republic of China
d
School of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, Lihu Dadao 1800, Wuxi, Jiangsu 214122, People's Republic of China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Pulsed electric eld (PEF) treatment was applied to brown rice grains in a treatment chamber which was
Received 18 June 2012 surrounded by organic glass as walls around a pair of horizontally paralleled plate electrodes to investigate the
Accepted 16 January 2014 feasibility of PEF on low moisture food materials. Based on a monolayer of brown rice grains the results showed
Available online 6 February 2014
that the lipase activity could be signicantly inactivated by PEF. Among the PEF parameters, the voltage was the
most important to the inactivating efciency, followed by frequency and pulse width; while the time was less
Editor Proof Receive Date 24 February 2014
dominant. The interactions between voltage and pulse width and between frequency and pulse width also
Keywords: contributed to the lipase inactivation signicantly. By using BoxBehnken design, response surface methodology
Pulsed electric eld was applied to optimize the process and a well tting model was obtained with PEF parameters, voltage, frequen-
Lipase cy, pulse width, and residence time.
Brown rice Industrial relevance: Pulsed electric eld (PEF) is a low temperature and environment friendly technology in food
Stabilization processing. It is promising and has received considerable attention over the years in the past. PEF has been
applied to inactivate microorganisms or enzymes. However, research work regarding PEF focused almost only
on liquid food processing so far. There has been no report of PEF on solid food materials. Rice bran is abundant
and nutritious, but it could not be stored for a long time because enzymolysis takes place soon after it is scraped
off from rice grains. If the PEF could be used for lipase inactivation in brown rice grains, the stabilized rice bran
should be obtained after milling during the material convey. It would be another effective and in-line rice bran
stabilization technique potential in the rice industry. Furthermore, the application scope of PEF in food industry
could be widened.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Rice, a cereal with the second-highest production worldwide, is
the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human
population, especially in Asia and the West Indies. Nearly half of China
population consumes polished rice as their staple food. Rice bran is a
by-product of the milling process corresponding to 58% of the total
rice grain. It is one of the sources of protein, oil, dietetic ber and func-
tional compounds such as oryzanol and tocotrienes (Carrol, 1990;
Juliano, 1994; McCaskill & Zhang, 1999; Orthoefer, 1996). The abundant
lipid (N20%) limits its use for rancidity occurs soon after production,
thus, the fresh bran must be stabilized for further utilization. Efforts
have been made in this aspect. The most effective classical methods
include dry heat, moist heat, and moist heat on press stabilization
(Juliano, 1994; Prakash, 1996). Other methods include the use of
chemical products, such as hydrochloric acid, acetic acid, acrylonitrile
Corresponding author at: School of Food Science & Engineering, Yangzhou University,
Huayang Xilu 196, Yangzhou, Jiangsu 225127, People's Republic of China. Fax: +86 514
8731 3372.
E-mail address: jyqian@yzu.edu.cn (J.-Y. Qian).
and propanal, and the use of microwave (Prakash, 1996; Prakash &
Ramanatham, 1995; Ramezanzadeh, Rao, Windhauser, Prinyawiwatkul,
& Marshall, 1999). Obviously, in all possible options, the application of
chemicals is getting far away from consumer acceptance. When thermal
treatment is applied, the rice bran stabilization process consists of the
destruction of active lipases and peroxidases (Saunders, 1990). In sub-
tropical or warm areas, the temperature of rice bran could reach over
40 C after milling. And the bran is normally stored without cooling in
most of the milling plants. If it has deteriorated, as often happens, most-
ly due to lipase enzymolysis after being stripped from the grains and
stored for a long time at a relatively higher temperature, the bran
would be of no use at all; this is the reason why less than 10% of the
rice bran has been used in China. On the other hand, if the lipase could
be inactivated in the grains, stabilized bran could be obtained at any
time whenever the brown rice is milled.
Pulsed electric eld (PEF) has gained increasing interest for different
applications in food industry. As a non-thermal food preservation
method, this technique is mainly applied in liquid food products, e.g.
to produce juices with extended shelf life and high sensorial quality
by inactivating enzymes such as polyphenol oxidase in foods (Aguilar-
Rosas, Ballinas-Casarrubias, Nevarez-Moorillon, Martin-Belloso, &
Ortega-Rivas, 2007; Giner et al., 2002; Mertens & Knorr, 1992; Qin,

1466-8564/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2014.01.010
90 J.-Y. Qian et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 22 (2014) 8994
Chang, Barbosa-Canovas, & Swanson, 1995; Riener, Noci, Cronin,
Morgan, & Lyng, 2008; Zhang, Barbosa-Canovas, & Swanson, 1995).
Heretofore to our knowledge there are few reports on the application
of PEF on solid foodstuffs. Janositz, Semrau, and Knorr (2011) used PEF to
treat cuboids of fresh white asparagus (Asparagus ofcinalis L.), but no
hint was available if they lled the treatment chamber with aqueous
solutions to form a continuous system.
This work aimed to evaluate the feasibility of PEF on low moisture
food processing in a noncontinuous system. Lipase in brown rice was se-
lected as the target subject as it is of great interest to the rice milling
industry.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Reagents
All reagents of analytical pure grade were made by authentic pro-
ducers in China: sodium hydroxide by Shanghai Zhenxin Reagent Facto-
ry; absolute ethanol and 95% (v/v) ethanol by Guangzhou Chemical
Reagent Factory; petroleum ether by Tianjin Oubo Chemical Engineer-
ing Co., Ltd.; and disodium hydrogen phosphate and potassium
dihydrogen phosphate by Shanghai Hengli Reagent Factory. Soya bean
oil of class I, in accordance with the China National Standard GB 1535-
2003 (AQSIQ, 2003), was purchased from a local supermarket and
pretreated as follows: transferring 250 ml of the oil into a separatory
funnel and adding 100150 ml of 2% (m/v) sodium hydroxide solution;
discarding the aqueous layer after rigorously vibrating and standing
to stratify; washing with warm distilled water to neutral pH and
dehydrating with anhydrous sodium sulfate at last. This procedure
gave the pure oil as the substrate for determination of lipase activity.
2.2. Materials
Brown rice, supplied by a local rice milling plant, Jiangsu Shuangtu
Food Co. Ltd., was manually sorted out and cleaned up. Only those full
grains were used.
2.3. Determination of moisture
A direct drying procedure was exploited according to MOH (2010).
Brown rice grains were ground to 20-mesh and dried in a forced-air
dryer (DGX-9053B-2, Fuma Experimental Instruments Co. Ltd., Shanghai,
China) at 101.3 kPa and 105 2 C. The loss of the sample mass was
calculated to give the moisture content in g/kg.
2.4. Determination of lipase activity
Lipase activity is dened as the amount of sodium hydroxide (in mg)
needed to neutralize the free fatty acids liberated from pure lipid by the
lipase in 1 g sample of brown rice grain (on dry basis) at pH 7.4, according
to the China National Standard GB/T 5523-2008 (AQSIQ-SA, 2008). 2
0.01 g (correct to 0.0001 g) of rice grain was weighed into a mortar, and
1 ml of pure soya bean oil (treated as in 2.1.) was added. After blend-
ing, 5 ml 1/15 mol/l of phosphate buffer solution (PBS) was added
followed by being ground manually with a pestle, the paste was then
transferred into a conical ask. 5 ml of distilled water was used to
wash the mortar and collected in the conical ask. After 3 droplets of
toluene added in, the conical ask was stopped and put into an
electro-heating standing-temperature cultivator (Nanjing Experimental
Instrument Factory, China). 50 ml of the mixture of ethanol and petro-
leum ether (4:1, v/v) was pipetted into the conical ask after incubation
at 30 C for 24 h. After standing for 5 min, the mixture was titrated with
0.5 mol/l sodium hydroxide solution to pH 8.2 with an automatic poten-
tial titrator (ZDJ-5, Shanghai Precision & Scientic Instrument Co., Ltd.).
The volume (V1) of alkaline was recorded. Two grams (correct to
0.0001 g) of rice grain was mixed with PBS and titrated with the
standard NaOH solution (0.5 mol/l) without incubation to get the
blank volume of alkaline V0. The activity of lipase was calculated accord-
ing to Eq. (1),
V 1 V 0  c  40:01 60
X   100 1
m  100M 25
where X is the lipase activity in mg/g (milligrams of NaOH based on
grams of dry sample); V1 is the volume of sodium hydroxide solution
for the subject sample in ml; V0 is the volume of sodium hydroxide
solution for the blank in ml; c is the actual concentration of sodium hy-
droxide solution in mol/l; m is the sample mass in g; M is the moisture
content of the sample in % (m/m); 40.01 is the molecular mass of NaOH;
60 is the total volume of the enzymatic reaction system in ml; and 25 is
the part of total volume (60 ml) used for titration with NaOH solution in
ml.
2.5. PEF treatment
PEF was exerted to brown rice grains in a chamber constructed with
a pair of horizontally paralleled plate electrodes (25 16 cm) with the
distance adjustable from 45 mm to 100 mm and surrounded by organic
glass as walls. The PEF generator (HVP-153P30, Shenghuo Sci-Tech Co.
Ltd, Tianjin, China) delivered reversal monopolar pulses of nearly rect-
angular shape with a peak value of 15 kV-30 mA. The prole of pulses
(pulse width: 315 s; frequency: 501000 Hz; and voltage: 015 kV)
was adjustable with knobs and displayed on an oscilloscope (Lecroy
24 MXs 2.5 Gs/s, 250 MHz, USA) equipped to the generator. The applied
treatment time (t, in s) was calculated according to Eq. (2).
t f   tr 2
where f is the frequency in Hz; is the pulse width in s and tr is the
residence time in s. And the energy input is the product of the energy
for one pulse and the number of pulse in J.
2.5.1. Factorial experiments
2.5.1.1. Effect of material thickness on lipase activity. The brown rice grains
were laid in the treatment chamber between the electrode plates with a
xed distance of 45 mm. The parameters were set to voltage: 9 kV, fre-
quency: 600 Hz, pulse width: 9 s, and residence time: 5 s. The thickness
of the grain varied from a monolayer to multilayer of 10 to 40 mm with
an interval of 10 mm. The treatment time was 27 ms for each trial with
an energy input of 4.95 J.
2.5.1.2. Effect of frequency on lipase activity. A monolayer of brown rice
grains (ca. 100 g) was laid in the treatment chamber between the elec-
trode plates with a xed distance of 45 mm. The parameters were set to
voltage: 9 kV, pulse width: 9 s, and residence time: 5 s. The frequency
of the eld varied from 200 to 1000 Hz with an interval of 200 Hz. The
corresponding treatment time was 9, 18, 27, 36, and 45 ms, respectively,
with an energy input of 4.95 J.
2.5.1.3. Effect of pulse width on lipase activity. A monolayer of brown rice
grains (ca. 100 g) was laid in the treatment chamber between the elec-
trode plates with a xed distance of 45 mm. The parameters were set to
voltage: 9 kV, frequency: 600 Hz, and residence time: 5 s. The pulse
width varied from 3 to 15 s with an interval of 3 s. The corresponding
treatment time was 9, 18, 27, 36, and 45 ms, respectively, with an
energy input of 4.95 J.
2.5.1.4. Effect of residence time on lipase activity. A monolayer of brown
rice grains (ca. 100 g) was laid in the treatment chamber between the
electrode plates with a xed distance of 45 mm. The parameters were
set to voltage: 9 kV, frequency: 600 Hz, and pulse width: 9 s. The
 J.-Y. Qian et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 22 (2014) 8994 91

Table 1 interaction (Jahani, Alizadeh, Pirozifard, & Qudsevali, 2008; Oliveira,

Code and level of factors. Oliveira, Aracava, & Rodrigues, 2012).
Factor and coded symbol Level

1 0 +1 X X 2
X
Y 0  i xi  ij x  ij xi x j 3
Frequency (Hz), x1 400 600 800
Voltage (kV), x2 6 9 12
Time (s), x3 3 5 7
Pulse width (s), x4 9 12 15 where Y is the response (lipase activity); xi and xj are the levels of
variables; 0 is the linear coefcient; i is the quadratic coefcient;
and ij is the interaction coefcient. The whole set of experiment
consisted of 29 trials including ve replicates in central point
residence time varied from 1 to 9 s with an interval of 2 s. The
(Table 1).
corresponding treatment times were 5.4, 16.2, 27, 37.8, and 48.6 ms,
respectively, with an energy input of 4.95 J.

2.5.1.5. Effect of voltage on lipase activity. A monolayer of brown rice
grains (ca. 100 g) was laid in the treatment chamber between the elec-
trode plates with a xed distance of 45 mm. The parameters were set to
frequency: 600 Hz, and pulse width: 9 s. The voltage varied from 3 to
15 kV with an interval of 3 kV. The treatment time was 27 ms for each
trial and the corresponding energy input were 2.25, 4.95, 8.70 and
13.50 J, respectively.
2.6. Statistical analysis
Every trial was repeated three times and the results were expressed
as the mean standard deviation. All statistical analyses were
performed by using Design Expert 8.05b (Stat-Ease Inc., Minneapolis,
Minnesota, USA).

2.5.2. Optimization 3. Results and discussion

Response surface methodology with the BoxBehnken design was
applied to investigate the effect of the PEF treatment variables, fre- 3.1. Brown rice attributes
quency (x1), voltage(x2), residence time (x3), and pulse width (x4)
on the lipase activity (Y). A factorial design was planned to obtain The subject brown rice grains contained 162.3 0.56 g/kg
quadratic model for the response (Eq. (3)). The equation suggests of moisture and possessed an intrinsic lipase activity of 5.25
the effect of the process variables in terms of linear, quadratic, and 0.17 mg/g.

A 6
B 6
Lipase activity (mg/g)
Lipase activity (mg/g)

5
5
4
4
3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
5 10 15 20 25 200 400 600 800 1000
Material thickness (mm) Frequency (Hz)

C 6
D 6
Lipase activity (mg/g)
Lipase activity (mg/g)

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
3 6 9 12 15 1 3 5 7 9

Pulse width (s) Residence time (s)

E 6
Lipase activity (mg/g)

0
3 6 9 12 15
Voltage (V)

Fig. 1. Factorial effect of pulsed electric eld on lipase activity. A. Effect of material thickness on lipase activity; B. Effect of frequency on lipase activity; C. Effect of pulse width on lipase
activity; D. Effect of residence time on lipase activity; E. Effect of voltage on lipase activity.
92 J.-Y. Qian et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 22 (2014) 8994

3.2. Effect of operating parameters on lipase activity
The thickness of material affects the inactivation efciency. The
thicker the brown rice grains, the weaker the inactivation, as is
shown in Fig. 1A. In the xed gap between the electrode plates, a
monolayer of grain gives the best inactivation after treatment with
a lipase activity of 2.79 mg/g, 53.14% of the original. 30 mm of mul-
tilayer height seems to be critical as there is no change in lipase
activity if the grain layer gets thicker, with nearly 91% of the activity
(4.76 mg/g) remaining. In order to minimize the effect of thickness
of the material, one single layer of brown rice grain was applied in
all the subsequent trials.
The frequency has a big impact on lipase activity (Fig. 1B). Lower
frequency, e. g. 200 Hz, plays little role on inactivation (99.62% of the
activity remains), while higher frequency can inactivate nearly half of
the enzymes; in the case of 1000 Hz, 55.62% remains.
As can be seen from Fig. 1C and D, more than two thirds of the lipase
activity remains in the single factorial situations, 68.95% for width and
68.38% (Fig. 1C) for residence time (Fig. 1D), respectively. It seems
that the width and residence time share an equal role in the impact
on the inactivation.
The lipase activity is not sensitive to lower voltage. For example,
98.48% of the activity remains when the voltage applied was 3 kV. At
the extreme upper limit 15 kV of the generator, almost half (50.86%)
of the lipase could be inactivated. The effect of voltage on lipase activity
is presented in Fig. 1E.
Literature reviewing effects of high electric eld pulses on enzymes
is available (Van Loey, Verachtert, & Hendrickx, 2002), however, only
two reports referred to lipase: one covering lipase in deionized water
solution (Ho, Mittal, & Cross, 1997), and the other in milk (Grahl &
Mrkl, 1996).
Enzymes are stabilized by weak noncovalent forces, such as hydro-
gen bonds, electrostatic forces, van der Waals forces and hydrophobic
interactions, internal salt bridges, and, in some cases, disulphide bonds
(Price & Stevens, 1991). PEF is a low temperature technique and there
Table 2
Experimental design and results.
exist low moisture in the grains. No temperature rise was observed
after PEF treatment in this specic work. The application of high electric
eld pulses might have affected the forces involved in maintaining
the three-dimensional structure (secondary, tertiary and quaternary
structure) or conformation of the globular protein (Ho et al., 1997)
rather than heat effect.
In low moisture material and uncontinuous system like this very
case presented, the electric resistance, composing of rice and the air,
is very big and results in a small electric current (b 2 A). While most
of the reports of PEF on liquid food products in a continuous system
demonstrate a big electric current, e.g. 5 kA (Pataro, Falcone, Dons,
& Ferrari, 2013) and the temperature rise, even though said as mod-
erate, could reach as high as 65 C (e.g. Heinz, Toep, & Knorr,
2003).
The voltage, frequency, pulse width and treatment time are fac-
tors critical to energy input. Higher voltage means higher electric
eld strength, therefore, higher level of energy dissipation. Higher
frequency gives more shocks to the material. Longer treatment
time means more pulses. Thinner layer demonstrates small mass of
rice. Thus, it should be the specic energy input that impacts the
lipase activity. In convenience for operating control, the residence
time rather than treatment time (a derivative variable) was chosen
for optimization below.
3.3. Optimization
3.3.1. Regression model
The experimental protocol and results of response are shown in
Table 2. Multiple regression t analyses produce the model of quadratic
equation (Eq. (4)) by using Design Expert 8.05b, between lipase activity
(Y) and frequency, voltage, residence time, and pulse width of the PEF
treatment.
Y 2:310:35x1 0:29x2 0:48x3 0:37x4 0:20x1 x2 0:27x1 x3 0:005x1 x4
2 2 2 2
0:26x2 x3 0:18x2 x4 0:16x3 x4 0:43x1 0:87x2 0:62x3 0:74x4
4

Trial no. Variable Response

Two way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Fisher's statistical test
(F test) were performed to investigate the effect of PEF treatment, to
x1 (Hz) x2 (kV) x3 (s) x4 (s) Observed Y Predicted Y
compare the means of the responses, and to determine statistical signif-
1 1 1 0 0 4.52 4.45 icance. F test reveals the signicance of the controlled factors on the
2 1 1 0 0 3.37 4.36
model (Table 3). It can be seen that the regression model is an extreme-
3 1 1 0 0 3.53 3.47
4 1 1 0 0 3.17 3.16
ly signicant one (P b 0.0001), while the lack of t is not signicant
5 0 0 1 1 4.57 4.35 (P N 0.05). The big square multiple regression coefcient R2 (0.9645) in-
6 0 0 1 1 3.62 3.73 dicates a good correlation between the predicted value and the actual
7 0 0 1 1 4.12 3.94 one. Adjusted R2 of 0.9290 means 92.90% of the variation of the response
8 0 0 1 1 2.51 2.65
value and the model tting well. Only 7.10% of the response variation
9 1 0 0 1 4.42 4.20
10 1 0 0 1 3.36 3.49 unts the model, suggesting smaller trial errors. The derived model
11 1 0 0 1 3.53 3.45 could be used for analyzing the variation of the response values
12 1 0 0 1 2.49 2.76 and predicating the optimal parameters of the PEF to inhibit the lipase
13 0 1 1 0 4.76 4.83
activity in brown rice grains.
14 0 1 1 0 3.66 3.72
15 0 1 1 0 3.37 3.36
16 0 1 1 0 3.31 3.29
17 1 0 1 0 3.58 3.91 Table 3
18 1 0 1 0 3.83 3.76 Analysis of variance (ANOVA) for regression equation.
19 1 0 1 0 3.41 3.5
20 1 1 1 0 2.57 2.26 Source Sum of squares DF Mean square F-value P-value
21 0 1 0 1 4.68 4.77 Prob N F
22 0 1 0 1 3.72 3.82 Model 16.10 14 1.15 27.15 b0.0001**
23 0 1 0 1 3.74 3.66 Residual 0.59 14 0.042
24 0 0 0 1 3.51 3.44 Lack of t 0.53 10 0.053 3.14 0.1405
25 0 0 0 0 2.5 2.31 Pure error 0.067 4 0.017
26 0 0 0 0 2.24 2.31 Total 16.69 28
27 0 0 0 0 2.31 2.31
28 0 0 0 0 2.33 2.31 R2 = 0.9645 Adj R2 = 0.9290
29 0 0 0 0 2.15 2.31
** Signicant at 1% level; * Signicant at 5% level.
 J.-Y. Qian et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 22 (2014) 8994 93

Table 4 The linear and quadratic terms of the model affect the Y extremely
Test of signicance for regression coefcient. signicantly (P b 0.0001). The interaction terms x1x3 and x2x3 contrib-
Model term Coefcient DF Standard 95% CI 95% CI P-value ute to the Y signicantly (P b 0.05), whereas the others do not
estimate error Low High Prob N F (P N 0.05), as is shown in Table 4.
Intercept 2.31 1 0.092 2.11 2.50 b0.0001** The response surface plots were generated for visualizing the
x1 0.35 1 0.059 0.48 0.22 b0.0001** combined effects of the two factors on the response (Fig. 2). Two of
x2 0.29 1 0.059 0.42 0.17 0.0002** the four variables in tting function varied while the other two were
x3 0.48 1 0.059 0.60 0.35 b0.0001**
kept at central values. The effect of the PEF parameters on the response
x4 0.37 1 0.059 0.50 0.25 b0.0001**
x1x2 0.20 1 0.10 0.023 0.42 0.0755 (lipase activity) descends, according to the signicance of inuence, in
x1x3 0.27 1 0.10 0.49 0.052 0.0191* the order of voltage, frequency, pulse width, and lastly residence time.
x1x4 0.005 1 0.10 0.22 0.23 0.9619
x2x3 0.26 1 0.10 0.039 0.48 0.0242* 3.3.2. Model verication
x2x4 0.18 1 0.10 0.038 0.40 0.0978
x3x4 0.16 1 0.10 0.39 0.056 0.1311
According to Eq. (4), the optimal conditions for PEF treatment on li-
x21 0.43 1 0.081 0.26 0.60 0.0001** pase inhibition are as follows, frequency: 716.9 Hz, voltage: 8.96 kV, res-
x22 0.87 1 0.081 0.70 1.05 b0.0001** idence time: 6.12 s, and pulse width: 12.94 s, at which the remaining
x23 0.62 1 0.081 0.45 0.79 b0.0001** lipase activity is only 2.01 mg/g (38.29% of the starting value). In order
x24 0.74 1 0.081 0.57 0.91 b0.0001**
to test the liability and precision of the methodology and taking the
** Signicant at 1% level; * Signicant at 5% level. convenience for parameters setting into account, the variables were

Fig. 2. Response surface plots of pulsed electric eld on lipase activity. a: Frequency vs. time, voltage and pulse width kept at the central levels. b: Voltage vs. time, frequency and pulse
width kept at the central levels. c: Frequency vs. voltage, time and pulse width kept at the central levels. d: Frequency vs. pulse width, voltage and time kept at the central levels. e: Voltage
vs. pulse width, time and frequency kept at the central levels. f: Time vs. pulse width, frequency and voltage kept at the central levels.
94 J.-Y. Qian et al. / Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies 22 (2014) 8994
corrected to frequency: 715 Hz, voltage: 9 kV, residence time: 6 s, and
pulse width: 13 s. Three trials were repeated and an actual lipase activ-
ity of 2.11 0.044 mg/g (40.19% of the starting value) was obtained. By
comparison with the theoretical value, the relative error is 4.74%, sug-
gesting a reliability and precision of the optimal parameters obtained
from the response surface methodology.
4. Conclusions
As mentioned earlier in the beginning, the purpose of this work was
to see whether the PEF treatment could be applied to low moisture food
materials or not. All factors were not taken into account, even those very
important ones such as moisture, although an empirical tting model
was optimized. PEF is powerful in inactivating lipase in brown rice
grains as could be drawn from the results that about 60% could be
inactivated, which means, that at least, the lipolysis by lipase could be
slowed down. Chang and El-Dash (1998) used microwave energy as a
thermal treatment to inactivate lipase to improve the long-term storage
stability of brown rice. Lipase is a limiting factor to utilization of the
nutrients in brown rice (in rice bran indeed). The stabilization of
brown rice benets the stability of rice milling to get stabilized rice
bran (Qian, 2010a; Qian, 2010b). Another undergoing work reveals
that PEF treatment is not harmful to the subsequent milling of brown
rice (data not shown).
The voltage (referring to electric eld strength) is the most impor-
tant parameter to the efciency, followed by frequency and pulse
width; the residence time shows less dominance because it does not
mean the real treatment time. The interactions between voltage and
pulse width and between frequency and pulse width contribute to the
lipase inactivation signicantly. It is optimistic to suppose that PEF
treatment is potentially of use in rice processing industry as a non-
polluted, low temperature, clean, and effective means.
In order to get more effective consequence, there are possibilities to
improve the design of the pulse generator or to treat the bran itself, as
the amount of brown rice could be a big burden compared to that of
bran in rice milling production.
Acknowledgments
This work was nancially supported by Project of China National Key
Technology Research and Development Program for the 12th Five-year
Plan (no. 2012BAD37B08), Project of the Priority Academic Program
Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, and Project of
Jiangsu Provincial Key Technology Research and Development Program
(no. BE2011392).
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