Treatment of air polluted with xylenes using a biofilter reactor

Biofiltration of air polluted by VOCs is now being recognized by the industrial and research communities to be an effective and viable alternative for the classical environmental technologies. While a number of biological aspects of the biofiltration process are well understood, the effect of certain engineering parameters such as temperature, pressure drop, bacterial count, etc., remained ambiguous especially when several isomers have to be removed simultaneously. In this paper are reported the results of purification of air containing vapors of xylenes in a laboratory-scale biofilter reactor. The latter is a packed bed of peat balls particles specifically designed and produced for this purpose. Three types of micro-organisms strains were scrutinizingly selected and immobilized on the filtering material. Xylenes entering the biofilter at a relatively high inlet load (110 g m(-3) h(-1)) are removed with an elimination capacity of 60 g m(-3) h(-1) (at steady state). The experimental results obtained on the reduction of xylenes were satisfactorily represented by the generalized Ottengraf's model.