Methane oxidation in a biofilter (Part 2): A lab-scale experiment for model calibration

Abstract

In this study an experimental study on a biological methane oxidation column presented with the aim to calibrate a mathematical model developed in an earlier study. The column was designed to reproduce at lab-scale a real biofilter trying to consider the more probable landfill boundary conditions. Although the methane oxidation efficiency in the column was lower than the expected (around 35%), an appropriate model implementation showed an acceptable agreement between the outcomes data of the model simulation and the experimental data (with Theil's Inequality Coefficient value of 0.08). A calibrated model allows a better management of the biofilter performance in terms of methane oxidation.

Keywords:

• Biofilters
• landfill gas
• methane emission
• methane oxidation
• methanotrophs microorganisms

Funding

This work was made possible thanks to the collaboration between the University of Basilicata and the Gent University and it fits within the IWT-Tetra project FYBAR [140218] and the LED H2O project supported by Vlakwa.