A Fiber-Optic Sensor for Accurately Monitoring Biofilm Growth in a Hydrogen Production Photobioreactor

Abstract

A new simple fiber-optic evanescent wave sensor was created to accurately monitor the growth and hydrogen production performance of biofilms. The proposed sensor consists of two probes (i.e., a sensor and reference probe), using the etched fibers with an appropriate surface roughness to improve its sensitivity. The sensor probe measures the biofilm growth and change of liquid-phase concentration inside the biofilm. The reference probe is coated with a hydrophilic polytetrafluoroethylene membrane to separate the liquids from photosynthetic bacteria Rhodopseudomonas palustris CQK 01 and to measure the liquid concentration. We also developed a model to demonstrate the accuracy of the measurement. The biofilm measurement was calibrated using an Olympus microscope. A linear relationship was obtained for the biofilm thickness range from 0 to 120 μm with a synthetic medium under continuous supply to the bioreactor. The highest level of hydrogen production rate occurred at a thickness of 115 μm.

Development of an Attenuated Total Reflection Based Fiber-Optic Sensor for Real-time Sensing of Biofilm Formation

“…10 Microscopy imaging is one of the techniques that provide information concerning the physical structure, cell size, shape, and chemical properties. However, it is a labor-intensive method, and cannot be implemented for real-time monitoring.…”

“…[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Several groups have studied the fiber-optic method for monitoring biofilm formation by using an exposed fiber-optic core. 4,10,30 These methods were based on the principle of evanescent field attenuation by biofilm formation. In our A fiber-optic sensor capable of real-time monitoring of biofilm formation in water was developed.…”

A high-sensitivity fiber-optic evanescent wave sensor with a three-layer structure composed of Canada balsam doped with GeO2

“…Furthermore, in principle, FOEW sensors are more sensitive than attenuated total reflection point sensors because of the multiple reflections that occur within a short sensing region (Eggleton et al, 2011). Thus, FOEW sensors, which are composed of silica and polymer optical fibers, have been widely applied in chemistry, biochemistry, life sciences, and environmental research (Taitt et al, 2005;Zhong et al, 2014;Ton et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2015;Zhong et al, 2015). Although FOEW sensors present numerous advantages and represent a promising sensor technology, such sensors still experience a critical problem: low sensitivity.…”

Triple functional DNA–protein conjugates: Signal probes for Pb2+ using evanescent wave-induced emission

“…Up to now, numerous surface-based sensors have been developed (Zhang and Da, 2010), among them, of particular interest is the evanescent wave induced emission (EWIE) sensing platform (Fig. S1), which is portable, biological compatible, and highly sensitive with a background suppression design (Xiong et al, 2014;Zhong et al, 2014). One challenge in developing surface-based sensors is to establish a regenerable sensing surface and keep the biological activities of DNA strands.…”