Characterization of Effluent from Biological Trickling Filters Treating Graywater in Advanced Life Support Systems
Abstract
Six bench scale biological trickling filter reactors were constructed and operated for simulated advanced life support (ALS) graywater recycling. In an initial evaluation, after a reactor startup phase of 40 days, the average TOC removal for six replicate reactors packed with Tri-packs packing material was 65%. A second set of experiments was designed to assess TOC removal using several types of packing material (B-cell and Biobale). It was hypothesized that alternative packing materials would reduce the effects of channeling in the reactors, thus improving TOC removal. However, the TOC removal was not substantially improved during the second set of experiments. Additionally, recirculation rates were varied and effects to TOC removal were tracked. These modifications also did not result in improved reactor performance. Therefore, a partial characterization of reactor effluent was conducted to determine if the plateau in TOC removal was a result of mass transfer limitations from inefficient lateral dispersion of water through the packing material. The results indicate that degradation by-products may not be readily biodegradable in this system.
Description:10 pages
Date of this Version
January 2007
Identifier
ALS-NSCORT:p49
Publisher Identifier:
Habitation, 11(3), 95-104
Publisher
Cognizant Communication Corporation
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 2007 Cognizant Communication Corporation. For more information please visit the publisher's website at: http://www.cognizantcommunication.com
Access
This article is not available through e-pubs. Purdue Libraries have a hard copy of the journal in the Engineering Library 629.47705 H114.