Viability and Resilience of a Bacterial Biofilm Individual-Based Model

Abstract

In many industrial applications, bacteria are cultivated in mixed bioreactors filled with water and fed with nutrients. Depending on the reactor configuration and operating conditions, bacteria can either be grown as planktonic freely floating cells or attached to available surfaces forming a thin layer with a complex spatial structure called biofilm. In the planktonic growth mode, it is often assumed that all the bacterial cells experience the same average environmental conditions. Hence, their growth and metabolic activity can be controlled by acting directly on the environmental conditions in the reactor. Biofilm reactors are more difficult to control. Depending on the biofilm spatial structure, the local environment experienced by the individual bacterial cells in the biofilm may significantly differ from the conditions in the bulk phase of the reactor. It is therefore often difficult to predict how a change in the bulk phase conditions will impact the conditions inside the biofilm.