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

Comments

Presented at International Conference On Environmental Systems, July 2005, Rome, ITALY, Session: Biological Waste Processing & Microbial Processes II

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.

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