Modeling the influence of microbial growth on the hydraulic properties of porous media

Abstract

Pore blocking dominates hydraulic conductivity in the processes of solute transport. Recent biological experiments have shown that the growth of microorganisms in these pores influences their hydraulic characteristics. This study proposes a microbial clogging kinetic model to examine the effects of bio-clogging based on Logistic microbial growth model. The results show that microbial clogging mainly depends on dead microbial cells rather than living microbial cells, and the contribution of dead microorganisms to microbial fouling is about 99%. The final clogging results depend on depends on the average microbial volume Vm, the maximum environmental carrying capacity K, the volume reduction coefficient of dead microorganism kd, the microbial growth rate r and the cell decomposition time Td. Compared with the experiments results, the R2 of the proposed model is exceeds 90%, which means that the model can well reflect the process of microbial clogging.