A novel fluid dynamic study of the gas-liquid flows in biotrickling filters through CFD simulations and digital imaging techniques
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Date
2022
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Universidad de los Andes
Abstract
Daily, tons of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which negatively affect the environment and human health are emitted into the atmosphere from anthropogenic and natural sources. Biotrickling filtration (BTF) is becoming one of the most promising treatment technologies for odor control. Within the last decades, the treatment of pollutants have been studied, and diverse numerical models for predicting the mass transfer have been intensively developed. However, the current state of the art is mainly based on using the two-film, penetration, and surface renewal theories which do not account for local variations of the fluid velocities, physical properties, or flow regimes. To account for variations on the local physical processes, a detail description of porous media, the multiphase fluid dynamics, and the biomass film is required. This work investigates and extends a three-dimensional
computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model coupled with computerized tomography (CT) with the novel incorporation of a contrast agent as a first attempt to assess the local biofilm formation inside a realistic porous structure used in biotrickling filtration of VOCs. The validation of these models was accomplished in terms of the gas and liquid phase residence time distribution (RTD), and the volumetric mass transfer coefficient. The gas phase RTD was obtained using a novel methodology based low cost MOx sensor; the liquid phase RTD was obtained from a methylene blue pulse method, while the mass transfer characterization was carried out by using the sulphite method. Finally, the column was operated for the treatment of toluene vapours and a contrast agent was added after reaching the steady state in order to obtain a 3D description of the local biofilm formation. These results were used to validate the CFD-CT models. The mean RTD and the normalized variance estimated in the simulation were 43.709 s and 0.326, respectively. Compared with the experimental results, a relative difference of 4.167% for the mean RTD and 32.515% for the normalized variance were found. The computed surface area was available for biodegradation was 0.366 m2. This work results in a validated gas RTD model, whereas for the liquid RTD and mass transfer coefficient the proposed approaches seem promising but requires additional computational resources to assess the steady state behavior. This methodology demonstrated the feasibility to obtain the local biofilm formation but additional imaging procedures are required to reconstruct the closed manifold geometry to use this image as a computational mesh.
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Carreño López, F. A. (2022). A novel fluid dynamic study of the gas-liquid flows in biotrickling filters through CFD simulations and digital imaging techniques (Tesis doctoral, Universidad de los Andes, Chile). Santiago, Chile.