SteriBeam has developed a pilot R&D PUV system for reducing bio-burden in powdered and shredded products. Its effectiveness was demonstrated with reducing one to two logs of Salmonella in fine and crude nutrition powders.
The system employs UV flash lamp and a clear quartz processing chamber, both encircled by a reflector. A batch processing was in place by cycling powder samples of 40g through this system x4 times each. No visible damage for powders was observed. Results confirmed that the sterilisation of powders strongly depends on sizes of its granules: one and two logs were reached respectively for fine and crude powders at the same number (16) of identical 80J pulses from a 40cm long flash lamp. Powder grains were respectively about 50µm and 100µm.
The system can be used for developing industrial powder sterilisation processes. SteriBeam is also capable of building full-scale systems of this type.
