Application of a pore network model to a biofilter treating ethanol vapor

Pore volume clogging due to biomass growth from the biodegradation of volatile organic compounds and other pollutants has significant implications for biofilter operation. As the larger pores in the biofilter narrow and the smaller pores fill, airflow through the biofilter is restricted, and headloss increases. The biomass surface area available for contaminant biodegradation is reduced, resulting in diminished removal efficiencies. As biomass clogging increases, flow channeling may occur, further reducing treatment efficiency. Biofilter designers try to overcome the effect of biomass clogging by making beds larger to reduce loading, which is costly. Better insight into the phenomena that occur during biofilter clogging is, therefore, clearly needed. In this paper the effect of biomass accumulation on the removal efficiency and pressure drop of a bench-scale biofilter treating an air stream containing ethanol vapor was investigated using a pore network model. In the model, the biofilter pore structure is described by a cubic lattice of cylindrical pores of uniform length and varying diameters following an experimentally determined pore size distribution. The model assumes that at the pore level biomass growth depends on the oxygen diffusion in the biofilm and on oxygen-limited Monod-type kinetics. Unlike prior biofilter models, this model accounts in detail for phenomena that occur at the pore level, and for the impact of the pore network structure on biofilter behavior. It accounts for the biomass growth in the biofilter and its interaction with the airflow distribution, and explains its influence on the headloss and the ethanol removal efficiency.