Removal of chlorinated and non-chlorinated alkanes in a trickle-bed biofilter

Industrial emissions of air contaminated with low levels of volatile organic components (VOCs) continue to be a problem, and the potential for biotreatment of these gases has resulted in an increased interest in this area. This paper describes the use of a trickle-bed reactor seeded with a microbial consortium enriched from a methanotrophic culture. The microbial consortium has been found to degrade chlorinated alkanes in air as the sole carbon source. Degradation rates of alkane mixtures are presented for the trickle-bed as well as results from batch cultures experiments designed to study degradation of various chlorinated and non-chlorinated VOCs. In batch reactors it was found that this particular consortium was capable of degrading straight C₂-C₅ alkanes as well as 1-chloropentane. The results indicate that chloropentane was degraded with stoichiometric release of chloride ions. Is was also shown that the conversion of straight and branched alkanes in a trickle-bed reactor was temperature dependent, indicating a kinetically confined removal efficiency.