ABSTRACT
Beginning with the early development of biofilters, efforts were directed toward modeling. The difficulty in modeling a biofilter lies in the complexity of the fundamental processes. Biofiltration involves many physical, chemical, and microbiological phenomena. In order to simulate biofilter effectiveness with varying operating conditions, a model must include these various phenomena. Further, a number of unknowns or difficulties exist in the definition of equations for a biofilter model. Biofilter modeling started in the early 1980s and was based on earlier work on submerged biofilm models. The models assumed basic mass balance principles, simple reaction kinetics, and a plug flow air stream. The chapter reviews different biofilter models: Ottengraf's model, Devinny and Hodge model, Shareefdeen et al. model, Shareefdeen and Baltzis model with patches of biomass, Deshusses et al. model, Choi et al. model, Johnson and Deshusses model, and Govind et al. model.
