11234 Conventional Application of Biocides May Lead to Bacterial Cell Injury Rather than Bacterial Kill within a Biofilm

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Product Number: 51300-11234-SG

Author: Scott Campbell, Andrew Duggleby, and Angela Johnson

Publication Date: 2011

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Mitigation of microbiological related problems, specifically, microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) is often mitigated utilizing biocides or biostatic chemicals. The use of the chemicals is often employed to control viable bacterial numbers, which would ultimately mitigate microbiological activity. However, after applying biocides for over 50 years within the petroleum industry, MIC is present and has been implicated in several critical failures. Although these failures still occur, no work has been done to establish and understand if current treatment regimes are ultimately mitigating MIC by controlling bacteria populations, specifically SRB’s within a biofilm. This paper reports the efficacy of biocides applied in a dynamic flow cell system evaluating current conventional treatment regimes decreasing viable bacterial numbers within a biofilm, and thus decreasing SRB activity. The data suggests that biocides may not be killing bacteria within a biofilm, and after further review of doubling times of SRB’s within the bacterial biofilm, suggests that bacterial cell injury may be a possible explanation rather than bacterial cell kill. Therefore, controlling MIC by applying biocides to simply kill bacteria may not be effective.

Keywords: microbially influenced corrosion, MIC, Biocide Efficacy, Bacterial Cell Injury,