Development and application of kinetic models for the primary biodegradation of non-ionic surfactants Núñez Olea, Josefa The growing concern for the environment is promoting the use of surfactant products from renewable sources such as fatty alcohol ethoxylates. The high production and use of these products implies the need to develop models that enable predictions of their behaviour in biodegradation processes. The biodegradation tests were carried out according to the OECD 301 E test for ready biodegradability. In this work, kinetic models of general application to surfactant biodegradation are developed, both for substrates that do not support growth and for those that do, considering a residual substrate concentration as not being biodegraded. The models were applied to three commercial non-ionic surfactants, fatty alcohol ethoxylates with different carbon-chain lengths and degrees of ethoxylation, also analysing the initial surfactant concentration. 2024-12-20T07:16:00Z 2024-12-20T07:16:00Z 2009-08-01 journal article https://hdl.handle.net/10481/98306 10.1016/j.cej.2009.01.030 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ embargoed access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier