Specific Absorption Rate of Microwaves for Bacteria - Can it be measured? (Dec/30/2010 )

Good Morning all,

I am trying to be sneaky and set an exam question concerning microwave sterilization of food carried pathogenic bacteria, namely E.coli, Salmonella poona and Staph aureus.
I have hunted online to find figures for the Specific Absorption Rate(SAR)of Microwave Irradation for the bacteria in question and am hard pushed to find:
(1) Any figures relating to the levels of watts per kilogram for the bacteria in question.Since bacteria are not at this scale
and
(2) Any way of measuring the levels of the SAR at such a small level? I know there are probes etc available but they wouldn't be viable at microscopic levels.

I do have a back up question (concerning The Use of Microwaves in Indutry and their application to the economy of a country) but I thought I would include this one just to be a little bit nasty this term!!

Any help would be appreciated.

Andy

You'll need to look up some specialised litature like: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/1996/00000059/00000010/art00005 or http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-64402006000300004 or http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/58/3/920 or http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJP-4C769KF-2S&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F1991&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1594149298&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=42626d55a27b2c9b2875e2d523d14d1c&searchtype=a

You could look for a good book on disinfections methods, they sometimes spend some pages on using microwaves

But you should be able to look those things up yourself?

pito on Sun Jan 2 18:39:23 2011 said:

Pito many thanks for your help.
I have actually read the papers you provided the links to in the course of my studies and post graduation research, they are informative and as background reading they are invaluable. However the question of SAR is one which I have founnd very little on and as such I hoped that colleagues on here who are more Biophsics based may have had some input and since academia is hectic at the moment (marking, writing lectures etc), I think i will just use the question that I had as back up.

Cheers for your help.

Andy

frasier on Wed Jan 5 12:01:02 2011 said:

you do ask a very specific question. And not many people are working in that field.

The only thing I could say is that you need to look up a company that does use microwave sterilisation... But I cant think of any at the moment.
Anyway, good luck with it.
It is a very interesting topic.

Have a look at here, here, and here, and at references therein.

Any help?