Project description (pdf)
Description:
Biofilms are sessile microbial consortia embedded in a matrix of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). Normally they grow in aquatic environments and can have negative or beneficial impacts on their environment. Typically, they are used in waste water treatment, where their tasks are the nitrification or denitrification of our waste water. Apart from that they can also grow on implants, industrial settings like pipes and they can potentially cause infections to the human body. Therefore the analysis of this aggregations is a great discipline in water technology. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an application which can be used to investigate biofilms growing in flow cells. With this technique it is possible to determine structural parameters of biofilms and the distribution of biomass. The EBI is a leading institue in biofilm research which uses OCT for the
determination of different parameters of biofilms.
Tasks:
In several studies it was shown that different iron concentrations and shear stresses can have diverse effects on the stability of biofilms. The aim of the project is thus to investigate different iron concentraions on the stability of biofilms by means of OCT. A second part will be the realization of deformation experiments.
