To be more specific, within the oil and gas production facilities microbial growth patterns may or may not correlate with the internal corrosion. Since the fluid composition is highly complex it is difficult to generalize the bacterial proliferation with specific parameters (like dissolved oxygen or sulphate). There are inherent problems to establish the types of bacterial communities growing within the system. We are not sure if these communities remain "stable" for long unless the source (reservoir?) is known. So the question is how far are we from the reality.
Excellent question. Most feel that lab studies are useful for studying the mechanism(s) that result in corrosion, how the various strains interact and even issues such as the effectiveness of biocides. Translating this to field applications where the sources of nutrients and micro-nutrients is not well understood nor is there usually a decent understanding of the actual biocolonies is a great stretch. Don't get me wrong, the lab is much closer to field applications today than 10 or 20 years ago. But when the field often does not have a good understanding of the real conditions in the pipe (think about weld beads, slugging due to 1 degree elevation changes, sand and corrosion deposits, etc.), there is still a great deal of research that needs to be performed before we will truly understand what is happening in the field.
I tend to agree with Stephen, though MICs are very useful tools as a comparative measure, the direct relation to clinical or real life scenarios is a stretch. There are two different types of testing for MICs, liquid or agar, which will compare treatment versus two main types of bacteria, planktonic and biofilm. In reality, there is a combination of planktonic and biofilm bacteria. Since the mutation rate is higher in biofilm bacteria, even triplicates can have different values on the same day. This is the reason MICs are not listed for antibiotics in books until they are confirmed by multiple laboratories on different occasions.
The laboratory preparations of bacteria have ill effects on trying to represent bacteria in real life. This is a critical feature that has to be sorted out to better represent what happens in the field. I will refer you to two papers, the first is from Pembrey et al. 1999 AEM "Cell Surface Analysis Techniques: What Do Cell Preparation Protocols Do to Cell Surface Properties?" and Peterson et al. 2012 AEM "Bacterial Cell Surface Damage Due to Centrifugal Compaction".
- There is a great limitation of lab determined MIC values in compariosn to thier field applications. MIC determined in lab is useful for fidning a probable dose of susceptibility of compound. But in field studies it has so many parameters to determine however, it is useful in corrosion or biodegradation studies petroleum, mineral mines, wood tannin decay. It represents a minimum quantity of a compound against which various strains show physiological inhibition that is the effectiveness of biocides. But more than this a transformation of a strain lead to fast catebolism of a chemical compound in any media, microbial strains behave differently. If this is translated and used in field applications where the sources of nutrients and micro-nutrients are ample. Hence, MIC is highly useful tool to find a comparative dose mainly resistant, susceptible and sublethal. In field MIC will be resistance against any biochemeical, media and organic compound
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