In the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, chemical, and food industries high-pressure homogenization is used for the preparation or stabilization of emulsions and suspensions, or for creating physical changes, such as viscosity changes, in products. Another well-known application is cell disruption of yeasts or bacteria in order to release intracellular products such as recombinant proteins. The development over the last few years of homogenizing equipment that operates at increasingly higher pressures has also stimulated research into the possible application of high-pressure homogenization as a unit process for microbial load reduction of liquid products. Several studies have indicated that gram-negative bacteria are more sensitive to high-pressure homogenization than gram-positive bacteria supporting the widely held belief that high-pressure homogenization kills vegetative bacteria mainly through mechanical disruption. However, controversy exists in the literature regarding the exact cause(s) of cell disruption by high-pressure homogenization. The causes that have been proposed include spatial pressure and velocity gradients, turbulence, cavitation, impact with solid surfaces, and extensional stress. The purpose of this review is to give an overview of the existing literature about microbial inactivation by high-pressure homogenization. Particular attention will be devoted to the different proposed microbial inactivation mechanisms. Further, the different parameters that influence the microbial inactivation by high-pressure homogenization will be scrutinized.

中文翻译：

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高压均质化是一种非热灭活微生物的技术。

在制药，化妆品，化学和食品工业中，高压均质用于制备或稳定乳液和悬浮液，或在产品中产生物理变化，例如粘度变化。另一个众所周知的应用是破坏酵母或细菌的细胞，以释放细胞内产物，例如重组蛋白。近几年来，在越来越高的压力下运行的均质设备的发展，也刺激了人们对高压均质作为降低液体产品微生物负荷的单元工艺的可能应用的研究。数项研究表明，革兰氏阴性细菌比革兰氏阳性细菌对高压均质化更为敏感，这支持了广泛认为的观点，即高压均质化主要通过机械破坏杀死植物性细菌。然而，关于高压均质引起细胞破坏的确切原因，文献中存在争议。提出的原因包括空间压力和速度梯度，湍流，空化，对固体表面的影响以及拉伸应力。这篇综述的目的是概述有关高压均质微生物灭活的现有文献。将特别注意不同的微生物灭活机制。进一步，