Bio trickling and Bio scrubber applications to control odor and air pollutants: Developments, implementation issues and case studies

Abstract

Air pollution has become more and more of an environmental and medical concern. The effects of air pollution on all life forms have become better understood, and there fore legislation controlling the emissions of air pollutants(VOC s, toxics and odor) has proliferated. In recent years, biological techniques have been applied more frequently for industrial applications, because they eliminate many of the drawbacks of classical physical-chemical techniques (van Groenenstijn and He sselink 1993;Devinny et al. 1999; Kennes and Veiga 2001). The disadvantages of the traditionally used air-treatment techniques are high energy costs (incinerators), theuse of chemicals (chemical scrubbers), and the formation of waste products(incinerators, scrubbers, activated carbon).Conventional organic mediumbio filters have beenoftenapplied to treat verydifferent types of airstreams.Many of these installations have been successful,but there also have been a number of setbacks. Conventional bio filters haveserious limitations though in treating polluted airstreams that contain compoundsthat are difficult to degrade biologically, or which result in a build-upof intermediates or acid degradation products from the biological degradation process. Bio scrubber and bio trickling technologies have made it possible to extend the application of biological waste gas treatment technology. Better process control, higher degradation capacities, lower operational costs, and smaller footprints are some of the advantages of bio trickling and Bio scrubber installations. In this chapter, the advantages and limitations are discussed. Recentdevelopments and issues related to implementations of bio trickling and Bio scrubberreactors are discussed and examples of full-scale applications are given. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.