Degradation of trichloroethylene in a coupled anaerobic-aerobic bioreactor: Modeling and experiment

This work studied trichloroethylene (TCE) degradation in a single stage coupled anaerobic-aerobic granular biofilm reactor. The co-existence of aerobic methanotrophic and anaerobic methanogenic bacteria in this reactor was expected to allow for a combination of reductive and oxidative pathways of TCE degradation and result in mineralization of TCE. First, the anaerobic-aerobic coupling was simulated using a mathematical model. Simulations of TCE degradation under different operating conditions suggested the superiority of the coupled reactor system over either aerobic or anaerobic process alone. Next, the approach of combining aerobic-anaerobic TCE degradation was validated in a reactor experiment. The experiment confirmed degradation of TCE due to the co-existence of methanogenic and methanotrophic populations in a single reactor.