Morral E, Dorado AD, Gamisans X. A novel bioscrubber for the treatment of high loads of ammonia from polluted gas.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL 2023;
30:8698-8706. [PMID:
35262894 DOI:
10.1007/s11356-022-19065-6]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2021] [Accepted: 02/01/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
This work presents a novel bioscrubber configuration for the treatment of high ammonia loads at short contact times. The biological reactor was designed to work as a moving-bed biofilm rector (MBBR) increasing biomass retention time. This configuration is still unexplored for the treatment of waste gases. Long-term operation of a lab-scale bioscrubber under different inlet concentrations of ammonia (60-570 ppmv) and a gas contact time of 4 s was performed to study the system operational limits during 250 days. The effect of the dissolved oxygen concentration on the nitrification rate was also evaluated. Under these conditions, a critical elimination capacity (EC) of 250 NH3·m-3·h-1 and a maximum EC of 300 g NH3·m-3·h-1 were obtained. The maximum nitrification rate obtained was 0.5 kg N·m-3·day-1. However, this nitrification rate only was possible to be achieved under partial nitrification. For complete nitrification, the critical nitrification rate was 0.3 kg N·m-3·day-1. These results confirm that bioscrubber coupled to a MBBR is a good alternative to treat high ammonia loads with remarkable advantages, such as the retention of properly biomass concentration without auxiliary equipment.
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