Bacteria Super-Repellent and Water-efficient, Self-Cleaning Surfaces for Vegetable Washing, Grading, and Packing Machinery and Equipment

The long-term objective of this project is to advance the current state-of-art microbiological safety of machinery and equipment used for washing, sorting, and processing of vegetables through a novel, smart sanitary design. Another critical goal is to improve the interfacial characteristics of the machine and equipment surfaces to enable their easier washing, cleaning, and sanitization which will contribute to the global initiative on the reduction of water usage. The final objective of the project is to increase stakeholder awareness about this new technology. As part of these long-term goals, the project is organized into three research objectives and two outreach objectives:Research Objective 1: Develop novel, reapplicable spraying- and dipping-based formulations that are optimized for effectively and robustly inhibiting bacterial adhesion on selected polymer- and metal-based components and parts of washing, sorting, and processing equipment and machinery.Research Objective 2: Establish scalable processes that can be used for the permanent, durable/robust modification of metal and polymer machinery/equipment components and parts related to automated vegetable handling operations.Research Objective 3: Optimize the coating nanotexture and composition to significantly reduce water usage in cleaning and sanitization of machine and equipment surfaces utilized in packing, sorting, and processing facilities via nanotechnology-based smart design.Outreach Objective 1: Disseminate information on the key features and potential benefits of the developed technologies to stakeholders in various modalities with a specific goal of maximizing the widespread utilization and adaptation of such technologies by vegetable industry through extensive outreach efforts.Outreach Objective 2: Prepare detailed, easy-to-follow printed and video instructions and interactive multimedia demonstrations explaining how vegetable growers/processors/sellers can modify their existing equipment and machine surfaces to incorporate these with functions of bacterial repellency and self-cleaning using spraying and dipping.