Biological NOx removal by denitrification process in a jet-loop bioreactor: system performance and model development

Nitrogen monoxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide referred as NOx are one of the most important air pollutants in the atmosphere. Biological NOx removal technologies have been developing to reach a cost-effective control method for upcoming stringent NOx emission standards. The BioDeNOx system was seen as a promising biological NOx control technology which is composed of two reactors, one for absorbing of NO in an aqueous Fe(II)EDTA(2-) solution and the other for subsequent reduction to N-2 gas in a biological reactor by the denitrification process. In this study, instead of two discrete reactors, only one jet-loop bioreactor (JLBR) was utilized as both absorption and denitrification unit and no chelate-forming chemicals were added. In other words, the advantage of better mass transfer conditions of jet bioreactor was used instead of Fe(II)EDTA(2-). The process was named as Jet-BioDeNOx. The JLBR was operated for the removal of NOx from air streams containing 500-3000ppm NOx and the results showed that the removal efficiency was between 81% and 94%. The air to liquid flow ratio (Q(G)/Q(RAS)) varied in the range of 0.07-0.12. Mathematical modelling of the system demonstrated that the removal efficiency strongly depends on this ratio. The high mass transfer conditions prevailed in the reactor provided a competitive advantage on removing NO gas without any requirement of chelating chemicals.