TY - JOUR
T1 - Disintegration of simulated drinking water biofilms with arrays of microchannel plasma jets
AU - Sun, Peter P.
AU - Araud, Elbashir M.
AU - Huang, Conghui
AU - Shen, Yun
AU - Monroy, Guillermo L.
AU - Zhong, Shengyun
AU - Tong, Zikang
AU - Boppart, Stephen A.
AU - Eden, J. Gary
AU - Nguyen, Thanh H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Biofilms exist and thrive within drinking water distribution networks, and can present human health concerns. Exposure of simulated drinking water biofilms, grown from groundwater, to a 9 × 9 array of microchannel plasma jets has the effect of severely eroding the biofilm and deactivating the organisms they harbor. In-situ measurements of biofilm structure and thickness with an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system show the biofilm thickness to fall from 122 ± 17 µm to 55 ± 13 µm after 15 min. of exposure of the biofilm to the microplasma column array, when the plasmas are dissipating a power density of 58 W/cm2. All biofilms investigated vanish with 20 min. of exposure. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) demonstrates that the number of living cells in the biofilms declines by more than 93% with 15 min. of biofilm exposure to the plasma arrays. Concentrations of several oxygen-bearing species, generated by the plasma array, were found to be 0.4–21 nM/s for the hydroxyl radical (OH), 85–396 nM/s for the 1O2 excited molecule, 98–280 µM for H2O2, and 24–42 µM for O3 when the power density delivered to the array was varied between 3.6 W/cm2 and 79 W/cm2. The data presented here demonstrate the potential of microplasma arrays as a tool for controlling, through non-thermal disruption and removal, mixed-species biofilms prevalent in commercial and residential water systems.
AB - Biofilms exist and thrive within drinking water distribution networks, and can present human health concerns. Exposure of simulated drinking water biofilms, grown from groundwater, to a 9 × 9 array of microchannel plasma jets has the effect of severely eroding the biofilm and deactivating the organisms they harbor. In-situ measurements of biofilm structure and thickness with an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system show the biofilm thickness to fall from 122 ± 17 µm to 55 ± 13 µm after 15 min. of exposure of the biofilm to the microplasma column array, when the plasmas are dissipating a power density of 58 W/cm2. All biofilms investigated vanish with 20 min. of exposure. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) demonstrates that the number of living cells in the biofilms declines by more than 93% with 15 min. of biofilm exposure to the plasma arrays. Concentrations of several oxygen-bearing species, generated by the plasma array, were found to be 0.4–21 nM/s for the hydroxyl radical (OH), 85–396 nM/s for the 1O2 excited molecule, 98–280 µM for H2O2, and 24–42 µM for O3 when the power density delivered to the array was varied between 3.6 W/cm2 and 79 W/cm2. The data presented here demonstrate the potential of microplasma arrays as a tool for controlling, through non-thermal disruption and removal, mixed-species biofilms prevalent in commercial and residential water systems.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41522-018-0063-4
DO - 10.1038/s41522-018-0063-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85055270914
SN - 2055-5008
VL - 4
JO - npj Biofilms and Microbiomes
JF - npj Biofilms and Microbiomes
IS - 1
M1 - 24
ER -