Reduction Kinetics of Manganese Dioxide by Geobacter Sulfurreducens and Associated Biofilm Morphology in a Flow-Through Reactor

Abstract:

Biogeochemical interactions have been investigated extensively to characterize natural nutrient cycling and predict contaminant transport in surface and groundwater. Dissimilatory metal reducing bacteria, many of which form biofilms, play an important role in reducing a variety of metals in these systems. It has been shown that biofilm morphology is impacted by flow conditions, but there has been little work that explores how reduction kinetics change as a result of these different morphologies. Different flow rates may affect physical properties of the biofilm that influence the rate of substrate reduction. We introduce an approach to calculate changes in Monod kinetic parameters while simultaneously evaluating biofilm morphologies under different flow rates. A vertical, cylindrical flow cell with removable glass slide sections coated in manganese dioxide (electron acceptor) was used to grow a biofilm of Geobacter sulfurreducens with acetate as the electron donor under both high (50 mL/hr) and low (5 mL/h) flow rates. The removable sections allowed for visualization of the biofilm at different time points with a confocal microscope, and quantification of the biomass on the surface using a combination of a protein assay and image analysis. Data collected from the experiments was used to determine yield and specific growth rate at the different flow rates, and a simple numerical model was used to estimate the half saturation constant of manganese dioxide at both flow rates. A smaller half saturation constant was estimated at the higher flow rate, indicating that the biofilm was more efficient in the high flow system, but a strong correlation between morphology and the faster reduction rate was not observed. Monod kinetic parameters are important for the development of accurate nutrient cycling and contaminant transport models in natural environments, and understanding how they are impacted by flow will be important for the development of new, improved models.