Phenol Biodegradation Kinetics in an Anaerobic Batch Reactor

Abstract

Biodegradation of phenol with mixed consortia of bacterial was studied in an anaerobic batch reactor. The culture was acclimatized for a period of two months to grow in mineral salt medium contained phenol as the sole carbon. A minimum concentration of 50 and a maximum of 1000 mgl –1 of phenol in the medium were used for the purpose of culture adaptation and biodegradation studies. The goals of these experiments were to determine the kinetics of biodegradation by determination of biomass growth rates and phenol concentrations with respect to incubation time. Substrate inhibition kinetics and the specific growth rate were defined while the data fitted to Haldane model. The specific growth rate, half-saturation coefficient and inhibition coefficient for Haldane model were 0.065 h –1, 20.24 mg/l and 200 mg/l, respectively. The biokinetic parameters were used to predict the biodegradation profile, which was quite consistent with the experimental data. The obtained results were useful for the estimation of relations between growth rate and substrate utilization, which may be used to evaluate mass balance for a wastewater treatment system contained phenol compound.