Determination of the Inhibitory Growth Kinetics of Nitrifiers in Batch and Continuous Flow Reactors

摘要

The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of the functional relationship that exists between nitrifying microorganisms and exogenous ammonia concentration. A two-stage continuous culture system which was fed a synthetic ammonia waste devoid in organic carbon was utilized to collect mu versus S data for nitrifiers. These experiments showed that nitrifier growth kinetics should be quantified with a substrate inhibition growth model and not the Monod equation. At this time, no explanation is offered to explain this discrepancy between the measured values of the continuous flow and batch growth constants; however, for field applications, the batch constants imply a more conservative operating range in which to achieve nitrification. It would seem appropriate that, in future work, consideration should be given to investigating this aspect of nitrification kinetics.