New Green Technology for Effective Odor Removal

Groundbreaking new technology proven to remove both organic and inorganic odorous compounds from wastewater treatment plant and pumping stations airstreams, without the use of hazardous chemicals or activated carbon, is now available to operators of facilities in the Middle East. Developed by BioAir Solutions the EcoBase® synthetic media is specifically designed to provide uniform and optimised mass transfer of odorous compounds under a controlled microenvironment.

This enables the growth and proliferation of specific bacterial species that effectively remove wastewater treatment plant odours. The proprietary design, which includes engineered air flow channels to control mass transfer and eliminate plugging, also eliminates media density variations that often result in spotty performance of competing media types. The EcoBase media has a life expectancy of over 20 years. According to Dr Louis le Roux, president of BioAir, the EcoBase media allows for a controlled steady-state process for long-term, consistent, uniform performance in removing odours at a very low cost.

“Based on several years of research and development, we have perfected a biology-based solution that can handle both organic and inorganic odours,” said Dr le Roux. “Plus, because of the increased bacterial population and uniform air flow distribution designed into the EcoBase media, we can treat higher odour loadings in less time. This benefits our customers since the reactor sizes we provide are much smaller than that of competing technologies.”

BioAir’s Dr le Roux noted that the EcoBase technology has had ‘real world’ application at several municipal wastewater treatment plants in the United States and Canada. BioAir’s president said the EcoBase media was shown to remove more than 99.9% of hydrogen sulphide odours, including 95% of all odours.

“The key to the EcoBase media is uniformity,” added Dr le Roux. “We have developed a uniformly available surface area, uniform flow distribution properties and uniform biomass contact time. The result is uniform performance in removing wastewater treatment odors, without the use of hazardous chemicals or carbon. Both of these competing technologies have very high operating costs, and those using carbon must ultimately have the media replaced and disposed of properly.”