Atmospheric-pressure gas plasma for decontamination of food products

A resistive barrier discharge (RBD) prototype was set-up in order to decontaminate the table eggs surface from Salmonella Enteritidis. The discharge was generated between three couples of parallel plate reactors made of brass and glass was used as high resistive material to prevent arcs. The eggs were treated in the discharge afterglow where the gas temperature was close to room temperature, minimizing thus the risk of thermal alterations of the samples. A 19 V supply input voltage was used for the egg treatment and the measured voltage at the electrodes was about 15 kV. With atmospheric air non-equilibrium discharges, N2 peak spectra were dominant and the presence of OH and NO radicals was also detected. The examined prototype proved to have a good decontamination power towards Salmonella Enteritidis deliberately inoculated onto the surface of eggshells giving cell load reductions ranging between 1 and 5 log10 CFU/eggshell in relation to the time of treatment.