Date of Award

1992

Publication Type

Doctoral Thesis

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Keywords

Engineering, Sanitary and Municipal.

Supervisor

St. Pierre, C. C.,

Rights

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Abstract

Horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is a robust enzyme that catalyzes a wide variety of reactions involving aromatic compounds. The enzyme once activated by hydrogen peroxide initializes polymerization reactions of different aromatic compounds. The products of reaction are water insoluble and can be separated easily. Since HRP is relatively inexpensive and readily available, the process has great promise for removing aromatic compounds from industrial wastewaters which are not effectively removed by conventional biological or physico-chemical wastewater treatment methods. Removal of 4-chlorophenol with HRP was investigated in three immobilized enzyme reactor systems using HRP: cellulose filter, nylon balls and nylon tubing. The enzyme catalyzed a different number of reactions in each case. Nylon balls provided turnover numbers up to 52 000 in batch reactor operation. For cellulose disks it varied from 6 000 to 13 000 and was proportional to substrate concentration. For nylon tubing the maximum turnover number was 12 400. The chemical reaction in all cases was extremely fast and achieved more than 95% removal efficiency when enzyme activity was not limiting. Initial reaction rates exhibited hyperbolic kinetics. The reaction was mainly mass transfer controlled at contaminant concentrations less than 1 mM. Two mathematical models, based on bulk phase concentration, were developed to simulate the batch reactor systems. The single parameter model was extended to predict continuous flow reactor system behaviour. All the models were tested using the data collected in this study.Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1992 .S544. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-12, Section: B, page: 6524. Supervisors: C. C. St. Pierre; N. Biswas. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1992.

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