The authors conclude that ozonation is an effective sanitisation method that may have potential use
in the dairy industry and that its advantages include an absence of undesirable by-products such as
the trihalomethanes formed by chlorine-based products. They also note that ozone treatment can
bring cost-savings as maintenance costs are low.
In another laboratory-scale model, Takahashi et al., [23], compared the efficacies of gaseous ozone
and sodium hypochlorite as oxidants in cleaning stainless steel particles impregnated with different
proteins. Exposure of the particles to 0.5% (v/v) ozone gas for 30 min improved the removal of
proteins during subsequent cleaning with a NaOH solution to a degree equivalent to that achieved
by a sodium solution containing 0.2 to 0.4 g/l sodium hypochlorite. Moreover, they observed that the
effect of the ozone pre-treatment on protein removal depended on the ozone concentration. When
pre-treatment was carried out with a high ozone concentration (20%) for 30 min, the proteins were
almost completely eliminated from the stainless steel particles. These results show that the