Evaluation of Biological Trickling Filter Performance for Graywater Treatment in ALS Systems
Abstract
The Bioregenerative Air Treatment for Health system has been proposed for Advanced Life Support (ALS) planetary base applications. The system will be operated as a biotrickling filter to simultaneously treat graywater and waste gas. Preliminary experiments have focused on carbon removal from a graywater simulant. Six bench scale biotrickling filter reactors were constructed and monitored continuously. After a reactor startup phase of 40 days, the average total organic carbon (TOC) removal for reactors packed with Tri-packs\sR packing material was 62%. A second set of experiments was designed to evaluate TOC removal using different packing materials (Bee-cell and Biobale). It was hypothesized that the alternative packing materials would reduce the effects of channeling in the reactors, thus improving TOC removal. However, TOC removal did not significantly improve during the second set of experiments. Of note is that start-up performance was higher in reactors packed with Tri-packs\sR than other reactors. These results indicate that selection of packing material may be an important design parameter for reduction of reactor start-up period and associated off- line time.
Description:7 pages
Date of this Version
July 2005
Identifier
ALS-NSCORT: p48
Publisher Identifier:
SAE Document Number: 2005-01-3023
Publisher
SAE International
ALS NSCORT Project Number
Project 6 - Bio-Regenerative Environmental Treatment for Health-air and water (BREATHe 1)
Project Lead
M. Katherine Banks
Language
English
ALS NSCORT Series
Published Materials
Administrative Contact
Dave Kotterman, dkotter@purdue.edu
Rights
Copyright 2005 SAE International. For additional information please visit the intellectual property section of the publisher's website: http://www.sae.org/about/intelproperty/ or the publisher's home page at: http://www.sae.org
Access
This article is not available through e-pubs. To purchase a copy of this article visit: http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2005-01-3023.This article is available on CD-ROM at Purdue University's Engineering Library.
Comments
Presented at International Conference On Environmental Systems, July 2005, Rome, ITALY, Session: Biological Waste Processing & Microbial Processes II