Source: NCSU COLLEGE OF AG & L IFE SCIENCES, 3/28/22

Imagine never having to worry about washing your produce before you eat it. Both the package and the produce would already be sanitized, and you could feel confident it’s safe and clean to consume.

That’s the goal of assistant professor Deepti Salvi within NC State’s Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences. As a food engineer interested in food processing techniques, Salvi is researching methods that do not involve heat, including plasma. Plasma is the fourth state of matter, and it’s created by applying energy to gas. It’s also found commonly in nature, including in lightning and the northern lights.

“Most of our universe is made up of plasma, but these are hot plasmas,” says Salvi. “We are talking about cold plasmas, which are at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. You generate it by passing electricity through a gas.”

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