The removal of high concentrations of 1-butanol in an air stream was evaluated with a biotrickling filter for potential application to an industrial off-gas. Experiments were conducted on a laboratory-scale system, packed with perlite, in a co-current downward mode with constant recycling of water. The performance was monitored for different inlet concentrations and empty bed residence times du...

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments prompted an increased urgency to find new ways to treat airstreams containing volatile organic compounds, which affect the nitrogen photolytic cycle and help produce ground-level ozone, hazardous air pollutants, and odorous air emissions such as hydrogen sulfide. Scientists at the New Jersey company Envirogen have adapted traditional biofiltration technology to...

A pilot-scale reactor, consisting of a set of two-stage-in-series biotrickling filters, an influent gas supply system and a liquid recirculation system, was utilized to treat ammonia in an airstream. Each stage of the biotrickling filter was constructed from a 20 cm × 200 cm (inner diameter × height) acrylic column packed with cokes (average diameter = 3.0 cm, specific area = 150 m/m) of 125 cm...

Odour nuisance has become a major environmental issue worldwide with increasing public demand for better control of odorous emissions from municipal wastewater treatment facilities, chicken farms, chemical plants and other industrial works. Odour annoyance affects the population directly and there is a trend that more and more people are becoming less tolerable with obnoxious odour emissions. B...

Acid scrubbers and biotrickling filters have been developed for ammonia (NH3) removal at pig and poultry houses in The Netherlands over the last 20 years to prevent acidification and eutrophication of soils. Because of growing suburbanization, odor removal is increasingly considered important as well. In this review, we report the results of the on-farm research on full-scale operated scrubbers...

The effect of some important operation parameters, as pH, pollutant load and composition of the nutrient media, on the biodegradation of a mixture of formaldehyde and methanol in a gas-phase biotrickling filter was studied. pH proved to affect the degradation of both compounds at moderately acidic values. Replacing ammonium with nitrate as nitrogen source in the liquid solution led to a slight ...

A Sporothrix variecibatus-inoculated biotrickling filter (BTF) was examined for styrene removal, without and with the addition of silicone oil, at different empty bed residence times. The highest elimination capacities (ECs) were 172.8 (without silicone oil) and 670 g m(-3)h(-1) (with silicone oil), respectively, corresponding to a 4-fold improvement in presence of oil. The addition of silicone...