Additional Determinations in a Potential Support Material for Toluene Biofiltration: Adsorption and Partition in the Nutrient Solution

A. Barona, A. Elías, I. Cano, A. Uriarte and J. Artetxe

Abstract
This paper studies the adsorption properties in wet and dry conditions of a potential support material for toluene biofiltration. The material was able to retain 2.5 times less toluene when the contaminated airflow was fed either water-saturated or devoid of moisture, which is an indication of the relative exposed surface area accessible for adsorption. The correlation coefficients between Freundlich-modelled and experimental values (R2 = 0.9 8) suggest that, within the tested range of toluene concentrations, this model is valid to describe adsorption equilibrium and that n exponent is near 1 when natural material is used as adsorption bed. In addition, the air-liquid partitioning constant values of toluene in water and in a nutrient solution used for biomass acclimation were determined. The constant obtained for the nutrient solution ranged from 0.167 to 0.224 for liquid toluene mass concentration (γL) values ranging from 10.3 to 36.2 g m–3 at 298 K. By contrast, the constants in water varied from 0.221 to 0.277 for γL values ranging from 7.86 to 27.6 g m–3.

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Keywords
toluene, adsorption, partitioning constant, biofilter support material