Disclaimer:

I’ll open this post with a disclaimer. Microbes are ubiquitous. There are extraordinarily few habitats on earth where thriving, microbial communities have not been detected. In practical terms, this means that it is unlikely that operators will ever have a completely sterile fuel system or that they will reduce their fuel system biodeterioration risk to zero. Biodeterioration can still occur in the best maintained fuel systems. However, the risk of it occurring in an…

In today’s blog, I’ll cover the lastest family of microbiology methods used for testing fuels & fuel associated water. These methods fall under the category genomics – the study of genes. Warning: genetic testing is more technically complex than the methods I’ve described in recent posts. I’ll do my best to keep the language as simple as possible.

Genetic methods have evolved substantially over the past 30 years. They all depend on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR); first…

Quick review:
In post #12 I provided an overview of microbiological testing.
Next (post #13) I launched my discussion of non-culture tests.
In posts #14 and #16 – post #15 captured my impressions of the fuel microbiology sessions at two conferences – I discussed how ATP testing could be used to measure microbiological contamination in both liquid and solid samples (surface swabs and sections of filter media).

Before moving on from microbiological test methods, I want to cover two more…

In my August post (https://biodeterioration-control.com/microbial-damage-fuel-systems-hard-detect-part-14-test-methods-still-microbiological-tests/), I discussed using ASTM D7687 to quantify microbial loads (AKA bioburdens) in liquid samples – fuels and fuel associated water. This post will focus on surface samples.

Generally speaking, microbes tend to be most abundant on surfaces. By some estimates, in any given system, for every microbe floating in the bulk fluid, there are 1,000 to…

In September, I attended two conferences; each of which included a half-day, fuel microbiology session. Although most of the folks presenting fuel microbiology papers were onboard for both conferences, the information overlap was minor. My overall take home lesson is that when it comes to fuel microbiology, we are all still like the five blind men attempting to describe an elephant (if you are not familiar with this ancient, Indian parable, I invite you to look it up).

Although it has…