Introduction to Electrolyzed Water
The first discovery and development of EW can be tracked to more than a century ago (6). In the 1950s, EW was applied in general agriculture. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the use of EW was proposed in drinking water disinfection and wastewater treatments. Next, during the 1980s, EW was commercially introduced in the food industry in Japan as sanitation water, stored in an automatic dispenser, for use in food processing in the soda industry. Since then, EW has attracted the attention of many researchers and numerous studies have reported the effectiveness of different types of EW as disinfectants in the food industry (7). At the beginning of this century, EW was officially approved by regulatory authorities in Japan and the U.S. for use as a sanitizer in the food industry (3). Official criteria have been published describing the applications of EW in Japan, the US, the EU, and China in many fields (6).
EW has been extensively used in the food industry and the agriculture and food science and technology literature contain many relevant studies (2, 17). generation device and verifying its FAC and acidity (pH) as indictors of disinfectant potency/efficacy. The results presented here may open the door to more applications and further studies on this potent, safe, and on-site-producible solution as an alternative.