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Bioremediation for Sustainable Environmental Cleanup

Figure 3.6. Login screen of the Reactor App.

Data on adsorbents, adsorbates and pre-loaded adsorbent-adsorbate systems are needed to start

the task. The software works through cards for each adsorbate (Figure 3.7) or adsorbent (Figure 3.8)

that are pre-filled. These cards include the physicochemical characteristics of both the adsorbate and

the adsorbent. These data can be obtained from literature (in the case of adsorbates, legislation or

guide levels are included) or empirically and are used for the implementation of the models included

in the software.

Figure 3.8 shows the cards corresponding to the systems or adsorbate-adsorbent pairs studied.

In these cards, the data obtained in batch tests such as qmax and Langmuir constant, equilibrium time,

reaction order and kinetic constant, among others are loaded.

Figure 3.9 shows the screen where the information to calculate the first approximation of the

volume of a continuous reactor must be loaded.

Reactor App also allows uploading experimental data from continuous reactors (by uploading a

CSV or XLSX file), both from fluid dynamic tests in which inert material is used as the reactor filler

and additionally tests with the reactor filled with the adsorbent under study. By difference of the

areas under the breakthrough curve (Saralegui et al. 2022), in both cases the amount of contaminant

removed by the reactor can be calculated (Figure 3.10).

With the experimental data of the breakthrough curves, Reactor App is able to perform the

estimation of different models used as approximations and return the characteristic fitting parameters

of each one together with the regression coefficient R². The models that are possible to apply are

Thomas, Bohart-Adams and Yoo-Nelson, explained above, and an example from the Reactor App

return page is shown in Figure 3.11.