A Computational Approach to Incorporate Decelerating Log Phase in the
Growth Kinetics of Indigenously Isolated Bacterial Strain Bacillus
subtilis MN372379 During the Degradation of Congo Red Dye
Abstract
Detailed knowledge of the bacterial growth kinetics is essential to
ensure optimized biodegradation of the wastewater at high volume
processing. A potential azo-dye degrading bacterium (Bacillus subtilis
MN372379) was isolated from the sludge-waste nearby carpet-dyeing unit
at Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh, India. The isolated bacterial strain was
used to decolorize simulated wastewater containing Congo Red dye in a
batch reactor. This study primarily aimed at developing a parametric
bacterial growth model to account the decelerating bacterial growth,
caused by toxic metabolites present in the decelerating log phase, which
was generally ignored in the previous studies. Specifically, this study
proposed a computational approach to determine a time-averaged specific
bacterial growth rate for the entire sigmoidal log phase, instead of
using the conventional exponential growth kinetic which is valid only in
the initial part of accelerating log phase. The nature of metabolite
inhibition in the decelerating part of log phase was also determined and
found to be non-competitive. Further, the computed time-averaged
specific bacterial growth rate was incorporated into three substrate
inhibition models to account for both, the metabolite- and substrate-,
inhibitions, and their corresponding kinetic parameters were determined.
Finally, the initial dye concentration and inoculum size were optimized
to yield maximum dye utilization rate.