Phenomenological model of fungal biofilters for the abatement of hydrophobic VOCs

Vergara-Fernández, Alberto; Hernández, Sergio; Revah, Sergio

doi:10.1002/bit.21989

Cited by 34 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The gas phase biofilters were similar to those reported previously by Vergara-Fernández et al (2008) and consisted of a 1 m cylindrical glass column with an inner diameter of 0.07 m (Fig. 1).…”

Section: Biofilter Systemsmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…In the control experiment biofilter B1, the fungus was grown with gaseous n-hexane as only carbon source (Vergara-Fernández et al, 2008), in B2 it was initially grown with glycerol (10 g L À1 in the liquid medium), in B3 with 1-hexanol (10 g L À1 in the liquid medium), and in B4 with a mixture of wheat bran (30% w/w) and perlite. Given the nature of wheat bran it was not possible to establish equivalence with other carbon sources.…”

Section: à3mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Elimination of hydrophobic volatile organic compounds in fungal biofilters: Reducing start‐up time using different carbon sources

Vergara-Fernández

Hernández

Revah

2010

Biotech & Bioengineering

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Fungal biofilters have been recently studied as an alternative to the bacterial systems for the elimination of hydrophobic volatile organic compounds (VOC). Fungi foster reduced transport limitation of hydrophobic VOCs due to their hydrophobic surface and extended gas exchange area associated to the hyphal growth. Nevertheless, one of their principal drawbacks is their slow growth, which is critical in the start-up of fungal biofilters. This work compares the use of different carbon sources (glycerol, 1-hexanol, wheat bran, and n-hexane) to reduce the start-up period and sustain high n-hexane elimination capacities (EC) in biofilters inoculated with Fusarium solani. Four parallel experiments were performed with the different media and the EC, the n-hexane partition coefficient, the biomass production and the specific consumption rate were evaluated. Biofilters were operated with a residence time of 1.3 min and an inlet n-hexane load of 325 g m(-3) (reactor) h(-1). The time to attain maximum EC once gaseous n-hexane was fed was reduced in the three experiments with alternate substrates, as compared to the 36 days needed with the control where only n-hexane was added. The shortest adaptation period was 7 days when wheat bran was initially used obtaining a maximum EC of 160 g m(-3) (reactor) h(-1) and a critical load of 55 g m(-3) (reactor) h(-1). The results were also consistent with the pressure drop, the amount of biomass produced and its affinity for the gaseous n-hexane, as represented by its partition coefficient.

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Section: Biofilter Systemsmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: à3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Elimination of hydrophobic volatile organic compounds in fungal biofilters: Reducing start‐up time using different carbon sources

Vergara-Fernández

Hernández

Revah

2010

Biotech & Bioengineering

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“…Bacteria are the group of microorganisms generally utilised in these systems. Whilst fungi have been shown to have very high removal capacity for some VOCs due to the large surface area created by aerial growth (Kennes and Veiga 2004;Vergara-Fernández et al 2008), the resistance to air flow created by fungal mycelia restricts their utility in microbial biofiltration systems, although biofilter packing material technology (e.g. Gutiérrez-Acosta et al 2012) may effectively address this problem in future developments.…”

Section: Microbial Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Indoor Air Pollutants Through Biotechnology

Torpy

Irga

Burchett

2014

Biotechnologies and Biomimetics for Civil Engineering

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Indoor environmental quality is a growing concern, as populations become more urbanised and people spend a greater proportion of their lives indoors. Volatile organic compounds outgassing from synthetic materials and carbon dioxide from human respiration have been major indoor air quality concerns. The growing use of energy-efficient recirculating ventilation solutions has led to greater accumulation of these pollutants indoors. A range of physiochemical methods have been developed to remove contaminants from indoor air, but all methods have high maintenance costs and none reduce CO 2 , which some biological systems can achieve effectively with the additional benefit of the selfsustaining capacity of biological material. Bacteria are the major organisms involved in bioremediation of VOCs, although green plants may help sustain the bacterial community and add the capacity for CO 2 reduction to a system. The main problems faced by indoor air bioremediation systems is the extremely low concentrations of VOCs present indoors and the possibility of microbial release. Simple, passive biofiltration with potted green plants may be the simplest and most effective system for indoor air cleaning, but further research into substrate types, ventilation, and the microbiology of biodegradation processes is required to reveal their ultimate potential. Purely microbial systems have potential for the bioamelioration of high concentrations of toxic gases, but not without significant maintenance costs. Despite many years of study and substantial market demand, a proven formula for indoor air bioremediation for all applications is yet to be developed.

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“…Therefore, a set of complicated phenomena such as absorption, diffusion, adsorption, and finally biodegradation affects the performance of a BF [4]. Large numbers of studies have formulated mathematical models to illustrate the BF performance on the basis of different parameters which led to solve complex nonlinear equations of momentum, heat, and mass transfer, simultaneously [5][6][7][8]. Moreover, experimental determination of these parameters such as biological kinetic constants, diffusion of pollutants in biofilm, oxygen consumption and CO 2 production rates, probable change in the elemental composition of the attached biofilm, and mass transfer coefficients are so difficult, whereas, various points of views are discussed in literatures about batch or continuous determination of them [9][10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biofiltration of Hexane Vapor: Experimental and Neural Model Analysis

Zamir

Halladj

Saber

et al. 2011

CLEAN Soil Air Water

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Research Article Biofiltration of Hexane Vapor: Experimental and Neural Model AnalysisBiofiltration is a commonly practiced biological technique to remove volatile compounds from waste gas streams. From an industrial view-point, biofilter (BF) operation should be flexible to handle temperatures and inlet load (IL) variations. A compost BF was operated at different temperatures (30-458C) and at various inlet loading rates (ILR; 8-598 g m À3 h À1 ) under intermittent loading conditions. Complete removal of n-hexane was observed at 30 and 358C at ILRs up to 330 g m À3 h À1 . Besides, 20-75% of the pollutant was removed at 408C, corresponding to the different ILs applied to the BF. Increasing the temperature to 458C decreased the removal efficiency (RE) significantly. A feed forward neural network was used to predict the RE of BF with temperature and ILR as the input variables. The experimental data was divided into training (2/3) and test datasets (1/3). The best structure of neural network was obtained by trial and error on the basis of the least differences between predicted and experimental values, as ascertained from their coefficient of regression (R 2 ) values. The modeling resultsshowed that a multilayer network with the topology 2À10À1 was able to predict BF performance effectively with R 2 -value of 0.995 for the test data. The results from this study showed the predicting capability of ANNs which can be considered as an alternative for conventional knowledge-based models.

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Phenomenological model of fungal biofilters for the abatement of hydrophobic VOCs

Cited by 34 publications

References 28 publications

Elimination of hydrophobic volatile organic compounds in fungal biofilters: Reducing start‐up time using different carbon sources

Elimination of hydrophobic volatile organic compounds in fungal biofilters: Reducing start‐up time using different carbon sources

Reducing Indoor Air Pollutants Through Biotechnology

Biofiltration of Hexane Vapor: Experimental and Neural Model Analysis

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