Medina, Victor F., Todd S. Webster and Joseph Devinny. Under review by Environmental Technology.
Microorganisms destroy pollutants after they are removed from the air stream by adsorption.
During operation, the biofilter medium will tend to dry, inhibiting biological activity. The drying effect may be mitigated by adding water, either by prehumidifying the inlet stream or by spraying water directly on the media. For routine performance at moderate and steady loads, the direct water addition had little effect on performance. However, when a spike of pollutant was intentionally applied to a column, the column with water directly added had no breakthrough, while the control column did. Water addition affected the microbial populations.