Marketers sell bacterial or biocatalyst products by saying, “The concentration is “X” billion per gram!” The “X” is usually between 1 and 10.
Selling bacteria by concentration is a popular gimmick, but it has little to do with how a product will perform in a wastewater environment on substrates such as fats, petroleum, and surfactants. Many marketers blatantly lie about concentrations while others offer high counts of purposeless bacteria that do not function in wastewater.
In addition, most bacteria are blended with carriers like corn or salt. As a manufacturer we choose carriers that act as biostimulants to the naturally-occurring and added bacteria.
With our processes we ferment bacterial cultures and package them in 1 to 50 billion concentrations. Mostly we grow bacillus, heterotrophic and autotrophic nitrifiers, but we also work with some fungal strains. In formulating a bacterial product we do growth rates studies on different media. If we are developing a product to break up dairy waste or animal fat, we will see what cultures grow the best on those substrates and at what percent to add them and what type of micronutrient do the bacteria need to perform that task.
In grease, for example, we make a 3 billion per gram product that will easily outperform any competitions 5 billion strain. Most companies use 3 strains; we traditionally use 5 to 9 depending, which results in a high quality product.