ISSN 2375-0936
African Journal of Water Conservation and Sustainability ISSN: 2375-0936 Vol. 2 (1), pp. 099-107, January, 2014. © International Scholars Journals
Full Length Research Paper
A study of the kinetic coefficients and the rate of biodegradation of phenol by indigenous mixed microbial system
Sudipta Dey*and Somnath Mukherjee
Department of Biotechnology, Heritage Institute of Technology, Anandapur, Chowbaga Road, PO: Kolkata, PIN:
700107, West Bengal, India.
*Corresponding author. E-mail: sudiptadey_ [email protected]. Tel: +91 33-2443-0454 or +91 9830590415. Fax: +91 033-2443-0455.
Accepted 03 July, 2010
Abstract
Mixed microbial culture collected from effluent treatment plant of a coke oven industry has been studied for its phenol biodegrading potential under aerobic condition in a batch reactor. The result showed that, after acclimatization, the culture could biodegrade up to 700 mg/l of phenol. The results showed that specific growth rate of microorganisms and specific substrate degradation rate increased up to 300 mg/l of initial phenol concentration and then started decreasing. The biodegradation kinetics is fitted to different substrate inhibition models by MATLAB 7.1©. Among all models, Haldane model was best fitted (Root Mean Square Error = 0.0067) for phenol degradation. The different biodegradation constants (Ks, Ki, S m, mmax, YX/S, kd) estimated using these models showed good potential of the mixed microbial culture in phenol biodegradation.
Key words: Mixed culture, phenol biodegradation, kinetics, inhibition model.