Dynamics of a periodically pulsed bio-reactor model with a hydraulic storage zone (Q657764)

The authors study a periodically pulsed bio-reactor model of a flowing water habitat with a hydraulic storage zone in which no flow occurs. Two microbial populations compete for a nutrient in the habitat. Advective and diffusive transport occur only in the flowing zone, not the storage zone. Exchange of nutrient and populations between the two zones occurs by Fickian diffusion. This results in a \(6\times 6\) system of nonlinear parabolic equations with initial and boundary values. The full system can be reduced to a limiting system based on a conservation principle. Sufficient conditions are obtained for the persistence of a single population and the coexistence of two competing populations for the limiting system. Then the theory of chain transitive sets is used to lift the dynamics of the limiting system to the full system.