Application of electric field treatment (EFT) for microbial control in water and liquid food

Water disinfection and food pasteurization are critical to reducing waterborne and foodborne diseases, which have been a pressing public health issue globally. Electrified treatment processes are emerging and have become promising alternatives due to the low cost of electricity, independence of chemicals, and low potential to form by-products. Electric field treatment (EFT) is a physical pathogen inactivation approach, which damages cell membrane by irreversible electroporation. EFT has been studied for both water disinfection and food pasteuri-zation. However, no study has systematically connected the two fields with an up-to-date review. In this article, we first provide a comprehensive background of microbial control in water and food, followed by the intro-duction of EFT. Subsequently, we summarize the recent EFT studies for pathogen inactivation from three aspects, the processing parameters, its efficacy against different pathogens, and the impact of liquid properties on the inactivation performance. We also review the development of novel configurations and materials for EFT devices to address the current challenges of EFT. This review introduces EFT from an engineering perspective and may serve as a bridge to connect the field of environmental engineering and food science.

Automated summary

Water disinfection and food pasteurization are crucial for reducing waterborne and foodborne diseases, and electrified treatment processes, such as electric field treatment (EFT), are emerging as promising alternatives due to their cost-effectiveness and low potential for by-products. This article provides a comprehensive review of EFT, including its principles, recent studies on pathogen inactivation, and developments in device configurations and materials. It also serves as a bridge between environmental engineering and food science.