Assessment of Bacterial Sterilization Efficiency Using a Custom-Designed Cold Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet System

The present research work, an optimized sterilization method has been introduced using atmospheric pressure cold plasma. A developed pin-to-pin atmospheric pressure setup of cold yield plasma, the working operational parameters of the designed setup are equal to (11kV, 50µA, 17kΩ, 10L/min and 0.3mm, 11mm) for the electrode potential, the plasma current, ballast resistance and airflow rate, the electrode pins diameter and spacing respectively. The disinfection process was subjected on flat glasses substrates contaminated with several bacteria types including, Proteus, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Staphylococcus aureus. The study demonstrates the dependent of the bacterial sterilization on the exposure time. The rates of exposure time of the contaminated slides were chosen in a relatively short time period equals 5, 10, 15 and 25 min the process was repeated statistically to confirm the effects. Sterilization efficiency was measured by counting the remaining colonies after treatment and standardizing against a 0.5 McFarland reference. The results expose that; all the bacteria type is eliminated at different exposure time. Since the E. coli bacteria elimination time is 10min, the S. aureus bacteria removal attended at 25min. this study shows that the cold plasma with suitable setup design and operational parameters can implemented for successful sterilization method as this type of sanitization has several practical advantages.