Flow Cell Apparatus – affordable flow cell apparatus for biofilms.

This system offers the biofilm investigator an affordable, sterile, consumable flow cell apparatus for creation of biofilms, and for direct, non-destructive, on-line microscopic examination of biofilms.

The gamma irradiated flow cell, bubble trap and connective tubing necessary for experiments is completely assembled in its airtight package, and needs only to be opened and connected to a reservoir of culture medium and a peristaltic pump to start a biofilm experiment. This single use set-up eliminates the possibility of carryover from experiment to the next, and eliminates time consuming sterilization methods which either require equipment not easily accessible to most researchers (ethylene oxide chambers) or are, in fact, disinfection methods (hypochlorite).

Moreover; the bubble trap design creates a low positive pressure on the flow of medium, thus mitigating the undesirable peristaltic pulsation in liquid delivery to the flow cell.

Features and benefits

• A three outlet manifold disperses medium to sturdy pump tubing which locate in the peristaltic pump cassettes.
• A triple cylinder bubble trap with air release cocks is located immediately after the pump.
• Write on flags keep lines organized and record injections, ect.
• Three feet of PVC tubing connects the bubble trap to each of the tree chambers in the flow cell, each chambers measuring 1 mm deep, 4 mm wide and 40 mm long.
• Pinch clamps control inoculant movement or to control back flow when sampling effluent.
• The effluent tubing is interrupted by lure connectors which can be unlocked briefly for collection of effluent from any biofilm chamber fir analysis. The coiled excess of tubing in the system is necessary to allow placement of the flow cell on a microscope platform without disturbing the flow of medium to the growth chambers.
• The triple chambers of the flow cell are covered with a #1 glass cover slip, attached to the flow cell acrylic adhesive. The coverslip can be scored and removed for access to the bacteria for further analysis. The flanges at each end of a flow cell provide attachments for the microscope platform.
• Several feet of tubing takes the effluent to another manifold and consequently to a waste container.