Harvard University’s Engineered Water Nanostructures (EWNS)

I last wrote about this research in a March 19, 2015 posting, which focused on work proving that a water-engineered nanostructure platform had microbial properties useful for decontaminating food and allowing manufacturers to avoid using chemicals for the task. This latest research focuses on finetuning the platform’s ability. Here’s more from the latest research paper’s abstract,

A chemical free, nanotechnology-based, antimicrobial platform using Engineered Water Nanostructures (EWNS) was recently developed. EWNS have high surface charge, are loaded with reactive oxygen species (ROS), and can interact-with, and inactivate an array of microorganisms, including foodborne pathogens. Here, it was demonstrated that their properties during synthesis can be fine tuned and optimized to further enhance their antimicrobial potential. A lab based EWNS platform was developed to enable fine-tuning of EWNS properties by modifying synthesis parameters. Characterization of EWNS properties (charge, size and ROS content) was performed using state-of-the art analytical methods. Further their microbial inactivation potential was evaluated with food related microorganisms such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, Listeria innocua, Mycobacterium parafortuitum, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae inoculated onto the surface of organic grape tomatoes. The results presented here indicate that EWNS properties can be fine-tuned during synthesis resulting in a multifold increase of the inactivation efficacy. More specifically, the surface charge quadrupled and the ROS content increased. Microbial removal rates were microorganism dependent and ranged between 1.0 to 3.8 logs after 45 mins of exposure to an EWNS aerosol dose of 40,000 #/cm3.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Optimization of a nanotechnology based antimicrobial platform for food safety applications using Engineered Water Nanostructures (EWNS) by Georgios Pyrgiotakis, Pallavi Vedantam, Caroline Cirenza, James McDevitt, Mary Eleftheriadou, Stephen S. Leonard, & Philip Demokritou. Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 21073 (2016) doi:10.1038/srep21073 Published online: 15 February 2016

This is an open access paper.

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