Profiling the microbial contamination in aviation fuel from an airport

Abstract

Microbial contamination during fuel storage can cause fuel system fouling and corrosion. Characterizing microbial contamination is critical for preventing and solving these problems. In this study, culture-based combing with the culture-independent methods, were used to profile the microbial contamination in aviation fuel. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) modified by propidium monoazide (PMA) revealed a higher diversity of contaminating microorganisms in samples than the culture method. Proteobacteria (47%), Actinobacteria (21%) and Ascomycota (>99%, fungi) were the most abundant phyla, and the neglected archaea was also detected. Additionally, qPCR-based methods revealed all samples contained a heavy level of microbial contamination, which was more accurate than its culturable counterparts, and fungal contamination was still a problem in aviation fuel. The application of a PCR-based method gives deeper insight into microbial contamination in aviation fuel than the conventional culture method, thus using it for regular detection and accurate description of fuel contamination is strongly recommended in the case of explosive microbial growth.

Keywords:

• Aviation fuel
• microbial contamination
• culture method
• PCR-based methods
• detection
• biodeterioration

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the staff at the airport for helping to obtain the fuel.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there was no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51678551), the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFE0107300), the Xiamen Major Science and Technology Project (3502Z20171003) and the K. C. Wong Education Foundation.