Nitrifying biofilters oxidize harmful ammonia excreted by fish into less toxic nitrate within recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). Biofilter performance and resulting RAS water quality largely depend on a robust microbiome that effectively converts nitrogenous wastes; however, occasional use of disinfectants may also be necessary to reduce or eliminate specific pathogens. Disinfectants sani...

In urban areas, untreated stormwater runoff can pollute downstream surface waters. To intercept and treat runoff, low-impact or green infrastructure approaches such as using biofilters are adopted. Yet, actual biofilter pollutant removal is poorly understood; often studied in laboratory columns, with variable of viable culturable microbial cell numbers including pathogens. Here, to assess bacte...

An novel diffusion reaction model for the determination of both the steady-state and transient-state behavior of biofilters for waste air biotreatment is developed and discussed. The model considers the reactor to comprise finite sections, for each of which transient mass balances are established and solved by digital simulation. The elimination of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and methyl isobutyl ...

Biofiltration has proved to be a useful system to treat combined sewer overflow (CSO). The study presented uses numerical simulation to detect the critical operating conditions of the filter. The multi-component reactive transport module CW2D was used for the simulation study. Single-event simulations of lab-scale-column experiments with varying boundary conditions regarding the throttle outflo...

Biomass and microbial activity in backwashing processes of a biofilter for tertiary treatment were investigated. The microbial groups revealed new distribution along the biofilter depth after low flow rate backwashing for a short time. Then the start-up process was accelerated by backwashing. The biomass profile and microbial activity profile both varying with depth before and after backwashing...