Physiological Aspects of Pressure Decontamination in Building Inactivation Models

摘要

Predictive models describing growth or inactivation of microbial cells are mostly purely descriptive and mechanistic elements are hardly included. In most cases these so called 'black box' models are used in food processing. However, it should be borne in mind that even in descriptive models, knowledge of the physiology of the microorganism(s) to be eliminated is also necessary to ensure fail-safe predictions. In this overview various aspects related to microbiologically safe pressure processing will be addressed: Preparation of the inoculum, environment during pressure treatment, recovery conditions, effect of compression and decompression and model selection. Preparation of the inoculum seems one of the most important elements. Sufficient circumstantial evidence has been collected that compression and decompression has no effect other than the result of the integrated time-temperature-pressure history. Consequently, kinetic models describing inactivation of micro-organisms can be used in dynamic situations such as generation of adiabatic heat and heat dissipation and coming up times of pressure.