Bio filter technology

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the impact of air pollution on human health and the environment has received an increasing amount of attention from the public, the government, and industry. As a result of increasingly stringent regulations governing releases of volatile organic compounds (VOC s), hazardous air pollutants(HAP s), and reduced sulfur compounds (RSC s), research into developing new air pollution control technologies and improving existing technologies has grown dramatically. Currently, bio filtration of air emissions is gaining attention as a low-cost, energy-efficient, and effective treatment for emissions containing low concentrations of biodegradable compounds. It has been usedextensively for over the last 40 years for odor control. During the past few years, it has been used increasingly in North America for treating high-volume airstreams containing low concentrations of a range of pollutants. The term bio filter is generally applied to the reactor for conversion of gas phase chemical compounds to common biological degradation products ofcarbon dioxide, water, and mineral salts. In the reactor, contaminated air ispassed through a bed of porous and moist medium, and the contaminants aresorbed to the medium surface where they are degraded by micro organisms in the medium. Microbial reactions have been used throughout the 20th century to treat wastewater and solid waste, but it is only since 1950 that this technique has been employed to treat waste gases (Pomeroy 1957).This chapter provides an overview of the fundamentals and applications involved in bio filtration technology. Some of the basic terminology and method to characterize system performance are described, followed by a discussion of the key operating parameters and what is known about the microbiology of these systems. The chapter ends with a discussion of some of the applications of bio filters, and where some future work is required. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.