Decontamination of sugar syrup by pulsed light

The pulsed light produced by xenon flash lamps was applied to 65 to 67 °Brix sugar syrups artificially contaminated with suspensions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and with spores of Bacillus subtilis, Geobacillus stearothermophilus, Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris, and Aspergillus niger. The emitted pulsed light contained 18.5 % UV radiation. At least 3-log reductions of S. cerevisiae, B. subtilis, G. stearothermophilus, and A. acidoterrestris suspended in 3-mm-deep volumes of sugar syrup were obtained with a fluence of the incident pulsed light equal to or less than 1.8 J/cm(2), and the same results were obtained for B. subtilis and A. acidoterrestris suspended in 10-mm-deep volumes of sugar syrup. A. niger spores would require a more intense treatment; for instance, the maximal log reduction was close to 1 with a fluence of the incident pulsed light of 1.2 J/cm(2). A flowthrough reactor with a flow rate of 320 ml/min and a flow gap of 2.15 mm was designed for pulsed light treatment of sugar syrup. Using this device, a 3-log reduction of A. acidoterrestris spores was obtained with 3 to 4 pulses of incident pulsed light at 0.91 J/cm(2) per sugar syrup volume.