Development and evaluation of an experimental protocol for 3-D visualization and characterization of the structure of bacterial biofilms in porous media using laboratory X-ray tomography

The development of a reliable model allowing accurate predictions of biofilm growth in porous media relies on a good knowledge of the temporal evolution of biofilm structure within the porous network. Since little is known about the real 3-D structure of biofilms in porous media, this work was aimed at developing a new experimental protocol to visualize the 3-D microstructure of the inside of a porous medium using laboratory X-ray microtomography. A reliable and reproducible methodology is proposed for (1) growing a biofilm inside a porous medium, and (2) X-ray tomography-based characterization of the temporal development of the biofilm at the inlet of the biofilter. The statistical analysis proposed here also validates the results presented in the literature based on a biofilm structure single measurement.