Biomass as Packing Material for Biofiltration of Gaseous Streams

Biofiltration has quickly become an effective choice for treating odorous air streams as well as air emissions because of the improving reliability of these systems and also because of its reputation as a type of green technology with no hazardous residue and no utilization of chemicals. As odorous air flow through the system, the air compounds are oxidized by the microbes growing on the biofilter media. Four local biomass packing materials to be used as support media in biofiltration are analyzed and compared to evaluate their suitability according to physical and chemical characteristics. The characteristics of the packing material in biofilters is an important factor for the success in the biofiltration’s construction and operation. A set of six different parameters were selected to test the selected packing materials such as porosity, spesific density, surface area, water holding capacity, moisture content, pH and purchase cost. Since biofiltration success generally depends on a combination of several parameters either from the system or the materials choosen, a procedure was defined to compare packing materials suitability under common situations in biofiltration. The results indicate that, out of the packing materials studied, palm kernel shell and wood chip were ranked on top of several parameter rankings and showed as a significantly better packing materials when parameters were combined.