Protein Degradation in Aquatic Environments

Abstract

Organic matter degradation in aquatic environments has been studied for a long time by sanitary engineers and geologists concerned with predicting the rate of this process, either in polluted rivers, in sewage treatment plants or in sediment. Models have been established for this purpose, and most of them derive from the early Streeter and Phelps (1925) model where the rate of organic matter degradation is simply assumed to be proportional to the organic load. In order to take into account the differing susceptibilities to bacterial attack of the various classes of compounds making up the overall organic matter, Jorgensen (1978), Berner (1980) and Westrich and Berner (1984) suggested the use of “multi G’s-first order kinetics,” considering a number of organic matter fractions, each with its own first-order degradation constant.