I clearly remember my high school science teacher running across the room with a pressure cooker in hand making a beeline to the sink. After some sizzling when cold water hits its hot surface, my teacher finally opened it. What were we up to? Making agar plates of course!
Years later, research published in PLoS One puts the pressure cooker to a test: can these tools be used for sterilization when a steam autoclave is not available?
Note: As an Amazon Associate I may earn commissions from qualifying purchases from links in this post (affiliate disclosure).
Steam heating to 121°C at 15 PSI for ~20 minutes per liter of liquid is standard practice to consider something sterile. Lower temperatures (115°C) may be adequate at a longer sterilization time.
However, autoclaves can be prohibitively expensive for many facilities and schools. They also have a large physical footprint and are difficult for field researchers to sterilize equipment as needed.
Enter, the pressure cooker. These researchers tested four different 8-quart electric pressure cookers (GoWISE, CORSORI, Gormia, and Instant Pot) for their utility as lab sterilization tools.
They first tested whether or not the pressure cookers could sterilize 1.5 L of nutrient broth or agar medium. For all pressure cookers, 15 minutes of sterilization time was enough to sterilize the medium. But growth medium freshly prepared is homogenous and unlikely to contain a lot of microbes.
Thus, the researchers turned to soil mixture containing small particles and many more microbes than media would. They resuspended 20 g of soil per liter of water and tested sterilization times. Unlike the nutrient agar, the soil water mixture took 45 minutes to completely sterilize.
For dry items, such as a spatula or scissors, the researchers dunked them into soil water and then placed them into the pressure cooker for different sterilization times. Afterwards, they submerged them into liquid medium for a week to see if things grew. What they found was that sterilization times differ for different instruments. Spatulas and probes were sterilized after 15 minutes but the scissors required 30 minutes.
While these tests seem to indicate that the pressure cooker may be up for the task at hand, they were still all done with samples with low bacterial densities (103 – 104 CFU/mL in soil water) when compared to densities seen in laboratory grown bacteria (>107 CFU/mL in laboratory cultures or disease samples). They tested a diverse set of microbes at these densities and found that 15 minutes was required to inhibit growth of bacterial strains but one hour was needed to inhibit fungal growth. The pressure cookers used can inactivate up to 1010 CFU/mL bacteria and 107 CFU/mL fungi.
The ultimate test for a sterilization device uses the most heat-resistant organisms, commonly Geobacillus stearothermophilus endospores. If the hardiest of microorganisms is killed, than all other microbes should die as well. An ampoule containing 106 G. stearothermophilus endospores is autoclaved and then the spores are plated on growth media. Failure to grow means the autoclave is working properly. As for the pressure cookers in this study, only the Instant Pot was able to inactivate the endospores (but required 150 minutes), making it the best choice for a laboratory pressure cooker.
Which model of Instant Pot was used?
This article us useless and so is the study if the pressure is not quoted. The pressure cooker needs to generate 15 lbs to reach the required temperature. So if the pressure cooker or pressure caner has the option for 15lbs of pressure then it will achieve the required temperature same as the autoclave.
The original research article definitely lists the working pressure (PlosOne is a free open source journal, you just need to click the link in the first paragraph to read the journal article). While 15 PSI is the standard for autoclaves, none of these pressure cookers can reach that. That does not make it useless though, you just have to increase the time needed in the pressure cooker. That was the whole point of this article, and the original research.
The Instant Pot’s high pressure setting is 15.21PSI which is sufficient. I think 15psi is a default for most pressure canners.
Instapots only go to 12 PSI. They have a very new model out now, Instapot Max that goes to 15 PSI. Obviously, this was done with the 12 PSI model.
I’ve seen claims that the newer Instant Pot Max will reach temps of between 140° & 150° at 15 PSI. No one has approved it for canning low acid foods because it may not maintain (turns on & off to maintain heat) high enough temps over the full canning cycle. It has a temp readout, but no one should trust it until certified. Testing is being done in the US & Canada, no results yet apparently.
I didn’t see any mention to the altitude of the place where the research was done…
So unless the sterilisation will be done at sea level this research is useless since the reached temperature is dropping as the altitude go up (ex. At 900 meters and 15 psi water will boil at about 3 celsius degrees less)
Hello! You can find author location information in the referenced paper. The corresponding author and first author are at Dakota State University and I’d suggest reaching out to them for more information https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0208769
All you have to do is compare the temperature and pressure of an autoclave vs. a pressure cooker. Not all pressure cookers are the same, a table of various pressure cookers and insta pots would be helpful. I use an all American and yes its equivalent.