• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.599-606
• /
• 1998

Removal of toluene vapor from airstreams was studied in a biological reactor known as a biofilter. The biofilter was packed porous ceramic inoculated with thickened activated sludge (MLVSS 17,683 mg/L). The lab-scale biofilter was operated for 42 days under various experimental conditions including inlet toluene concentrations and flow rates of the contaminated air streams. Removal efficiency reached up 96.6% after 4 days from start up. Nutrient limitation was proposed as a reason for the decrease in biofilter performence. Biofilter performance decreased substantially, coincident with the buildup of back pressure due to accumulation of excess VSS within the medium bed. Practically, the bed needs to be backwashed when the overall pressure drop is greater than 460.6 Pa at SV (Space Velocity) 100 h-1. Periodic backwashing of the biofilter was necessary for removing excess biomass and attaining stable long -term high removal efficiency The removal efficiency of toluene in the biofilter decreased as the gas velocity and toluene concentration in the inlet gas increased. The maximum elimination capacity of ceramic biofilter could reach up to 444.85 g/m3. hr. When the loading of toluene exceed this critical value, substrate inhibition occurred.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.253-259
• /
• 2008

In this paper an optimum design of a lab-scale biofilter for absorbing ammonia has been proposed and analyzed. This biofilter is using pine chaff and wood shaving as filter materials. It is assumed that the biofilter can be used as a storage tank of swine manure slurry or swine stall. To evaluate the biofilter performance, the ammonia, mainly offensive odor ingredient, was measured. Swine compost was mixed with filter materials in ratio of 1:1 on weight base. Each test continued for 20 days. The ammonia emissions were reduced by 97.9% and 98.3% in case of using biofilter filled with pine chaff and compost, and wood shaving and compost, respectively. The system was tested with and without adding compost. It was found that the biofilter with wood shaving and compost has an ammonia removal efficiency of 94.1%, while biofilter with wood shaving only has 85.3%. The biofilter with wood shaving and compost showed 8.8% higher removal efficiency than that of wood shaving only. By mixing the compost, the number of microorganism was found to be about 2.3 times more than that of wood shaving only. Therefore it can be concluded that adding compost has a positive effect on the formation of microorganism.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.17 no.12
• /
• pp.1976-1982
• /
• 2007

In the current studies, we characterized the degradation of a hot mixture of benzene and toluene (BT) gases by a thermophilic biofilter using polyurethane as a packing material and high-temperature compost as a microbial source. We also examined the effect of supplementing the biofilter with yeast extract (YE). We found that YE substantially enhanced microbial activity in the thermophilic biofilter. The degrading activity of the biofilter supplied with YE was stable during long-term operation (approximately 100 d) without accumulating excess biomass. The maximum elimination capacity ($1,650\;g{\cdot} m^{-3}{\cdot} h^{-1}$) in the biofilter supplemented with YE was 3.5 times higher than that in the biofilter without YE ($470\;g{\cdot} m^{-3}{\cdot} h^{-1}$). At similar retention times, the capacity to eliminate BT for the YE-supplemented biofilter was higher than for previously reported mesophilic biofilters. Thus, thermophilic biofiltration can be used to degrade hydrophobic compounds such as a BT mixture. Finally, 168 rDNA polymerase chain reaction-DGGE (PCR-DGGE) fingerprinting revealed that the thermophilic bacteria in the biofilter included Rubrobacter sp. and Mycobacterium sp.

• KSBB Journal
• /
• v.14 no.5
• /
• pp.550-560
• /
• 1999

There have been many research efforts on biofilter modeling including Ottengraf et al. who derived a model equation for the concentration profile of pollutants(e.g., VOCs) in the biolayer and solved their outlet concentration of the waste gas stream through biofilter. However, for most of research works done so far, the effects to explain the effect of adsorption of organic particles to medium(i.e., adsorbent) have been ignored. In this work biofilter modeling accompanying process lumping has been proposed and the theoretical effect of adsorption property of the medium, on the biofilter performance of eliminating organic components in waste gas stream, is intensively discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.23 no.E2
• /
• pp.74-81
• /
• 2007

Feasibility test for a biofilter was performed to treat VOCs. The applied loading rate to the biofilter was calculated between 60 to $3,700\;kg\;COD/m^3$. Trimethyl-pentene and trimethyl-hexene were the two most dominant compounds and they occupy about 85 percent. During the acclimation period, it is desirable for a biofilter to receive relatively lower VOCs concentration and flow rate, until it can adjust to new substrate and operational environment. Temperature at various points inside the biofilter reactor was observed with more than 23 temperature sensors. With steam heating, temperatures of the top sections of the media were greater than those of bottom sections. Without steam heating, intermediate stages generally had higher temperature measurement than those of bottom and top stages. Because the pH values for different biofilter materials vary significantly, measurement of the pH for the mixture of different combinations of biofilter materials is necessary. Based on the types and brands of media, the measured pH ranged from 5.38 to 9.10. The range of measured pH of different mixtures with perlite, compost, saw dust, peat moss, limestone, vermiculite was 7.05 to 8.62.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.51 no.1
• /
• pp.136-143
• /
• 2013

In this study, both transient behaviors of a biofilter system with improved design and a conventional biofilter were observed to perform the treatment of waste air containing malodor and volatile organic compound (VOC). Their behaviors of removal efficiency and treated concentration of malodor and VOC were compared each other. During 1st~7th stages of improved biofilter system operation it was observed that the order of treated ethanol concentration at each sampling port was switched due to the difference of microbe-population-distribution in spite of the difference of biofilter effective height. However, at 8th stage of its operation, the order of treated ethanol concentration at each sampling port was consistent to the order of biofilter effective height at each sampling port. The same was applied to the case of hydrogen sulfide, even though the difference of switched treated-hydrogen sulfide-concentrations was less than that of switched treated-ethanol-concentrations. The ethanol-removal efficiency of the biofilter system with improved design was ca. 96%, which was greater by 2% than that of the conventional biofilter. The transient behavior of treated hydrogen sulfide concentration of both biofilters were similar to each other. However, the concentration of hydrogen sulfide treated by the biofilter system with improved design was observed lower than that by the conventional biofilter. The hydrogen sulfide-removal efficiency of the biofilter system with improved design was higher by ca. 2% than that of the conventional biofilter. Therefore, the hydrogen sulfide-removal efficiency of the biofilter system with improved design was observed to be enhanced by the same as its ethanol-removal efficiency.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.51 no.1
• /
• pp.127-135
• /
• 2013

In this study, both pressure drop and microbe-population-distribution were observed while running a novel biofilter system with improved design in which the biofilter system is composed of two, upper and lower biofilters with both equal feed-rates of up-flow and down-flow, respectively. Then they were compared with the pressure drop and microbe-population-distribution observed in a conventional biofilter of the same effective volume with unidirectional flow. The pressure drop-value of biofilter system with improved design turned out to be less at the incipient stage of run or steady-state long term operation by more than 40~80% of that of the conventional biofilter. The microbe-population-distribution was observed to be lower and higher at higher and lower column of biofilter, respectively, for both the conventional biofilter and the biofilter system with improved design. The microbe-media of waste-tire crumb showed much greater CFU counts than GAC. In the biofilter system with improved design, the $bottom{\rightarrow}up$ feeding of waste air showed greater microbe-population growth than the $top{\rightarrow}down$ feeding for both the microbe-media of waste-tire crumb and GAC. However, it was more prominent for the former than the latter. Comparing the microbe-population-distributions of both of the conventional biofilter and the biofilter system with improved design, the microbe-population of latter was distributed ca. 15 and 2.5 times more evenly for GAC and the media of waste-tire crumb, respectively, than that of former.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.50 no.1
• /
• pp.155-161
• /
• 2012

A dynamic biofilter model was suggested to integrate the effect of biofilter-medium adsorption capacity on the removal efficiency of volatile organic compound (VOC) contained in waste air. In particular, the suggested biofilter model is composed of four components such as biofilm, gas phase, sorption volume and adsorption phase and is capable of predicting the unsteady behavior of biofilter-operation. The process-lumping model previously suggested was limited in the application for the treatment of waste air since it was derived under the assumption that the adsorbed amount of VOC equilibrated with biofilter-media would be proportional to the concentration of dissolved VOC in the sorption volume of biofilter-media. Therefore a Freundlich adsorption isotherm was integrated into a robust biofilter process-lumping model applicable to a wide range of VOC concentration. The values of model parameters related to biofilter-medium adsorption were obtained from the dynamic adsorption column experiments in the preceding article and literature survey. Furthermore a separate biofilter experiment was conducted to treat waste air containing ethanol and the experimental result was compared with the model predictions with various values of Thiele modulus (${\phi}$). The obtained value of Thiele modulus (${\phi}$) was close to 0.03.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.18 no.E2
• /
• pp.79-84
• /
• 2002

The objective of this study was to investigate the biodegradation of ethylene in an activated carbon biofilter inoculated with immobilized microbial consortium. The biofilter performance was monitored in terms of ethylene removal efficiency and carbon dioxide production. The biofilter was capable of achieving ethylene removal efficiency as much as 100% at a residence time of 14 min and an inlet concentration of 290 ppm. Under the same conditions, carbon dioxide with a concentration of up to 546 ppm was produced. Its was found that carbon dioxide was produced at a rate of 87 mg day$\^$-1/, which corresponded to a volume of 0.05 L day$\^$-1/. During operation with an inlet ethylene of 290 ppm, the maximum elimination capacity of the biofilter was 34 g of C$_2$H$_4$m$\^$-3/ day$\^$-1/. The biofilter could provide an attractive treatment technology for removing ethylene, an extremely volatile and slowly adsorbed compound.

• KSBB Journal
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.115-120
• /
• 2002

Biofiltration is a bioprocess treating volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in order to convert the VOCs to harmless products. This review on biofiltration is intended to provide an engineering concept such as removal efficiency, maximum load, elimination capacity and so on. Besides, modeling concept of biofilter is also supplied for designing biofilter system. Quantitative data generated in our research group is shown to explain the engineering concept as well as the modeling idea.