BIOTECHNOLOGY BASED ODOR CONTROL: DESIGN CRITERIA AND PERFORMANCE DATA

As neighbouring areas continue to encroach upon wastewater treatment plants, there is an increasing need for odor control to mitigate potential negative offsite odorous impacts. One technology that is gaining widespread acceptance is biotechnology which utilizes the inherent ability of certain micro-organisms to biodegrade offensive odorous compounds. Two main advantages of this form of treatment over other odor control technologies include absence of hazardous chemicals and relatively low operation and maintenance requirementsThe purpose of this paper is to provide information related to odor control design criteria used in sizing/selecting biotechnology-based odor control technologies and provide odor removal performance data obtained from several different biotechnology-based odor control systems.CH2M HILL has collected biotechnology-based odor control performance data over the last several years in order to track continued performance of various biofilters and biotowers over time. Specifically, odor removal performance data have been collected from soil-, organic- and inorganic-media biofilters and inert inorganic media biotowers. Results indicate that biotechnology-based odor control is a viable technology capable of achieving high removal performance for odor and hydrogen sulphide.It is anticipated that the information presented in this paper will be of interest to anyone involved with odor control technology evaluation/selection or design review.