Experimental Study of Biodegradation of Ethanol and Toluene Vapors

their use as bioreactors for biological waste-gas treatment, is clogging by the formation
of excessive amounts of biomass within the filter pores.
1.2 Research Objectives
In order to drastically reduce the amounts of VOCs such as toluene and ethanol
being released into the air yearly, and to gain more knowledge about ethanol and
toluene removal using a stirred tank bioreactor, the following objectives for this project
have been set:
1) To study ethanol and toluene mass transfer from air into a well-mixed
stirred tank bioreactor (STR);
2) To investigate the effect of ethanol concentration in the aqueous
phase on the rate of oxygen mass transfer;
3) To study the bioremediation of ethanol or toluene contaminated air
using a well-mixed bioreactor.
4) To investigate the bioremediation of mixtures of toluene and ethanol
or benzyl alcohol in a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR)
5) To model the combined mass transfer and bioremediation processes
and predict their behavior.
1.3 Structure of the Thesis
This thesis contains six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the background and the
objectives in this study. Chapter 2 gives a survey of the literature relevant to this study,
which includes the biological and non-biological treatment of VOCs, and describes the
previous work and development in the modeling of VOC treatment. Chapter 3
illustrates the experimental procedures and materials applied in this project. The
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