Comparing biofilm models for a single species biofilm system

Abstract

A benchmark problem was defined to evaluate the performance of different mathematical biofilm models. The biofilm consisted of heterotrophic bacteria degrading organic substrate and oxygen. Mathematical models tested ranged from simple analytical to multidimensional numerical models. For simple and more or less flat biofilms it was shown that analytical biofilm models provide very similar results compared to more complex numerical solutions. When considering a heterogeneous biofilm morphology it was shown that the effect of an increased external mass transfer resistance was much more significant compared to the effect of an increased surface area inside the biofilm.

Impact of oxygen mass transfer on nitrification reactions in suspended carrier reactor biofilms

“…3 and 4 reveal, biofilms are often far from homogenous, limiting the interpretive power of the simplified model. Such models are however a useful compromise between modelling output and computational effort [22], can result in a good representation of the overall biofilm reactions at a scale useful for reactor-based studies [21], and are capable of providing results consistent with those of Fig. 3.…”

Aggregation of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria in microbial biofilm on oyster shell surface

“…Presence of vertically arranged microbial aggregates must be taken into account in the models of microbial biofilms (Morgenroth et al 2004;Picioreanu et al 2004). Theoretically, formation of vertical structures in thick microbial biofilms can significantly increase the surface-to-volume ratio (S/V) of the microbial aggregates.…”

Model‐based comparative performance analysis of membrane aerated biofilm reactor configurations

“…This approach can be useful in the analysis of structure-function relationship and the spatial dynamics of microbial populations in stratified biofilms. However this approach is an emerging development and, at present it is generally accepted that 1-dimensional models are a good compromise between accuracy and numerical complexity for many practical situations (Morgenroth et al, 2004). Under most of the conditions in experimental work reported here, oxygen limitations were overcome and glucose was the rate-limiting substrate.…”