The performance of a date palm tree bark-based biofilter inoculated with mixed microbial consortia was investigated for the removal of a benzeneethylbenzene-xylene mixture at a total inlet loading rate range of 38.0 to 612.0 g/m·h. The influences of the inlet pollutant concentration and air flow rate were studied. The maximum elimination capacities attained for benzene, ethylbenzene, and toluen...

A new type of biofilter packed with composite carriers was designed for tertiary denitrification of the secondary effluent with removal of both oxidized nitrogen and suspended solids (SS). At the empty bed residence time of 15 min and organic carbon to nitrate nitrogen (C/NO3-N) ratios of 2, 1.5 and 1 g/g, the removal percentage of NO3-N was 67%, 58% and 36% in the ethanol biofilter, and was 61...

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are powerful data driven modelling tools which has the potential to approximate and interpret complex input/output relationships based on the given sets of data matrix. In this paper, a predictive computerised approach has been proposed to predict the performance of an immobilized cell biofilter treating NH 3 vapours in terms of its removal efficiency (RE) and ...

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are powerful data-driven modeling tools which have the potential to approximate and interpret complex input/output relationships based on given sets of a data matrix. In this paper, a predictive computerized approach is proposed to predict the performance of an immobilized-cell biofilter treating NH3 vapors in terms of its removal efficiency (RE) and eliminatio...

Biofiltration has become a widely accepted technology for the removal of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) which is one of the major odor causing gases present in the air streams of municipal wastewater treatment facilities. In addition to odorous nature, H2S is toxic and corrosive. In this study, a biofilter which uses a novel media was employed in a pumping station which is closely located at the Univer...

A novel biofilter containing organic, bentonite and halloysite media was applied for elimination of microbial pollutants from the air of an industrial hatchery. The concentrations of total mesophilic bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria, thermophilic actinomycetes, dust and bacterial endotoxin were determined in the air of hatchery during 2 months before installation of the biofilter, and during 6 ...

Biofiltration is emerging as a promising cost effective technique for the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) removal from industrial waste gases. In the present investigation a comparative modeling study has been carried out using Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFN) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to predict and optimize the performance of a biofilter system treating toluene (a mo...

To improve biofilter performance, the microbial community of a biofilter must be clearly defined. In this study, the performance of a lab-scale polyurethane biofilter for treating waste gas with low loads of nitrobenzene (NB) (< 20 g m-3 h-1) was investigated when using different empty bed residence times (EBRT) (64, 55.4 and 34 s, respectively). In addition, the variations of the bacterial com...

The present work describes the biofiltration of mixture of n-propanol (as a model hydrophilic volatile organic compound (VOC)) and toluene (as a model hydrophobic VOC) in a biofilter packed with a compost-woodchip mixture. Initially, the biofilter was fed with toluene vapours at loadings up to 175 g m(-3) h(-1) and removal efficiencies of 70%-99% were observed. The biofilter performance when re...

Laboratory scale experiments were performed to evaluate the feasibility of biofilters for the removal of H 2 S from wastewater treatment plant waste air. The effects of changes in air flow rate and contaminant concentration on biofilter performance treating H 2 S odours were also assessed. Compost was used as media in biofilter. The study was carried out in six different phases, by increasing H...