A reactor engineering approach was used to mathematically describe microbial inactivation during continuous UV-C light processing of liquid foods. The method was followed to analyze the survival curves of Lactobacillus rhamnosus inoculated into sucrose model solutions prepared at different concentrations (8, 10 and 12 g sucrose per 100 g of solution) and pH values (pH 3, 4.5 and 6), and further processed at two different residence times (4.85 and 29.9 min). The inactivation process was considered as an irreversible elemental reaction of unknown order occurring in a continuous stirred tank reactor. The proposed model was expressed in terms of the logarithmic reduction in microbial population and its straight-line form allowed the easy estimation of the inactivation rate constant and reaction order. Results indicated that inactivation of L. rhamnosus followed a variable order kinetic, moving from a first-order rate during unsteady-state operation to a near zero-order inactivation when steady-state operation was reached. Steady-state was reached faster (0.48 ± 0.11 min⁻¹ vs. 0.37 ± 0.7 min⁻¹, p < 0.05) and with a higher steady-state log reduction (5.9 ± 0.2 vs. 5.4 ± 0.6 log CFU/mL, p < 0.05) in experiments conducted with the lowest residence time, UV-C dose and power density (4.85 min, 12.8 J/cm² and 6.6 J/cm³).

反应器工程方法用于数学描述液体食品连续 UV-C 光加工过程中的微生物灭活。用该方法分析了鼠李糖乳杆菌的存活曲线接种到以不同浓度（8、10 和 12 g 蔗糖/100 g 溶液）和 pH 值（pH 3、4.5 和 6）制备的蔗糖模型溶液中，并在两个不同的停留时间（4.85 和 29.9 分钟）下进一步处理。失活过程被认为是在连续搅拌釜反应器中发生的未知顺序的不可逆元素反应。所提出的模型以微生物种群的对数减少表示，其直线形式允许轻松估计灭活速率常数和反应顺序。结果表明鼠李糖乳杆菌的灭活遵循可变阶动力学，从非稳态运行期间的一级速率变为达到稳态运行时接近零级的失活。更快地达到稳态（0.48 ± 0.11 min ^-1与 0.37 ± 0.7 min ^-1，p  < 0.05），并且稳态对数减少更高（5.9 ± 0.2 与 5.4 ± 0.6 log CFU/mL，p  < 0.05) 在以最低停留时间、UV-C 剂量和功率密度（4.85 分钟、12.8 J/cm ²和 6.6 J/cm ³）进行的实验中。