Development of Selective Sterilization System of Bacteria in Aqueous Solution by High Electric Field Pulse Application

Our paper reported a selective sterilization system of bacteria in an aqueous solution using high electric field pulses. We applied high voltage pulses to Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae in 1×10−3mol/L NaCl aqueous solutions. We estimated the survival ratio in a model of high electric field pulse sterilization. As results, the survival ratios of E. coli or S. cerevisiae decreased with an increasing number of pulses. The survival ratio of E. coli was higher than that of S. cerevisiae because E. coli was smaller than S. cerevisiae. Our study shows that it is attainable to kill bacteria selectivity using high electric field pulses in liquid food based on the bacteria type (i.e., size). However, the survival ratio of the experimental results disagreed with that of the calculated values from the model of the sterilization mechanism.