Abstract
Bacteria that cause serious food poisoning are known to sporulate under conditions of nutrient and water shortage. The resulting spores have much greater resistance to common sterilization methods, such as heating at 100 °C and exposure to various chemical agents. Because such bacteria cannot be inactivated with typical alcohol disinfectants, peroxyacetic acid (PAA) often is used, but PAA is a harmful agent that can seriously damage human health. Furthermore, concentrated hydrogen peroxide, which is also dangerous, must be used to prepare PAA. Thus, the development of a facile and safe sporicidal disinfectant is strongly required. In this study, we have developed an innovative sporicidal disinfection method that employs the combination of an aqueous ethanol solution, visible light irradiation, and a photocatalyst. We successfully produced a sporicidal disinfectant one hundred times as effective as commercially available PAA, while also resolving the hazards and odor problems associated with PAA. The method presented here can potentially be used as a replacement for the general disinfectants employed in the food and health industries.
Highlights
Peroxyacetic acid (PAA) has been adopted, but concentrated peroxyacetic acid (PAA) is a harmful agent that can seriously damage human skin and respiratory systems, and this agent has a very strong odor[25,26]
To resolve the problems described above, we developed a sporicidal disinfectant that uses a combination of an aqueous ethanol solution, visible light irradiation, and a photocatalyst
We examined the survival rate of B. subtilis spores in the presence of WO3 suspended in aqueous ethanol disinfectant and irradiated with visible light
Summary
Peroxyacetic acid (PAA) has been adopted, but concentrated PAA is a harmful agent that can seriously damage human skin and respiratory systems, and this agent has a very strong odor[25,26]. We expected that photocatalytic oxidative decomposition of ethanol would produce organic acids such as acetic acid and formic acid (known food components that are generally regarded as safe) along with hydrogen peroxide from the multi-electron reduction of atmospheric oxygen, such that the organic peroxide would endow the mixture with sporicidal activity.
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