creator Bridges, Jack E. An energy-efficient method for killing noxious biological organisms (bacteria, insects, etc.) in contaminated materials ranging from liquid, semi-liquid, and solid foods pharmaceuticals and hospital wastes comprises passing the contaminated material through an exposure chamber; screening, comminution, addition of fluid or foam, limited heating, or other pretreatment steps may be required. As it flows through the exposure chamber the contaminated material is subjected to a nonuniform, high-intensity electric field; in that chamber, excessive current flows, including arcing and current "streamers", are suppressed by limiting the current density. The amplitude of the applied current density and the electric field in the exposure chamber are controlled, in accordance with the conductivity and/or dielectric constant of the contaminated material, so that the electric field intensity is of the order of 3,000 volts/centimeter or more. Submitted by Aric Ahrens (ahrens@iit.edu) on 2011-12-07T17:56:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 5326530.pdf: 568314 bytes, checksum: b0ed0fb61a0ff71b4a6ba2ae87cede11 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2011-12-07T17:56:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5326530.pdf: 568314 bytes, checksum: b0ed0fb61a0ff71b4a6ba2ae87cede11 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1994-07-05 IIT Research Institute 2009-05-08 1994-07-05 5,326,530 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/2384 en United States Patent Patent reformatted digital application/pdf No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/ Open Access