RESUMO
Three strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens with different motility rates and adsorption rate coefficients were injected into porous-medium reactors packed with l-mm-diameter glass spheres. Cell breakthrough, time to peak concentration, tailing, and cell recovery were measured at three interstitial pore velocities (higher than, lower than, and much lower than the maximal bacterial motility rate). All experiments were done with distilled water to reduce the effects of growth and chemotaxis. Contrary to expectations, motility did not result in either early breakthrough or early time to peak concentration at flow velocities below the motility rate. Bacterial size exclusion effects were shown to affect breakthrough curve shape at the very low flow velocity, but no such effect was seen at the higher flow velocity. The tendency of bacteria to adsorb to porous-medium surfaces, as measured by adsorption rate coefficients, profoundly influenced transport characteristics. Cell recoveries were shown to be correlated with the ratio of advective to adsorptive transport in the reactors. Adsorption rate coefficients were found to be better predictors of microbial transport phenomena than individual characteristics, such as size, motility, or porous-medium hydrodynamics.
RESUMO
A phenomenological model has been developed to describe biomass distribution and substrate depletion in porous diatomaceous earth (DE) pellets colonized by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The essential features of the model are diffusion, attachment and detachment to/from pore walls of the biomass, diffusion of substrate within the pellet, and external mass transfer of both substrate and biomass in the bulk fluid of a packed bed containing the pellets. A bench-scale reactor filled with DE pellets was inoculated with P. aeruginosa and operated in plug flow without recycle using a feed containing glucose as the limiting nutrient. Steady-state effluent glucose concentrations were measured at various residence times, and biomass distribution within the pellet was measured at the lowest residence time. In the model, microorganism/substrate kinetics and mass transfer characteristics were predicted from the literature. Only the attachment and detachment parameters were treated as unknowns, and were determined by fitting biomass distribution data within the pellets to the mathematical model. The rate-limiting step in substrate conversion was determined to be internal mass transfer resistance; external mass transfer resistance and microbial kinetic limitations were found to be nearly negligible. Only the outer 5% of the pellets contributed to substrate conversion.
