Mathematical modeling and simulation of hexane degradation in fungal and bacterial biofilters: effective diffusivity and partition aspects

Mathematical modeling in the biofiltration of volatile organic compounds is a valuable tool for performance prediction and in scaling up. Majority of the published models include parameters obtained from fitting experimental data, thus masking their real influence as they are lumped generally. The present work aims to evaluate experimentally some of the most relevant parameters including kinetic constant, partition coefficient in the biofilm, biofilm thickness, superficial area, and effective diffusivity. For the fungal biofilm, all the parameters mentioned above were obtained experimentally; and for the bacterial biofilm, the biofilm thickness and some intrinsic parameters used to obtain the first-order kinetic constant were taken from the literature. These parameters were then incorporated in a mathematical model to describe the steady-state degradation of hexane in bacterial and fungal biofilters operating under continuous mode. Experimentally, the dimensionless partition coefficients (mG) indicated that hexane was 4 and 35 times more soluble in the bacterial (mG = 9.14) and fungal (mG = 0.88) biofilters, respectively, than in water (mG = 30.4). Comparison of model estimates with experimental concentration profiles of the pollutant along the height of the biofilters proves that the first-order limited by reaction model was appropriate to interpret the experimental results with a small error of ~1%.