Decontamination of Bacteria by Gas-Liquid Gliding Arc Discharge: Application to

This paper investigated the bacterial inactivation/sterilization effects of a gas-liquid gliding arc discharge reactor, which created plasma at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature. Bacteria Escherichia coli were subjected to plasma treatment and the survivability was examined. With the bacteria suspension circulated at defined flow rate, the E. coli cells were almost killed in <;3 min. The inactivation efficiency with circulation was much higher than that with no circulation, and it could even reach a reduction of 7 logarithm units in the number of viable bacteria within 30 s after 1-min treatment. Flow rates of the suspension caused slightly impact on the bacteria inactivation to a certain extent. Observations of scanning electron microscopy images helped to draw a conclusion that gas-liquid gliding arc discharge plasma acts under various mechanisms driven essentially by oxidation and electric effect. The results demonstrate that gas-liquid gliding arc discharge allows a rapid and complete inactivation of E. coli bacteria in the water, which shows the great industrial interest of gliding arc discharge technique for decontamination.