Assessing combination treatment, enzymatic oxidation and ultrafiltration in a membrane bioreactor, for 4-chlorophenol removal: Experimental and modeling

An intensive combined treatment for removing 4-chlorophenol, consisting of its oxidation with soluble soybean peroxidase and hydrogen peroxide in a continuous tank reactor, followed by purification of the effluent in an ultrafiltration membrane module in series, is studied for the first time. The influence of the operational variables on the conversion was evaluated, and removal percentages of 90% or more were obtained for some of the conditions assayed. Using a bisubstrate Ping-Pong kinetics for the enzymatic reaction, a design model was proposed for the whole system. The model was solved by numerical calculation and the parameters were obtained by fitting the experimental data by means of an error minimization algorithm. The good results obtained for fitting the experimental data (7.76% typical deviation) confirm the validity of the model.