Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Dec 14;13(12):908.
doi: 10.3390/membranes13120908.

Investigating Mass Transfer and Reaction Engineering Characteristics in a Membrane Biofilm Using Cupriavidus necator H16

Burcu Akkoyunlu  1   2 , Sorcha Daly  1   2   3 , Federico Cerrone  2   4   5 , Eoin Casey  1   2
Affiliations

Investigating Mass Transfer and Reaction Engineering Characteristics in a Membrane Biofilm Using Cupriavidus necator H16

Burcu Akkoyunlu et al. Membranes (Basel). .

Abstract

Membrane biofilm reactors are a growing trend in wastewater treatment whereby gas-transfer membranes provide efficient bubbleless aeration. Recently, there has been a growing interest in using these bioreactors for industrial biotechnology using microorganisms that can metabolise gaseous substrates. Since gas fermentation is limited by the low solubilities of gaseous substrates in liquid media, it is critical to characterise mass transfer rates of gaseous substrates to enable the design of membrane biofilm reactors. The objective of this study is to measure and analyse mass transfer rates and reaction engineering characteristics for a single tube membrane biofilm reactor using Cupriavidus necator H16. At elevated Reynolds numbers, the dominant resistance for gas diffusion shifts from the liquid boundary layer to the membrane. The biofilm growth rate was observed to decrease after 260 μm at 96 h. After 144 h, some sloughing of the biofilm occurred. Oxygen uptake rate and substrate utilisation rate for the biofilm developed showed that the biofilm changes from a single-substrate limited regime to a dual-substrate-limited regime after 72 h which alters the localisation of the microbial activity within the biofilm. This study shows that this platform technology has potential applications for industrial biotechnology.

Keywords: Cupriavidus necator; biofilm; mass transfer model; membrane biofilm reactor; oxygen transfer.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A schematic of different nutrient profiles for biofilms formed on (a) a solid surface, (b) a membrane used for aeration, and (c) a membrane used for supplying gaseous substrate.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Membrane bioreactor module used in the study.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Experimental setup schematic diagram for OTR measurements.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Pressure drop method and the dynamic method oxygen transfer rate comparison at the same operational conditions.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Effect of intramembrane pressure on the oxygen transfer rate calculated using pressure drop method.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Mass transfer coefficient for O2 as a function of the Re. Circles represent the experimental values using the pressure drop method and the solid line represents the predicted model.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Average biofilm thickness development over time.
Figure 8
Figure 8
(a) Sloughing of biofilm on single tube after 120 h; (b) regrowth of biofilm on the sloughed areas in the same region after a further 24 h.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Oxygen transfer rate for biofilm thickness with different intra-membrane pressures.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Average oxygen uptake rate measurements at the specified biofilm thicknesses.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Fructose utilisation rate at corresponding biofilm thickness.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Nerenberg R. The membrane-biofilm reactor (MBfR) as a counter-diffusional biofilm process. Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 2016;38:131–136. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2016.01.015. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Casey E., Glennon B., Hamer G. Biofilm development in a membrane-aerated biofilm reactor: Effect of flow velocity on performance. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2000;67:476–486. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0290(20000220)67:4<476::AID-BIT11>3.0.CO;2-2. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Akkoyunlu B., Daly S., Casey E. Membrane bioreactors for the production of value-added products: Recent developments, challenges and perspectives. Bioresour. Technol. 2021;341:125793. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2021.125793. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Esquivel-Elizondo S., Delgado A.G., Rittmann B.E., Krajmalnik-Brown R. The effects of CO2 and H2 on CO metabolism by pure and mixed microbial cultures. Biotechnol. Biofuels. 2017;10:220. doi: 10.1186/s13068-017-0910-1. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Jiang M., Zheng J., Perez-Calleja P., Picioreanu C., Lin H., Zhang X., Zhang Y., Li H., Nerenberg R. New insight into CO2-mediated denitrification process in H2-based membrane biofilm reactor: An experimental and modeling study. Water Res. 2020;184:116177. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2020.116177. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources