Marine environments are constantly exposed to smaller oil releases which represent a major fraction of the total quantity of petroleum hydrocarbons entering the aquatic environment. Early detection of small oil leaks or spills can help avoid occurrences of major spills, thus eliminating environmental disasters related to marine environments and coastal communities. Organic contaminant sensors are difficult to employ under certain settings due to the material or function related limitations. In this research, a microbial biosensor cell was developed exploiting the benefits of microbial biodiversity and their metabolic functions. The biosensor is essentially created using exoelectrogenic bacteria in an anode that survive on organic matter and a photo or autotrophic, or sulfur reducing bacterial consortium in the cathode which will enable continuous transfer of electrons from one compartment (anode) to the other (cathode). This will create a voltage across a resistor which can be detected to identify possible contamination. The microbial biosensor cell will generate high voltage spikes when availability of organic compounds increases. In this study, a variety of hydrocarbons were used as substrates to understand the voltage generation potentials and to optimize and stabilize the sensor operations. We will discuss the development of millimeter scale microbial biosensor suitable for marine, soil and surface environmental settings and their performance using different combinations of exoelectrogenic and auto and phototrophic microbial consortia in terms of voltage generation potentials using various hydrocarbon and petroleum based compounds under the influence of environmental stressors including pH, water depth, temperatures and substrate and nutrient concentrations.

Novel microbial biosensor platforms for early detection and treatment of oil leakage and produced waters

255th National Meeting (2018)

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