Microbial handling of water using high voltage pulsed electric field

High Voltage (HV) Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) has long been used to destroy germs in dairy products and juices. The current study reveals that HV PEF can be used to cleanse the influence of bacteria found in water. To obtain microorganisms' free water, a PEF with a rise time of 1.2 micro second and a tail time of 50 microsecond was used in a parallel plate static chamber. The field intensity was modulated from zero to 180 kV/cm, and the number of pulses was changed from zero to 100, for the goal of deactivating water with PEF. In the first situation, field intensity was kept constant while the number of pulses was modified, but in the second case, field intensity was kept constant while the number of pulses was varied. The survival ratio of microorganisms has been estimated in both circumstances. The goal of this experiment was to determine the survival ratio of five bacteria often found in water and milk: Enterobacter aerogenes, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogene, Staphylococcus aurous, and Acetobacter. Some microorganisms had an extremely low survival ratio of 0.000001 at 40 kV and 40 pulses, and some other microbes had a very low survival ratio at more than 40 kV and more than 40 pulses. At 80 kV, E. coli was fully inactivated, however at 140 kV, L.monocytogenes was only reduced by two orders of magnitude. The bacteria were found to be eliminated by field-induced heating at the microorganisms' protective wall, rather than by ohmic heating.