Environmental performance of an industrial biofilter: Relationship between photochemical oxidation and odorous impacts.

Environmental performance of an industrial biofilter: Relationship between photochemical oxidation and odorous impacts. Environ Res. 2020 Jan 23;183:109168 Authors: Reyes J, Gutiérrez MC, Toledo M, Vera L, Sánchez L, Siles JA, Martín MA Abstract Biological techniques are widely used to treat gaseous streams derived from waste treatment plants. The generation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is one of the principal pollution sources in composting facilities from which nuisance odours are released. In addition, the generation of photochemical smog with other gases such as NOX can produce ozone at ground level due to their photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP). In this work, the performance of an industrial biofilter was evaluated from an environmental point of view. Specifically, this study evaluated the potential impact in terms of photochemical oxidation and odour emission derived from composting in a vessel under four different aeration conditions. Gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOFMS) was used to perform the chemical characterisation of the gaseous streams, while dynamic olfactometry was used to carry out the sensorial analysis. A total of 95 compounds belonging to 12 different families of VOCs were selected. Principal component analysis revealed the influence of each VOC family on each impact category and explained 88% of the total variance. Multivariate regression was used to study the corr...
Source: Environmental Research - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Environ Res Source Type: research