Determination of biodegradation kinetics of bacterial storage organic substrates through electrolytic respirometry

Biodegradation kinetics of bacterial storage substrates can be of prime imp ortance to designing some bioprocesses. as for example biological phosphoru s removal. In this work, kinetic parameters of polyhydroxyalcanoates degrad ation, stored into phosphorus accumulating organisms, were determined throu gh electrolytic respirometry. An experimental procedure, based on anaerobic substrate storage followed by respirometrically-measured aerobic degradati on, was used. A lot of experimental data points were easily obtained but a reference test was neccesary in order to remove interferences of other oxyg en consuming events. Oxygen uptake simulation curves were obtained through a non linear fitting estimation method, using a mathematical model that des cribed substrate consumption and biomass growth and decay. Simulation curve s correlated well with oxygen uptake data, and the parameters obtained (mu (max), K-s, b and Y) were similar to the ones obtained by several authors.