The odor emissions from environmental facilities (composting plants, EDARs, rendering…) are a frequent cause of nuisance in their surroundings which are given ever increasing attention. Therefore, stringent ambient air odor level requirements are being implemented worldwide which the conventional treatment technologies (such as scrubbers, conventional biofilters) are often unable to achieve.
In order to overcome these limitations, high capacity odor reduction technologies have been developed (such as Advanced Biofilters or Thermal Oxidation), which are already working in different real applications. In this work, the performance of 4 Advanced Biofilters treating COV and odor emissions has been evaluated.
Daniel Almarcha 1*, Sílvia Nadal 2, Arne Poulsen 3
1. Ambiente y Tecnología Consultores S.A. C\Còrsega 112, local 1. 08029 Barcelona.
2. Sistemas y Tecnologías Ambientales S.A. C/Còrsega 112, local 1. 08029 Barcelona
3. BBK-bio airclean A/S, Linnerupvej 5, Hjortsvang, DK-7160 Tørring, Denmark
E-mail: dalmarcha@sta-at.com. Tel.: +34 932 53 07 40
Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
Academic editor: Carlos N Díaz.
Content quality: This paper has been peer reviewed by at least two reviewers. See scientific committee here
Citation: Daniel Almarcha, Sílvia Nadal, Arne Poulsen, 2015, Evaluation of the VOC and odor depuration efficiency of inorganic bed biofilters installed in WWTPs and biomethanisation plants, III International Conference of Odours in the Environment, Bilbao, Spain, www.olores.org
Copyright: 2015 olores.org. Open Content Creative Commons license. It is allowed to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in olores.org website, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.
ISBN: 978-84-608-2262-2.
Keyword: High Eficiency Biofilters, Biofiltration, Bimethanisation, WWTP, rendering, VOC
Abstract
The odor emissions from environmental facilities (composting plants, EDARs, rendering…) are a frequent cause of nuisance in their surroundings which are given ever increasing attention. Therefore, stringent ambient air odor level requirements are being implemented worldwide which the conventional treatment technologies (such as scrubbers, conventional biofilters) are often unable to achieve. In order to overcome these limitations, high capacity odor reduction technologies have been developed (such as Advanced Biofilters or Thermal Oxidation), which are already working in different real applications. Advanced Biofilters use an inorganic support (as opposed to conventional ones with organic biomedia such as peat or coconut fiber) inoculated with selected microorganisms. Among other improvements, they can achieve higher odor elimination efficiencies, allowing a suitable depuration.
The performance of 4 Advanced Biofilters treating COV and odor emissions has been evaluated. These biofilters were installed in: a) two WWTPs (with emissions of 12.000 m3/h and 1.500 m3/h, respectively) b) an animal and vegetal waste biomethanisation plants (where important odor problems have been successfully minimized with efficiencies >97%) and c) an animal waste biomethanisation plant. Concentrations of odor, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide were mesured at the inlet and the poutlet of each Advanced Biofilter and specieted VOC analyses were carried out by HRGC-MS coupled to different techniques that, in combination, allow to determine the full COV profile in each case. Odoriferous VOC were identified and quantified, including: reduced sulfur compounds, alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, esters, terpenes...
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Knowing the chemical composition of an air sample is a complex challenge because the abundance of substances of different nature and different concentrations. This complexity increases if we want to identify those compounds that cause odors, since many of them are present at very low concentrations, hardly detectable by more conventional instrumental systems. Gas Chromatography (GC) coupled at Mass Spectrometry (MS) GC-MS, is undoubtedly the more robust and consolidated technique in air sample analysis. The more common types of GC-MS are Mass Spectrometers with single quadrupole detector. However, the continuous technological development of analytical instrumentation and especially in Mass Spectrometry allows ever more robust analyses, more sensitive and with improved resolution. In recent years, the interest in GC-TOFMS systems (TOF: time-of-flight) has been increasing, because it involves a faster detector with higher sensitivity and resolution compared to the conventional single quadrupole GC-MS. This paper compares a GCO-TOFMS system recently acquired by Odournet to a more conventional GC-MS quadropolemethod. Both used thermal desorption (TD) for the chemical and sensory analysis of air samples collected in the output of biofilters. The presented results show a clear difference in terms of sensitivity and resolution for GC-TOFMS compared to a conventional GC-MS identifying almost50% more compounds in the same air sample. Additionally an analysis using GCO (GC-sniffing) was performed, showing good complementarity with the results obtained by GC-TOFMS for the same sample.
Abstract