Can bacteria be killed by using mechanic pressure? Does this mechanic pressure have to be extreme - e.g. hydraulic press kind of extreme? :dubious:
Don’t know the answer…but it reminds me of the old Peanuts comic strip where Lucy is killing germs by stomping on them. No germ (she says) has ever built up a resistance to being stepped on.
I’m sure there is some pressure level that would physically crush bacteria, but it would have to be very high. The easier (and more common) way is to put the bacteria under extreme pressure, generated by a hydraulic press or gas, then release the pressure quickly. The bacteria explode at the transition point. The technique is called either French press (hydraulic press system) or nitrogen cavitation.
I think an important question would be how large bacteria are compared to the roughness of the crushing surfaces. Wouldn’t take much space for bacteria to slide sideways and escape death by crushing.
Here’s a wiki link on Pascalization Pascalization - Wikipedia that looks to be an answer. 50,000 psi, ouch.
Sneaky little buggers, these germs. :mad:
There’s two different kinds of pressure we’re talking about. One is solid crushing force, the other is gas pressure.
For solid crushing force, I think bacteria aren’t particularly resistant to being smooshed between two flat surfaces, but as naita says, ‘flat’ on the scale of bacteria is not very common. I bet if you pushed two ordinary metal plates together with your hands, you’d kill whatever bacteria happened to be at the peaks of the tiny-to-microscopic rough spots where the plates met, but the vast majority of bacteria on the plates would be in lower spots and be unaffected.
To kill bacteria with air (or other gas) pressure alone, I’m not surprised you need very high pressures: bacteria are mostly water, and water doesn’t deform much under gas pressure.