Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

10-31-1992

Degree Name

Master of Science in Chemical Engineering - (M.S.)

Department

Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Environmental Science

First Advisor

Piero M. Armenante

Second Advisor

Demetri P. Petrides

Third Advisor

Gordon Lewandowski

Abstract

Phanerochaete chrysosporium, a white rot fungus was immobilized on a packed-bed reactor, and was used to mineralize an aqueous stream contaminated with 50 ppm of 2-chlorophenol. Hollow fiber ultrafiltration membranes (for 5,000 daltons and 10,000 daltons molecular weight cut-oft) were utilized to retain the extracellular enzyme resulting from the immobilized fungus in a recirculation loop outside of the reactor.

It was found here that the concentration of proteins (roughly proportional to the extracellular enzyme releasd by the fungus) does not correlate with the rate of degradation of 2-chlorophenol in the system. The protein was concentrated 1.5 fold in the recycle loop by the ultrafiltration unit, but the biodegradation rate did not show any significant improvement.

At least four kinds of protein whose molecular weights were around 13,000 , 16,000, 23,000 and 40,000 daltons were observed in the concentrated enzyme solution using SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.

Extracellular enzyme solution containing a high amount of fungal biomass appeared to have a positive effect on the degradation rate. Mineralization of 2-chlorophenol cannot be obtained without fungal biomass.

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