Abstract
Central to all diagnostic strategies for microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) is the identification and enumeration of microorganisms, particularly bacteria. The shift from culture-based techniques to molecular microbiological methods for these procedures has increased the list of microbial species (including archaea) to which MIC is attributed but has not provided unambiguous data to correlate corrosivity to the size and/or composition of microbial populations. The following provides a state-of-the-art review of MIC diagnostics, including the possibility of correlating corrosivity with specific extracellular metabolites. Microbiological testing requires informed sample collection, preservation and data interpretation. Currently, no single diagnostic test is conclusive for MIC and all diagnoses require multiple layers of supporting data in addition to microbiological data.
