Dual-porosity model of liquid extraction by pressing from biological tissue modified by electroporation

• Electroporated tissue has been modelled as dual-porosity medium.
• Effect of electroporation on cell membrane porosity is theoretically evaluated.
• An efficient-to-compute analytical model was developed for liquid pressure.
• Model results/predictions were compared with experimentally obtained data.

The objective of this study is to provide insight into the phenomena related with juice expression from electroporated tissue. We propose an analytical model and study consolidation behaviour of a block of tissue during pressing; before and after electroporation. By the dual-porosity approach, we treat compressibility and hydraulic permeability of intracellular and extracellular space separately. Initial parameter estimations are based on previously published studies (for hydraulic permeability), or analysis of modelled data (for compressibility moduli). Good agreement between simulations and experiments performed is then obtained by optimization (i.e. fitting). Impact of electroporation on membrane permeability is theoretically estimated and elucidated via the extraction–consolidation model; results are compared with experimental kinetics for validation and evaluation of model performance. Permeability coefficient estimates from literature proved valuable as initial approximations, and the model results were able to fit experimental data with high accuracy, clearly demonstrating the power of the proposed approach.