Biofilter for treating toluene vapors: Performance evaluation and microbial counts behavior

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  School of Chemical Engineering and Energy, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1625v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biotechnology, Environmental Sciences
Keywords
Air treatment, Biofilter, Toluene, Inlet loading rate, Empty bed residence time
Copyright
© 2016 Zhu et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Zhu Y, Li S, Luo Y, Ma H, Wang Y. 2016. Biofilter for treating toluene vapors: Performance evaluation and microbial counts behavior. PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1625v1

Abstract

A lab-scale biofilter packed with mixed packing materials was used for degradation of the toluene. Three gas flow rates, i.e. 0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 m3/h, were tested for inlet concentration ranging from 0.2 to 1.2 g/m3. Removal efficiencies ranging from 45.6 to 97.3% and elimination capacities ranging from 4.95 to 61.07 g/(m3 h) were observed depending on the inlet loading rates. Maximum elimination capacity of 35.95 g/(m3 h) occurred at inlet loading rate of 45.87 g/(m3 h). The lowest layer always had highest elimination capacity. Carbon dioxide concentrations and the microbial cell counts for bio-degraders followed toluene elimination capacities. Results of this study indicated that mixed packing materials could be considered as a potential biofilter carrier, with low pressure drop (less than 84.9 Pa/m), for treating air streams containing VOCs.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.

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