Biodegradation kinetics of benzene, toluene and xylene compounds: microbial growth and evaluation of models.

The biodegradation kinetics of BTX compounds (benzene, toluene, and xylene) individually and as mixtures was studied using models with different levels of sophistication. To compare the performance of the unstructured models applied in this work we used experimental data obtained here and some results published in the literature. The system description was based on the material balances of key components for batch operations, where the Monod and Andrews models were applied to predict the biodegradation of individual substrates.