Effect of non-condensable gas on heat conduction in steam sterilization process

Non-condensable gas has an adverse effect on heat conduction in pressure steam sterilization. An experiment was carefully designed to study the effect, and a semi-empirical formulation is obtained to predict the maximal temperature difference between outside and inside of a package. This paper gives a systematical insight into the non-condensable gas effect, and there is a threshold of the non-condensable gas concentration, beyond which the thermal sterilization becomes invalid for complete killing microorganisms.