Many people are familiar with microorganisms (microbes) or bacteria, as they are also commonly called. Microbes are found throughout the world, in soil, on water, plants, animals, rocks, and people.

After death, all living organisms decompose to their base elements of water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphate, and trace elements. This process is called bioremediation or mineralization. It takes approximately one million bacteria to recycle the 6 million organic molecules that make up life. Basically microbes were "green" before the rest of the world discovered the importance of going "green".

The average human being has three pounds of microbes on the surface of and in their bodies.

Their average size is one micron, a 10,000th of a centimeter, 25,000ths of an inch, or 1 millionth of a meter. More than 27,000 species of bacteria have been identified.  There are many millions of microbes that have not yet been identified.

It is difficult to describe a simple yet complex form of life like the microbes. Because of their size ( 1 micron) they are so small that a powerful microscope is required to see them. It took the development of the microscope before man learned that microbes were the chemical agents of decay, fermentation, and disease.

Photo 1. A droplet of oil. The microbes can be seen inside the round oil drop. You can see the microbes  in the center eating and converting the oil.

Due to the power of advertising many people think of microbes as being bad and need to be destroyed.  Like many things in life there are good and bad microbes. There are a great many good and beneficial microbes in the world. Without beneficial microbes the earth would not be able to recycle many items.

Their size makes the microbe the smallest living unit that can contain the necessary complex chemicals for life processes and the necessary enzymes for recycling complex organic matter

Photo 2. A drop of oil under a microscope. The black / darker areas is the oil , the rod (bacillus) shapes are the microbes and the white / brighter areas are where the microbes have eaten the oil.

These small cells also have a large surface to volume ratio allowing for a maximum cell wall activity and interchange of materials in and out of the cells. In this way, nature fabricated the total microbe population for maximum activity in recycling of all natural organic matter.

The microbes that we produce are hydrophobic. In other words they prefer to attach themselves to the item they are converting and prefer to stay out of and away from water when they can. This is important because when you are applying the product in a wet environment you don't want the microbes to get diluted in the water.

To see how we use microbes in our everyday lives please click on our products page or look at our projects page. From large projects in the oilfield to use in households, microbes are changing the world. Click here if you would like to see the many different compounds the microbes will work on.