Rapid Screening of water quality in house installations
Abstract
Drinking water (dw) installations within buildings raise several challenges along the last meters. The water stagnates for several hours up to 23 hours per day including a temperature increase. These factors in combination with disinfection residues may expose bioavailable nutrients favouring microbial growth and biofilm formation. Based on the known microbial methods to evaluate the biological stability of drinking water installations (AOC, culture-based techniques), it is well recognized that a low culturability of planctonic bacteria (< 1%) does not elucidate the real dynamics of the microbiome. In order to fulfill the requirements to allow fast and reproducible microbial results, flow cytometry may has potential to monitor building installations. The examination of total cell counts and HNA/LNA fractions give information on sudden changes in the overall microbiological situation of the dw. Hence, this projects aims the application of flow cytometry for an effective monitoring of the microbial dynamics in buidlings. In parallel different methodologies will assess the biological stability (ATP) in order to obtain results for comparability purposes. The overall challenge is to evolve from the stage of characterization toward understanding for the benefit of the consumer and practitioner. Further, flow cytometry should increase the knowledge of the dynamics of the drinking water microbiome and therefore find broad acceptance for the management of dw safety.
keywords microbiology drinking water flowcytometry house installations HNA/LNA biofilms ATP biological stability stagnation sampling plan
Publikationen
Project staff
Marija Zunabovic-Pichler
Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Marija Zunabovic-Pichler
marija.zunabovic@boku.ac.at
Project Leader
01.05.2017 - 30.04.2020