'Plasma technology important within agro and food'

Within two years, plasma technology will play an important role within the agro and food sector. So predicts Jeroen Rondeel of Blue Engineering at Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo. Plasma is ideal for disinfection, but also for growth, germination and healing of plants.

Plasma was until recently unpredictable, it did not always give the same reaction. "And if you want to work with plasma, it is important that the effect is always the same. We at Blue Engineering have developed a controller to make plasma stable, which now makes the outcome predictable. Pure physics and control technology," says Jeroen Rondeel.

Plasma is a natural product that is created when you run electricity through gas. This sounds complicated, Jeroen continues, but everyone knows plasma. "Take a fluorescent bar that turns on, this is the plasma phase. And a lightning bolt is also plasma. This natural phenomenon appears to have very useful properties for agro and food: plasma disinfects water in a mild and thorough manner. For example, it kills bacteria and viruses without chemicals. When you treat water with plasma, nitrate is created. This is an important nutrient for plants. So the water becomes a kind of fertilizer, only plasma works a lot better and is environmentally friendly. If you activate water with plasma, after two hours you have pure drinking water again."

Economical
Now that the technology is predictable, Jeroen sees plenty of opportunities for plasma. "We are overburdening our globe now. If we want to live here with 9 billion people in the future, we have to look together for alternatives that do not pollute or deplete the (natural) environment. Plasma offers a solution: it replaces chemistry in agro and food," says Jeroen. "The technology is cheap, all you need is water, air and electricity. We assume that farmers and gardeners will be able to use the plasma technique within now and two years."

Medical residues
But not only agro and food can benefit from the advantages of plasma, according to Jeroen. "Tests show that plasma can also be used for odor reduction in, among other things, pig sties, cleaning equipment, sterilizing burns and breaking down medicine residues in water. We will be working on this in the coming years."

Source: Brightlands