DETECTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE GROWTH-CHARACTERISTICS OF PROTEUS-VULGARIS WITH A BULK ACOUSTIC-WAVE AMMONIA SENSOR

A bulk acoustic wave ammonia sensor to monitor the growth of Proteus v ulgaris is described, The corresponding bacterial growth response equa tion was derived based on the basic growth characteristics of P. vulga ris, and was verified experimentally, The application of the equation to tile estimation of kinetic parameters (such as the asymptote, the m aximum specific growth rate and the lag time) was accomplished success fully, The generation time is 33.3 min at 37 degrees C. The influence of temperature on bacterial growth was also investigated and the activ ation energy of P. vulgaris growth was estimated, Furthermore, the ini tial bacterial concentrations were determined based on the linear rela tionship between the inflection time, t(i), and the logarithm of the i nitial bacterial concentration in the range 10(2)-10(7) (cells ml(-1)) . The results were in good agreement with those from the pour plate co unt method and the precision was better than that of the frequency det ection time method.