Phillip Butterfield, PhD
Civil & Environmental Engineering
- Telephone: 509.358.7761
- E-mail: butterfield@wsu.edu
- Printer-friendly fact sheet (PDF)
Finding Solutions for Aircraft Drinking Water
Have you ever stepped into a riverbed with bare feet
and wondered about the slippery stuff on the rocks?
It’s biofilm, a substance that forms when
bacteria meet surfaces in wet environments. This slimy
film allows the bacteria to become anchored to all
sorts of materials, with both negative and positive
results.
Now consider that biofilm grows on the drinking water
storage tanks aboard commercial aircraft and that this
growth cannot be prevented. Until now, researchers have
not probed into the issue of aircraft drinking water,
which is stored in tanks lined with materials (ABS and
PETG plastics) uncommon in municipal water
systems.
Enter Phillip
Butterfield, a research professor at WSU Spokane,
who is asking clearly important questions as he tackles
this problem. What kinds of microbes form in these
tanks and make their way into water glasses? How
effectively do current disinfection methods work? What
potential does biofilm have to harbor harmful
bacteria?
Butterfield approaches these questions through
sophisticated laboratory work that simulates the tank
environment. Using a programmable controller, the
contents of CDC biofilm reactors are replaced with
fresh tap water by controlling valves, feed pumps, and
reactor mixers.
One reactor receives water amended with calcium to increase the water's hardness; another is amended with carbon compounds to increase the biodegradable carbon in the water. A third reactor receives un-amended tap water. After two months, Butterfield’s lab samples the reactors for biofilm and evaluates the success of the disinfection regimen.
