Abstract
The primary objective of this study is to investigate the effect of media on the performance of biofilters. Two types of experiments were carried out in this study. The first type of experiment used a biofilter with the media composed of three different packing materials of compost, peatmoss and GAC(granular activated carbon), whereas the second type used a biofilter with the media composed of compost only. It was found from the two experiments that the biofilter composed of compost, peatmoss and GAC showed better performance than the one composed of compost only with the higher toluene removal efficiency, lower pressure drop, and more uniform media moisture content. In particular, no appreciable media compression occurred for the biofilter composed of compost, peatmoss and GAC, whereas significant media compression took place in the biofilter composed of compost only. As suggested by the other researchers, it is likely that GAC may be responsible for the higher toluene removal efficiency in the case of the biofilter composed of mixed media especially for the early stage of biofiltration due to its adsorption capability of toluene of such high concentration as 300 ppm. It was also regarded that GAC may playa major role in maintaining lower media pressure drop in the case of the mixed media than the media with compost only because of its mechanical strength resisting to the compression. Nonetheless, further refined experiments may need to draw more accurate conclusion. The results of the additional test run using the same mixed media showed that the biofilter system using the mixed media can be consistently operated for more than 100 days very stably despite sudden change in operating conditions of temperature and flow rate.
