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A study of external mass transfer effect on biodegradation of phenol using low‐density polyethylene immobilized Bacillus flexus GS1 IIT (BHU) in a packed bed bioreactor
Author(s) -
Swain Ganesh,
Sonwani Ravi Kumar,
Giri Balendu Shekhar,
Singh Ram Sharan,
Jaiswal Ravi Prakash,
Rai Birendra Nath
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
water and environment journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1747-6593
pISSN - 1747-6585
DOI - 10.1111/wej.12626
Subject(s) - biodegradation , chemistry , phenol , bioreactor , mass transfer , packed bed , chromatography , low density polyethylene , chemical engineering , polyethylene , volumetric flow rate , organic chemistry , thermodynamics , physics , engineering
The impact of external mass transport on the biodegradation rate of phenol in a packed bed bioreactor (PBBR) was studied. A potential bacterial species, Bacillus flexus GS1 IIT (BHU), was isolated from the petroleum‐contaminated soil. Low‐density polyethylene (LDPE) immobilized with the B. flexus GS1 IIT (BHU) was used as packing material in the PBBR. The PBBR was operated by varying the inlet feed flow rate from 4 to 10 mL/min, and the corresponding degradation rate coefficients were found to be in the range of 0.119–0.157 L/g h. In addition, the highest removal rate of phenol was obtained to be 1.305 mg/g h at an inlet feed rate of 10 mL/min. The external mass transfer was studied using the modelJ D =K N Re ( n ‐ 1 ). A new empirical correlationJ D = 1 .625N Re ‐ 0.3for the biodegradation of phenol in the PBBR was developed after the evaluation at various values of K and n .