Biofilter Model for Robust Biofilter Design: 2. Dynamic Biofilter Model

A dynamic biofilter model was suggested to integrate the effect of biofilter-medium adsorption capacity on the removal efficiency of volatile organic compound (VOC) contained in waste air. In particular, the suggested biofilter model is composed of four components such as biofilm, gas phase, sorption volume and adsorption phase and is capable of predicting the unsteady behavior of biofilter-operation. The process-lumping model previously suggested was limited in the application for the treatment of waste air since it was derived under the assumption that the adsorbed amount of VOC equilibrated with biofilter-media would be proportional to the concentration of dissolved VOC in the sorption volume of biofilter-media. Therefore a Freundlich adsorption isotherm was integrated into a robust biofilter process-lumping model applicable to a wide range of VOC concentration. The values of model parameters related to biofilter-medium adsorption were obtained from the dynamic adsorption column experiments in the preceding article and literature survey. Furthermore a separate biofilter experiment was conducted to treat waste air containing ethanol and the experimental result was compared with the model predictions with various values of Thiele modulus (). The obtained value of Thiele modulus () was close to 0.03.