Study of bactericidal effects of corona discharge at atmospheric pressure on various bacteria

Summary form only given. Conventional methods of decontamination or sterilization are based on using the chemical agents or heat, which may be unapplicable for heat-labile materials, foods etc. It seems possible, that the conventional methods may be appropriately replaced by the nondestructive non-thermal plasma. We studied bactericidal effects of non-thermal plasma generated by the corona discharge in several experiments. Simple apparatus for generating the corona discharge at atmospheric pressure was built. Using this apparatus, we examined the corona discharge bactericidal effects on various gram-negative and gram-positive non-sporulating bacteria. The results showed, that the corona discharge at atmospheric pressure lowers the number of surviving bacteria up to their total elimination in 5-15 minutes. This makes it possible to use this method as an alternative method of decontamination