On 12 January 2012, Mr. George Samuel Lutterodt successfully presented and defended his PhD thesis and was awarded with a Doctoral degree. Professor Stefan Uhlenbrook was his promoter. The PhD research focused on ‘Transport of Multiple Escherichia Coli Strains in Saturated Porous Media'
About the research
Delineation of well-head protection areas, deep well injection of wastewater and pre-treatment of surface water by passage through sand to remove pathogenic microorganisms are based on the knowledge of microbial transport distances.
Prediction of microbial transport distances are usually based on the sticking efficiency, a parameter in the classical colloid filtration theory, this parameter represents the interaction between colloid and collector surfaces resulting in deposition. According to the theory, the sticking efficiency is invariable when physico-chemical characteristics of aquifer media are homogeneous. However, many research results have indicated variations within and among bacterial strains.
In this research, the transport of Escherichia Coli in saturated quartz columns were conducted in the laboratory. The objectives were to characterise the distribution of sticking efficiency, measure low sticking efficiency values of cells, and to develop a methodology to measure minimum values of sticking efficiencies within bacterial sub-populations. Also, the work assesses the effect of various phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of Escherichia coli on their attachment to quartz grains. Field work was conducted to assess the chemo-physical and bacteriological status of the springs in the Kampala area of Uganda. Furthermore, transport and cell characteristics of E. coli strains isolated from springs were studied.
UNESCO-IHE PhD Dissertations
Full text versions of most of the UNESCO-IHE PhD Dissertations are available through NARCIS. NARCIS provides access to 163,228 full-text publications and research output from all Dutch universities, KNAW, NWO and a number of scientific institutes. This dissertation will be added here shortly.
