Removal of chlorinated and non-chlorinated alkanes in a trickle-bed biofilter

Increasing restrictions in emissions from a variety of industrial settings demand low cost removal of dilute contaminants in air. Many of these contaminants such as volatile organic components (VOCs) and sulfur compounds are biodegradable and can be removed from air streams via biofiltration. The simplest form of biofiltration consists of compost-based systems. More advanced systems designed for unique contaminants are biofilters with bioactive structured packing operating in trickle-bed mode. These advanced systems rely on a microbial consortium capable of degrading the contaminants of concern and the consortium usually is isolated or enriched from a more complex microbial mixture. This paper describes the use of a trickle-bed reactor seeded with a microbial consortium enriched from a methanotrophic culture. The microbial consortium has been found to degrade chlorinated alkanes as the sole carbon source. Degradation rates of alkane mixtures are presented for the trickle-bed as well as results from batch cultures experiments designed to study degradation of various chlorinated and non-chlorinated VOCs