Mass transfer kinetics of polyethylene degradation by bacterial-fungal consortium

Abstract

Understanding the biodegradation rate of polyethylene (PE) plastic waste mediated by bacterial-fungal consortium (BFC) is important to ensure effective design process of the bioremediation technology. The aims of this study were to scrutinize the behaviors of PE plastic degradation mediated by the BFC colonies numerically simulated the experimental data using the modified mass transfer factor models and to analyze the kinetics and mechanisms of internal, external and global mass transfer. The performance of rectangular reactor (RR) to biologically degrade the PE plastic increased up to 61.5% shows an increased efficiency of 55.9% stimulated by the presence of BFC colonies. Trend in the variation of internal mass transfer is almost the same with that of global mass transfer and is far higher than that of external mass transfer (EMT). The rate-limiting step of PE plastic degradation is dependent on the resistance of EMT. The application of BFC colonies aimed to improve the biodegradation rate of PE plastic waste contributes to advancing the future environmental engineering technologies.