| AVS 59th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Biofilms and Biofouling: Marine Medical Energy Focus Topic | Thursday Sessions |
| Session MB+BI-ThA |
| Session: | Marine Biofouling |
| Presenter: | S.A. Wade, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia |
| Authors: | S.A. Wade, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia P.R. Stoddart, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia E. Palombo, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia M.M. Hlaing, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia M.A. Javed, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia D. Marić, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia D. Eldridge, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia S.L. McArthur, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) can lead to localized material degradation rates that are orders of magnitude higher than would normally be expected from standard, abiotic corrosion. This can lead to the premature failure of a wide range of important structures that can not only be costly to repair, but in some cases can have fatal consequences.
Studies of MIC require expertise from a wide range of fields such as material science, microbiology, chemistry and engineering. However, much of the past work that has been undertaken on MIC has been performed with a discipline-specific focus. This is somewhat understandable in a historical research context and may help to explain some of the observed discrepancies between MIC studies undertaken in the laboratory and field observations. In order to overcome some of these issues and develop solutions to the problems caused by MIC a multidisciplinary approach is required.
We have assembled a multidisciplinary team to investigate two specific aspects of MIC, namely the composition of bacterial consortia implicated in MIC and the associated physicochemical processes that drive MIC.
With respect to bacterial identification work is being carried out using a variety of techniques, including the relatively novel application of MALDI-TOF and Raman spectroscopy to MIC. The latter technique is particularly attractive as it potentially allows single bacteria to be identified at different stages of their life cycle, as well as in biofilm. Initial work in this area has required the development of data analysis techniques in order to remove background fluorescence signals in a consistent manner. MALDI-TOF potentially allows rapid routine identification from large numbers of samples. Initial results obtained with this technique will be presented.
The second area of interest includes work undertaken to look at how changes in field conditions can affect the likelihood of MIC. Metal coupon corrosion tests using seawater samples obtained from different field locations have been performed. A range of metallurgical, chemical and microbiological measurements were made to investigate differences observed for samples tested in two different seawater solutions and also for replicate samples tested using seawater from the same location.
Although progress remains challenging, the multidisciplinary approach reported here is showing great promise, with chemists, metallurgists and physical scientists working closely with microbiologists to understand the full complexity of the underlying biological processes.