Air-stripping effects on cell growth with volatile substrates

The removal of substate molecules from aerobic microbial cultures is due to both consumption by microorganisms and stripping by the air stream. The air stripping component can be described by a constant parameter for low concentrations of volatile substrates. This air stripping parameter was found to have a value of 0.0033 h(-1) for phenol molecules in a typical fermentation situation. The determination and inclusion of this constant is important for modeling microbial growth. For Pseudomonas putida growing on phenol, it is shown that air stripping is responsible for all of the original decline in phenol concentration. Further, the kinetic inhibition constant is sensitive to both the value of the air stripping parameter and the value of the initial concentration of bacteria. The experimental data for Pseudomonas putida growing on phenol was fit by a non-linear, least squares technique to isolate the inhibition constant between 100 and 600 ppm.