Press release
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november 30, 2016 - European Space Agency
Cold plasma freshens up French fries
Bad smells from deep-fat frying in restaurants and take-away food venues could soon be eradicated thanks to experiments funded by ESA on the International Space Station.
Cooking food such as French fries in hot fat or oil releases malodorous molecules that are extremely hard to remove or disperse. These odours are typically destroyed in bulky and expensive commercial cooker hoods by chemicals that create ozone as a byproduct – which must be removed because of health concerns.
Instead, a German manufacturer of deep-fat fryers, Blümchen, is taking a different approach, based on plasma experiments that have been running on the Space Station since 2001.
Plasma is usually a hot, electrically charged gas but it is possible to create ‘cold plasmas’ at room temperature. Cold plasma has proved to be an extremely effective bactericidal agent and can also tackle fungi, viruses and spores. It is safe to touch, which makes it attractive for many applications.
Methods for generating cold plasmas were developed at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, where the notion of using electrons to create the plasma for removing odours was patented.
Funded by ESA and in collaboration with the Russian space agency, scientists led by Professor Gregor Morfill were responsible for the first experiment on the Station. His team took advantage of weightlessness in orbit to study complex plasmas, which provided the impetus to develop the cold plasma technology.
The most recent fourth version of this experiment is still working on the Station, making the plasma study experiment the longest-running in space.
A grant from ESA has helped to transform the knowledge into practical applications on Earth. Since 2013 Prof. Morfill has been CEO of the Terraplasma company, which has already applied the cold plasma to medical and hygiene problems, and to water treatment.
To remove odours, Terraplasma’s new system generates the plasma by sparking a glowing electrical discharge in the air between a short rod electrode sitting in the middle of a cylindrical electrode. The discharge is initially a narrow line about 1 mm thick somewhere between the electrodes, but when it is made to move rapidly by a magnetic field it spreads out to produce a plasma disc. The foul air is then passed through this disc for cleaning.
More information on the press release
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