Development of a laboratory test for microbial involvement in accelerated low water corrosion
Scott Wade A and Linda Blackall BA Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Vic. 3122, Australia. Tel: +61 3 9214 4339, Email: swade@swin.edu.au
B Environmental Microbiology Research Initiative, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic. 3010, Australia. Email: linda.blackall@unimelb.edu.au
Microbiology Australia 39(3) 170-172 https://doi.org/10.1071/MA18049
Published: 13 August 2018
Abstract
Microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) is a general term for when microbes affect material corrosion processes. The rapid corrosion that can occur due to MIC can cause significant dangers and costs for owners of relevant assets in relation to predicting structural safety, design of new structures and maintenance. Verification and/or prediction that a structure may be subject to MIC is not straightforward and, when metal surfaces are involved, it requires a series of metallurgical, microbiological and chemical tests. A useful part of this testing can be laboratory-based studies of microbial consortium samples from the environment of interest. However, there are no standard guidelines for how to perform such tests. Here we report the results of a preliminary study of laboratory corrosion simulations with biomass from a marine metallic corrosion event and show that simple changes in the test conditions can alter the rate of corrosion and the composition of microbial consortia during the test.
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