The kinetics of inactivation of spheroidal microbial cells by pulsed electric fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates how pulsed electric fields inactivate spheroidal microbial cells, revealing that non-exponential inactivation kinetics are linked to cell orientation disorder and that electric field strength influences inactivation efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical model connecting cell orientation disorder to inactivation kinetics and explores how electric field strength affects microbial inactivation.

Findings

Non-exponential kinetics relate to cell orientation disorder.

Disordered suspensions show pronounced deviations from exponential inactivation.

Increased electric field strength enhances inactivation efficiency in partially oriented suspensions.

Abstract

The nature of non-exponential kinetics in microbial cells inactivation by pulsed electric fields (PEF) is discussed. It was demonstrated that possible mechanism of non-exponential kinetics can be related to orientational disorder in suspension of microbial cells of anisotropic form. A numerical studies of spheroidal cell suspensions was carried out. The most pronounced deviations from the exponential kinetics were observed for disordered suspensions of prolate spheroids at small electric field strength $E$ or at large aspect ratio $a$. For partially oriented suspensions, efficiency of inactivation enhances with increasing of order parameter and field strength. A possibility of the PEF-induced orientational ordering in microbial suspensions is discussed.