Biomass accumulation is a major obstacle for long-term, stable operation of biotrickling filters treating high loadings of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Clogging reduces pollutant removal and increases the pressure drop in biotrickling filters. Several options exist to remove excess biomass or to slow down the accumulation rate, but so far none has succeeded in combining a high VOC removal...

The design and the construction of an actual 8.7-m3 pilot/full-scale biotrickling filter for waste air treatment is described and compared with a previous conceptual scale-up of a laboratory reactor. The reactor construction costs are detailed and show that about one-half of the total reactor costs ($97,000 out of $178,000) was for personnel and engineering time, whereas approximately 20% was f...

A biotrickling filter with Nitrosomonas europaea immobilized on polyurethane foam is proposed for treating ammonia contaminated air. The effect of the surface velocity of the recirculation medium, nitrite concentration, pH, empty bed residence time (EBRT) and ammonia inlet load on the NH(3) removal process was investigated. The total amount of biomass immobilized on the carrier was 3.29+/-0.52 ...

A detailed analysis of a biotrickling filter treating trichloroethene (TCE) vapors anaerobically is presented and discussed. The biotrickling filter relies on mixed cultures containing bacteria from the genus Dehalococcoides that reductively dechlorinate TCE to ethene. After about 200 days of steady operation, as biomass in the packed bed increased, a partial loss in treatment performance was o...

This study presents the operation of a biotrickling filter when treating a monochlorobenzene (MCB) contaminated gaseous emission. Treatment dynamics were characterised by exposing the reactor to various MCB Organic Loads (OL). The use of different growth support materials, namely limestone, sand, ceramic and PVC pall-rings, was investigated. Limestone led to dogging of the reactor due to the ac...

Removal of hydrogen sulfide from waste and energy-rich gases is required, not only because of environmental health and safety reasons, but also because of operational reasons if such gases have to be used for energy generation. A biotrickling filter for the removal of ultra-high concentrations of H2S from oxygen-poor gases is proposed and studied in this work. Two laboratory-scale biotrickling ...

Gas film mass transfer coefficients (kGat , kGaw) and liquid film mass transfer coefficients (kLaw) for packing materials used in biofilters and biotrickling filters for air pollution control were determined experimentally. Lava rock, polyurethane foam cube (PUF), Pall ring, porous ceramic beads, porous ceramic Raschig rings and compost–woodchips mixtures were investigated. The experiments were...

Biological treatment is a promising alternative to conventional air-pollution control methods, but thus far biotreatment processes for odor control have always required much larger reactor volumes than chemical scrubbers. We converted an existing full-scale chemical scrubber to a biological trickling filter and showed that effective treatment of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the converted scrubber ...

Biogas biodesulfurization by an anoxic biotrickling filter packed with open pore polyurethane foam at the laboratory scale (packed volume 2.4L) has been studied. The biotrickling system was operated for 620 days with biogas supplied continuously and two nitrate feeding regimes were tested (manual and programmed). Biomass immobilization was carried out under the manual nitrate feeding regime and...