A comparative study in treating two VOC mixtures in trickle bed air biofilters

Two independent parallel trickling bed air biofilters (TBABs) (“A” and “B”) with two different typical VOC mixtures were investigated. Toluene, styrene, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK), and methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) were the target VOCs in the mixtures. Biofilter “A” was fed equal molar ratio of the VOCs and biofilter “B” was fed a mixture based on EPA 2003 emission report. Backwashing and substrate starvation operation were conducted as biomass control. Biofilter “A” and “B” maintained 99% overall removal efficiency for influent concentration up to 500 and 300 ppmv under backwashing operating condition, respectively. The starvation study indicated that it can be an effective biomass control for influent concentrations up to 250 ppmv for biofilter “A” and 300 ppmv for “B”. Re-acclimation of biofilter performance was delayed with increase of influent concentration for both biofilters. Starvation operation helped the biofilter to recover at low concentrations and delayed re-acclimation at high concentrations. Furthermore, re-acclamation for biofilter “B” was delayed due to its high toluene content as compared to biofilter “A”. The pseudo first-order removal rate constant decreased with increase of volumetric loading rate for both biofilters. MEK and MIBK were completely removed in the upper 3/8 media depth. While biofilter depth utilization for the removal of styrene and toluene increased with increase of influent concentrations for both biofilters. However, toluene removal utilized more biofilter depth for biofilter “B” as compared to biofilter “A”.