Simulation-based biofilm imitation test for cleanability verification in the food industry

Bacterial biofilms in food production pose a critical health and safety risk. Effective cleaning validation processes are crucial to mitigate these risks. The project addresses the biofilm challenge by developing a fast, secure and efficient cleaning test method to enhance hygiene, prevent microbial accumulation, and validate cleaning procedures in industrial settings. The test innovatively incorporates the use of a biofilm imitate and the numerical simulation of the cleaning process. Specifically, it can be used to evaluate cleaning and decontamination concepts, to quantify the effort to clean production equipment and to identify the hardest-to-clean areas. Key objectives of the project include the selection and characterization of industry-relevant, dynamically grown reference biofilms, the development of a transportable cleaning and cultivation test rig, the generation and application of biofilm imitates mimicking the biofilm reference as well as to model and numerically simulate the cleaning behavior of the biofilm and its imitate.