Conventional water disinfection with chemicals is limited by the inconvenience of their transportation, storage, and the production of carcinogenic disinfection by-products (DBPs). Electrified treatment processes are emerging and become promising alternatives due to the low cost of electricity, independence of chemicals, and low potential to form DBPs. Pulsed electric field treatment (PEFT) is a physical pathogen inactivate approach, which damages cell membrane by irreversible electroporation. PEFT has been intensively studied for food processing, and shown high-efficiency and broad inactivation of various pathogens. However, few studies have been conducted with PEFT for water disinfection, because of the relatively high energy consumption, unfavorable side reactions, and lack of practical experience. In this review, we first compare the pathogen inactivation between liquid food and water with the focus on the pathogen impact and species, inactivation objectives, and the conventional technologies. Subsequently, we summarize the recent PEFT studies for pathogen inactivation from three aspects, the processing parameters, its efficacy against different pathogens, and the impact of liquid properties on the inactivation performance. We also review the novel configurations and materials for PEFT devices from an engineering perspective. Lastly, we discuss the potential and challenges of PEFT to be adopted for water disinfection.

Pathogen inactivation by pulsed electric field treatment: From liquid food to drinking water

ACS Fall 2021

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