• Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Is there an Ultrasonic sterilization technique ? I mean, I thought that even UV weren’t considered as a sterilization technique for being notoriously inefficient.

    • WeeSheep@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I don’t think ultrasonic cleaning is sanitizing. It essentially shakes the thing so that dust and dirt falls off, at least for solid things. It can break up cells (living or otherwise) by shaking them aggressively and breaking them apart; I believe there is an ultrasonic fat reduction technique that utilizes this, where the subdermal fat breaks down and the components and broken cells can be reabsorbed.

      Ultrasonic cleaning devices usually use water as a medium to transfer the vibration to whatever it is you are trying to clean. If you, for example, put a pot roast with all the juices in an ultrasonic cleaner, it would probably break down and eventually turn to mush, from the outside in, likely breaking down softer material first such as any vegetables it was cooked with.

      UV light would not have effect on the physical form, and would likely not have any effect on a cooked/already sanitized item, at least not for the shorter periods of time we use for sanitizing. UV is usually only surface deep though. If you were to n use it on yogurt, the bacteria exposed would die and the coagulated proteins may start to break down. If you were to expose something to UV for a long time, such as fruit or vegetables over a month at room temperature, they wouldn’t have the opportunity to mold or be broken down in the same way. I expect they would either colonize something more capable of living in the UV exposure which would aid their break down, or they would just dehydrated into a rock.