Biodegradation of phenol by calcium-alginate immobilized @@ Bacillus cereus in a packed bed reactor and determination of the mass transfer correlation

Biodegradation of phenol by calcium-alginate immobilized @@ Bacillus cereus AKG1 MTCC9817 and @@ B. cereus AKG2 MTCC9818 in a re-circulated up-flow packed bed reactor was performed. The observed biodegradation rate constants were calculated at various flow rates by assuming first-order biodegradation kinetics. The effect of external mass transfer combined with intrinsic biodegradation reaction on the observed biodegradation was investigated by the correlation between the Colburn factor (@@ JD) and Reynolds number (@@ NRe  ) as JD=KNRe−(1−n) with values of @@ K and @@ n in the range of present experimentation as 1.34 and 0.35, respectively.