Comparative analysis: electropolishing prevents microbial accumulation better than other polishing methods  | Limat | 07.05.09


Corrosion is a substantial threat to "wet" industries which use water in their manufacturing process, and a factor they must consider when assessing the durability of metals which have been exposed to water or chemicals during their polishing.
Corrosion and various biological infections have a particularly costly affect on stainless steel surfaces, which are common in most factories.

Various methods of metal surfaces' polishing have been developed to address this problem, among them electrochemical polishing, also known as electropolishing.
Electropolishing was developed primarily to meet the demands and requirement of "wet" industries, such as the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry and any other industry that must be ware of microbial accrual.

A recent comparative analysis examined metals polished using eight different techniques, in order to compare post-process bacterial accumulation. Each polished surface was subjected to rigorous microscopic testing in order to determine the various methods' efficiency.

During the test, the surfaces were subjected to the same conditions which would occur following the poultry rinsing, so to allow from biofilm and bacterial growth across the surfaces' entirety.

Researchers monitored the kinetics of bacterial growth over the surfaces using a spectrophotometer, and used electron microscopy to scan the first bacterial biofilms created.
The tests found great differences in microbial accrual on each of the surfaces. The surface which underwent electrochemical metal polishing – electropolishing – proved significantly more resistant to bacterial accumulation compared to other metal polishing methods.

The electropolished metal also proved to have higher resistance to corrosion and bacterial accumulation – before and after it was exposed to corrosion-conducive conditions, compared to no less then seven other methods tested.   

The results of the analysis were published by Transactions of the ASABE, an international journal published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.