Determination of kinetic and stoichiometric parameters in anoxic moving bed biofilm reactor by pulse respirometry

In this paper, anoxic pulse respirometry was explored in the determination of denitrification kinetic's bio-constants under batch conditions in the presence of plastic support material occupying 7.5% of the effective volume. The biological reactor was run for 48 days as a denitrification continuous Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR) with intermittent changes to batch mode in order to realize pulse respirometry. The nitrates, nitrites and COD responses to nitrate and CODs pulses were analyzed. It was noticed that the attached biomass to the support was relatively low which was attributed to the water solution temperature which varied from 24-27°C [22] as well to possible detachments. It was therefore assumed that the MBBR could be considered as a representative batch reactor during pulse respirometry where different bio-kinetic constants such as the maximum specific denitrification growth rate μ