Estimation of the Michaelis-Menten parameters for reductive dechlorination of chlorinated solvents

We present a rigorous mathematical study a non-competitive model employing the Michaelis-Menten kinetics for description of a reductive dechlorination of chlorinated ethenes. We start with the qualitative and quantitative analysis of a single equation and we describe the relevant properties of a solution. We also perform the sensitivity study with respect to the biotransformation reaction rates. This is afterwards applied to the whole reaction network. The theoretical results enable the use of regularization techniques for the recovery of missing reaction rates. These are determined from the measurements of concentration profiles of all chemical species using minimization of a suitable error functional. This technique is demonstrated on two numerical examples. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.