A novel bioscrubber for the treatment of high loads of ammonia from polluted gas

This work presents a novel bioscrubber configuration for the treatment of high ammonia loads at short contact times. The biological reactor was designed to work as a moving-bed biofilm rector (MBBR) increasing biomass retention time. This configuration is still unexplored for the treatment of waste gases. Long-term operation of a lab-scale bioscrubber under different inlet concentrations of ammonia (60-570 ppm(v)) and a gas contact time of 4 s was performed to study the system operational limits during 250 days. The effect of the dissolved oxygen concentration on the nitrification rate was also evaluated. Under these conditions, a critical elimination capacity (EC) of 250 NH3 center dot m(-3)center dot h(-1) and a maximum EC of 300 g NH3 center dot m(-3)center dot h(-1) were obtained. The maximum nitrification rate obtained was 0.5 kg N center dot m(-3)center dot day(-1). However, this nitrification rate only was possible to be achieved under partial nitrification. For complete nitrification, the critical nitrification rate was 0.3 kg N center dot m(-3)center dot day(-1). These results confirm that bioscrubber coupled to a MBBR is a good alternative to treat high ammonia loads with remarkable advantages, such as the retention of properly biomass concentration without auxiliary equipment.

Automated summary

This study presents a novel bioscrubber configuration for treating high ammonia loads in a short amount of time. The findings demonstrate that this configuration, coupled with a moving-bed biofilm reactor, effectively removes ammonia and achieves high nitrification rates.