Pulsed electric field assisted treatment of microorganisms for lysis

Pulsed electric field (PEF) treatment can be used to facilitate microbial cell lysis. The present work is to investigate the effect of PEF treatment on micro-algae. One traditional PEF test cell with parallel-plane metallic electrodes and one conceptual test cell with parallel-plane dielectric electrodes are designed and built. Both test cells and the PEF system are modeled using a lump element circuit approach and the results of simulations performed using PSpice software are presented. PEF treatment of microalgae is conducted using both test cells. The efficiency of the PEF treatment is assessed by measurement of optical transmission of microalgae in growth media at different time intervals (growth curve). Also, microalgae were visual inspected using optical microscope before and after PEF treatment. It was shown that smaller number of high voltage impulses is required to achieve efficient inactivation of microalgae in the test cell with metallic electrodes as compared with the conceptual test cell with the ceramic dielectric barriers.