• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.758-766
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• 2006

A two-stage bioreactor, which consists of a biotrickling filter module and a biofilter module in series, was investigated for the enhanced treatment of a VOC mixture, toluene and methyl ethyl ketone (MEK). Throughout the experiments, the overall inlet loading rate was maintained at approximately $43g/m^3/hr$, but the inlet ratios of the VOCs were modified. The experimental results showed that the different ratios of the VOC mixture resulted in changes of overall removal efficiencies, elimination capacities (ECs) and microbial accumulation on the surface of each packing material. The ratio of inlet toluene to MEK at 50 : 150 was found to be most effective in terms of the overall removal efficiency, because, at this condition, MEK (i.e., the hydrophilic compound) was mostly removed in the biotrickling filter module and the following biofilter module was used to remove toluene. It was also found that when the inlet loading rate of the VOC mixture was serially increased stepwise within short-term periods, the ECs for toluene dropped significantly but the ECs for MEK increased at the ratio of the VOC mixture. These results implied that substrate interaction and/or substrate preferable utilization might have an effect on the biological removal of each compound in the two-stage bioreactor; therefore, the bioreactor should be operated in the condition where the substrate interaction could be minimized in order to maximize overall performance of the two-stage bioreactor.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.669-675
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• 2005

Biological nitrate removal from groundwater was investigated in the biofilters packed with both gravel/sand and plastic media. Removal of particles and turbidity were also investigated in the 2-stage biofilter system consisted of biofilter and subsequent sand filter. In the single biofilter packed with gravel and sand, nitrate removal efficiency was dropped with the increase of filtration velocity and furthermore, nitrite concentration increased up to 3.2 mg-N/L at 60 m/day. Denitrification rate at the bottom layer below 25 cm was faster 8 times than upper layer in the up-flow biofilter. Nitrite build-up, due to the deficiency of organic electron donors, occurred at the upper layer of bed. Besides DO concentration and organic carbon, contact time in media was the main factor for nitrate removal in a biofilter. The most of the effluent particles from biofilter was in the range from 0.5 to $2.0{\mu}m$, which resulted in high turbidity of 1.8 NTU. However, sand filter followed by biofilter efficiently performed the removal of particles and turbidity, which could reduce the turbidity of final filtrate below 0.5 NTU. Influent nitrate was removed completely in the 2-stage biofilter and no nitrite was detected.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.7-16
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• 1999

The objective of this study is to recover the contaminated ditch by using a biofilter filled up with waste-concrete media and vegetation bed. Two systems were tested for elimination of organic compounds, turbidity, nitrogen and phosphate. System 1 is three-stage system which consisted of one biofilter and two vegetation bed, system 2 has three-stage system consisted of one biofilter, one vegetation bed (four bed), and one media trench operated in series. In system 1, HRT of biofilter was 4 hour, and Oenanthe javanica was planted in two vegetation bed. In system 2, HRT of biofilter was varied 2 hours and Persicaria chinensis was planted on the top of the biofilter. And Oenanthe javanica, Hydrocharis asiatica, Salvinia natans were planted in four bed of a vegetation bed and the second vegetation bed of system 1 was rebuilt to a media trench bed. The elimination rate of BOD and turbidity was over 90% in both systems. The mean elimination rates 40~50%(system 1), 30~40%(system 2) for T-N and 40~50% (system 1), 30~40%(system 2)for T-P. T-N and T-P elimination performance of system 1 was a little higher(10%) than that of system 2. Results showed that vegetation bed are not efficient in reducing T-N and T-P. It was considered that HRT of vegetation bed of both systems was much lower(1~2hr) than that of conventional system(5~20days).

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.245-252
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• 2004

Two biofilter tests were conducted under different operating conditions. Test # 1 was performed to treat VOCs generated from a paint booth. The second test was performed to treat VOCs generated from chemical manufacturing processes. The volume of biofilter media was 4.3 $m^3$. For the test # 1, the biofilter was operated for 30 days with 99.9% reduction ratio. Range of temperature of each stage of the biofilter media was measured between $34^{\circ}C$ and $73^{\circ}C$. All the temperatures of stages reduced gradually after the initial dramatic increase. For the test # 2, the biofilter experiment was conducted for 14 days. In this case, the biofilter was installed outdoor and the experiment was performed during wintertime. Therefore, temperature management for the biofilter was needed. Seven-centimeter thick fiberglass insulation and $150^{\circ}C$ steam heating were used to overcome the outside freezing cold weather during test # 2. Temperature of stage # 5 was measured the highest and that of stage # 1 was the lowest. More acclimation time and test period was needed to determine the maximum loading rate.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.265-276
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• 2007

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.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.60 no.1
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• pp.100-115
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• 2022

In this study, integrated hybrid system (IHS) composed of two alternatively-operating UV/photocatalytic reactor (AOPR) process and biofilter processes of a biofilter system having two units (i.e., R_up and R_dn) with an improved design (R reactor) and a conventional biofilter (L reactor) was constructed, and its transient behavior was observed to perform the successful treatment of waste air containing ethanol and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). At the IHS-operating stages of HA1, HA2 and HA3T of reversed feed direction, the AOPR process showed not only ethanol-removal efficiencies of 55, 50 and 45%, respectively, but also H₂S-removal efficiencies of 70, 60 and 37%, respectively. In particular, a drastic decrease of H₂S-removal efficiency at the stage of HA3T was observed due to a doubling of H₂S-inlet concentration fed to AOPR from 10 ppmv to 20 ppmv at the stage of HA3T. The order of ethanol-breakthroughs and the order of the magnitude of ethanol-removal efficiencies at the sampling ports of each unit of R reactor at the stages of HA1, HB1, HA2, HB2, and the first half of HA3T, were reversed, respectively, at the stages of the second half of HA3T and HB3T. In case of H₂S, R reactor did not show H₂S-breakthrough as prominent as the ethanol-breakthrough, but showed the trend similar to the ethanol-breakthrough.

• Proceedings of the Korea Air Pollution Research Association Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.187-188
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• 2004

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

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.281-286
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• 2005

Biofiltration is a biological process which is considered to be one of the more successful examples of biotechnological applications to environmental engineering, and is most commonly used in the removal of odoriferous compounds. In this study, we have attempted to assess the efficiency with which both single and complex odoriferous compounds could be removed, using one- or two-stage biofiltration systems. The complex gas removal scheme was applied with a 200 ppm inlet concentration of ethanol, 70 ppm of acetaldehyde, and 70 ppm of toluene with EBCT for 45 seconds in a one- or two-stage biofiltration system. The removal yield of toluene was determined to be lower than that of the other gases in the one-stage biofilter. Otherwise, the complex gases were sufficiently eliminated by the two-stage biofiltration system.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.511-515
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• 2001

In this paper, we development and operated a two-stage continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR)/trickling biofilter(TBF)system for the long-term continuous treatment of trichloroethylene (TCE) using Burkholderia cepacia G4. In this reactor system. CDTR with cell recycle from TBF was coupled to the TBF for the reactivation of the cells deactivated during TCE degradation. The critical elimination capacity was determined to be 25.3 mg TCE/L day and the reactor has been stably operated for more than 1 months, which clearly represented that CSTR/TBF system can be used for long-term treatment of TCE.