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 - Funding Information:
The technical assistance of Dr. Dianwen Zhang (Beckman Institute, University of Illinois) and Yulin Wang (Huaqiao University, China) with regard to the CLSM experiments, and the support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA (agreement no. RD-83487001), and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant no. FA9550-14-1-0002, as well as the National Institutes of Health under grant no. R01EB013723, are gratefully acknowledged.
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 -