In this research, an analytical framework to solve nonlinear equations of biodegradation of n-butanol removal in biofilters is constructed using Taylor-series method. This is aimed at getting the correct and computationally efficient predictions of n-butanol in the biofilm and gas phases to aid in the design and optimization of biofiltration processes. The equations of governing diffusion-reaction are obtained using mass-balance principles and finally calculated using Taylor series to form iterative equations which start converging toward closed-form solutions. This approach reduces the amount of computation and has the same quality predictions as standard numerical models, which is desirable in design, scaling, and parametric investigations of biofilters. The quality of the analytical findings is very good as compared to the available numerical solutions thus validating the method. The framework is not always limited to n-butanol but it can be applied to other volatile organic compounds and other biofilter configurations, which can be the foundation of future studies on gaseous pollutant biofiltration.
Devi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.