A Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) bench static system to study bacteria inactivation

Pulsed Electric Fields (PEF) technology is a promising non-thermal processing method for inactivation of microorganisms. A small PEF bench system able to treat a 0.4 ml static liquid volume has been built and tested at the laboratories of the Universita del Piemonte Orientale in Alessandria, Italy. The technique used to produce the required fields consists of charging high voltage cables of various lengths and subsequently discharge them on a cylindrical cell. The pulse intensity can be adjusted to reach a maximum electric field in the cell of about 35 kV/cm and the pulse frequency can reach 10 Hz. We describe the PEF system in some detail and, as a benchmark of its performances, we report preliminary results obtained on Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922) at 109 Cfu/ml concentration suspended in a McIlvaine buffer (pH 7.2).