The interest towards cold pasteurisation of sensitive materials with supercritical carbon dioxide is growing more and more, especially for the applications to food products (Sims, 2001). The aim of this work is to study the inactivation kinetic of microorganisms naturally present in red orange juice freshly squeezed, carried out in an equipment operated semi-continuously. Three operating parameters have been considered: temperature, pressure and treating time. The results obtained confirm that supercritical CO_2 is effective for microbial inactivation even on materials particularly complex as orange juice, characterized by the presence of solid pulp particles in suspension. The temperature plays a fundamental role on the treatment efficiency, the inactivation being significantly enhanced increasing its value. A similar behaviour was observed at different pressures (100-200-300 bar). This new inactivation treatment turned out to be a promising, safe and inexpensive alternative for the microbial pasteurization of products in food industry.
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