Abstract In this work, a horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was immobilized onto diatomites by covalent bonding. Results indicated that the enzyme loading increased when diatomites were modified with (3-Aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) and glutaraldehyde. The immobilization was confirmed by SEM/EDX, XRD, DRIFT, and TGA analysis. Higher HRP concentrations of the immobilization solution and immobilization time had also a positive effect on the enzyme loading. Orange II (OII) adsorption onto diatomites and oxidative catalytic activity was evaluated. Results demonstrated that diatomites had a low OII adsorption capacity. However, under the presence of hydrogen peroxide, the dye removal was highly increased due to the catalytic activity of the immobilized HRP. A mathematical model that adequately describes the simultaneous adsorption and enzymatic oxidation of OII in batch tests was developed. Finally, immobilized diatomites were tested in the decolourization reaction of Orange II in a fixed-bed column reactor. Column results demonstrated that the immobilized HRP remained active for at least 12 h during three sequential OII removal tests.

Abstract In this work the aerobic degradation of phenol (PH), catechol (CA), resorcinol (RE), hydroquinone (HY) and of the binary mixtures PH+CA, PH+RE, PH+HY by phenol-acclimated activated sludge was studied. Single substrate experiments show a Haldane-type dependence of the respiration rate on PH, RE and HY, while CA corresponded to the Monod model. Binary substrate experiments demonstrated that the presence of a second substrate only affected the kinetics, but not the stoichiometry of the oxidation of the compounds tested. While CA inhibited the oxidation of PH, PH inhibited the oxidation of RE and HY. A mathematical model was developed to represent the aerobic biodegradation of the phenolic compounds tested. The agreement between the proposed model and the experimental data indicates that the proposed model can be useful for predicting substrate and dissolved oxygen concentrations in bioreactors treating phenolic wastewaters.

This work deals with the calculation of the uncertainty of the exogenous respiration rate (Rex) and the total oxygen consumed (OCT) derived from a single open respirometric profile. Uncertainties were evaluated by applying a linear error propagation method. Results show that standard deviations (SD) of Rex and OCT depend not only on the SD of the dissolved oxygen (σC) and kLa (σkLa), but also on the SD of the derivative term (dC/dt) of the oxygen mass balance equation (σb). A Monte Carlo technique was employed to assess σb; a power law expression for the dependence of σb as a function of σC, the time window (t w) and the sampling rate (Δt) was proposed. The equations obtained in the present work are useful to calculate suitable conditions (e.g., biomass concentration, kLa) that minimize the coefficient of variation corresponding to Rex and OCT.