Effect of the Atmospheric Pressure Cold Plasma Treatment on Tempranillo Red Wine Quality in Batch and Flow Systems

• Main Authors: Elisa Sainz-García, Isabel López-Alfaro, Rodolfo Múgica-Vidal, Rosa López, Rocío Escribano-Viana, Javier Portu, Fernando Alba-Elías, Lucía González-Arenzana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-08-01
• Series: Beverages
• Subjects: atmospheric pressure cold plasma; continuous flow; batch; Argon; red wine; color
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5710/5/3/50

The demand for chemical-free beverages is posing a challenge to the wine industry to provide safe and healthy products with low concentrations of chemical preservatives. The development of new technologies, such as Atmospheric Pressure Cold Plasma (APCP), offers the wine industry the opportunity to contribute to this continuous improvement. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effect of Argon APCP treatment, applied in both batch and flow systems, on Tempranillo red wine quality. Batch treatments of 100 mL were applied with two powers (60 and 90 W) at four periods (1, 3, 5, and 10 min). For flowing devices, 750 mL of wine with a flow of 1.2 and 2.4 L/min were treated at 60 and 90 W for 25 min and was sampled every 5 min. Treatments in batch resulted in wines with greater color intensity, lower tonality, and higher content in total phenolic compounds and anthocyanins, so that they were favorable for wine quality. Among the batch treatments, the one with the lowest power was the most favorable. Flow continuous treatments, despite being more appropriate to implement in wineries, neither led to significant improvements in the chromatic and phenolic wine properties nor caused wine spoilage.