Utvärdering av analysmetoder för detektering av mikrober.

Abstract

Surface coatings are widely used both by individuals and companies. To avoid problems such as bacterial growth, which will result in the disposal of the coating, a need to monitor the growth arises. The focus of this study is comparing three different methods to detect microorganisms, two of the ATP-detection versions (LuciPac and QG21S) and one with culturing microbes, where three different agar media are used. Before evaluating the methods, an inoculum had to be composed using wastewater from production. The goal is to reach an understanding regarding which of these are the best to use depending on the user’s objective. The result of the paper is that depending on the economic situation the preferred method will differ. Agar is recommended to always be used as it can detect spores which the ATP-methods cannot, thus making it a necessity in contaminationdetection, though it takes at least 24h getting a result. Both ATP-methods takes about 5-10 minutes before receiving a result. While LuciPac is the cheaper version of ATP-detection it is also lacking in detecting all the ATP in samples and cannot be used with pigmented coatings. However, as QG21S is a thorough method it is expensive, hence recommended to be used sparingly. It can also detect microbes in pigmented coatings and should therefore be use with those. This report is written in Swedish. English title: "Evaluation of analytical methods for detection of microbes".