ABSTRACT
Isoamyl alcohol (IA) (C5H12O) is a VOC widely employed in industrial facilities, for instance, esters from isoamyl alcohol, such as isoamyl butyrate, and acetate are widely used and provide an economic valuable as chemicals for flavoring and fragrance manufacturing. However, when IA released to atmosphere, can lead to the formation of tropospheric ozone and smog, affecting both population health and environment. Thus, the industries have to put into practice control strategies that minimize the impacts of IA emissions. Biofiltration is a cost effective and reliable option in treating VOCs emitted from processes with large off gas volumes but low concentrations.1 Biofiltration of
alcohols has been the subject of many studies and has been applied in industry over a period of many years.2,3 However, isoamyl alcohol biofiltration has been rarely studied and issues such as effects of inlet concentrations and shutdown of the system on efficiency removal of IA remain to be studied. Therefore, the objectives of this study were (a) Evaluation of both the variation of removal efficiency and stability of the biofilter to different inlet concentrations (b) Study the influence of shut-down on the stability of the biofilter.
