Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) processing, a novel, non-thermal food preservation method, has been shown to inactivate both spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms, while minimizing changes in the physical and organoleptic qualities of the food, such as those observed under conventional thermal processing. An understanding of the inactivation mechanisms and kinetics of microorganisms exposed to lethal or sub-lethal PEF treatments would allow industry and consumers to better understand and evaluate the potential of PEF technology as an alternative or complement to traditional methods of food preservation. This study consisted of three sets of experiments which sought to determine: (i) the electrical conductivity (EC) of various liquid food products (apple, orange and pineapple juices, egg white, whole egg and egg yolk) at different temperatures (5--55°C); (ii) the capacity of PEF (15 kV cm-1, 0°C) to inactivate Escherichia coli O157:H7 in dialyzed liquid egg products; and (iii) the effect of PEF (20 or 30 kV cm-1) in combination with temperature (10--40°C) on the inactivation of E. coli and Salmonella Enteritidis in liquid egg yolk (EY), whole egg (WE), or egg white (EW). The treatment chamber design was based in part on regression equations of EC vs. temperature developed in the first set of experiments. After only 0.1 sec of PEF (15 kV cm-1) treatment, l, 3 and 3.5 log reductions of E. coli were noted in dialyzed egg white, egg yolk and whole egg, respectively. Kinetic models of bacterial inactivation were proposed. A 210 mus exposure to PEF (30 kV cm-1 ) resulted in log reductions of 5.0 and 5.0 in egg yolk, 3.9 and 3.6 in WE and, 2.8 and 3.6 in egg white, for E. coli and S. Enteritidis, respectively. A maximum energy of 914 J was required to inactivate S. Enteritidis in WE. In egg white, cells injured by PEF represented 0.9 and 0.4 log for S. Enteritidis and E. coli, respectively. An exponential decay model and an Arrhenius equation were
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85664 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Amiali, Malek |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Bioresource Engineering.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002268568, proquestno: AAINR21612, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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