Rapid Microbial Detection and Quantification, 21TAPPICon Virtual

Microbial contamination is a major expense for any papermill.  The downtime for removing biofilm buildup, recall of contaminated product and corrosion of infrastructure can cost a mill several millions of dollars per year.  Chemical treatment is the primary means to control microbial contamination, but there are constant changes in microbe levels due to many factors including starting material, temperature and water sources.   

One of the major issues with chemical treatment is optimal dosage.  Excess chemical treatment results in wasted money for the mill and increased health hazards due to chemical waste.  Inadequate dosing will result in microbial growth in the system and poor-quality paper which costs millions in recalled product.  A quick, reliable measurement is needed to test for contamination early in the papermaking process to reduce money lost due to excess biocide treatment or lack of thereof.   

The most common industry methods for detecting bacterial contamination are ATP tests, petri-films and the Dairyman’s standard.  ATP testing relies on ATP being present in the cell but is unreliable for measuring spore counts since bacterial spores are not metabolically active thus little to no detectable ATP.  ATP tests are also highly variable between replicates, easily affected by background chemistry and minimal limit of detection. Petri-films are used to measure colony forming units but require 48 hours or more to see the results.  Petri-films are also limited to the nutrients in the film for growth of the organism.  Due to the limited nutrients found in the film, you may only see 10-40% of the actual population of species in your system.  The Dairyman’s standard shares similar pitfalls as the petri-films such as time required to see the results and limited population growth of bacterial species.   

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