A mass balance is essential in the design of a biological treatment system in order to establish the necessary quantity of material inputs into the system and to evaluate the resulting system output(s). A portion of the energy from organic nutrients is converted to end products for energy and another portion is synthesized into cellular materials. While short term selenium reduction can be achieved with less complex nutrients alone, these compounds do not often provide the proper ratio of C:N:P:S and other micro nutrients required for longer term biofilm stability and function. However, to perform mass balance calculations or to apply energetics models to undefined systems various assumptions need to be made to varying degrees. Because many of the variables of environmental systems are unknown the assumptions below have been reduced to the most elementary states.
However, common nutrient components
include the following in amounts balanced for a specific site remediation
application and site water chemistry:
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