Environmental Science & Technology 2012-11-20

Enhanced reduction of Fe(II)EDTA-NO/Fe(III)EDTA in NO(x) scrubber solution using a three-dimensional biofilm-electrode reactor.

Ya Zhou, Lin Gao, Yin-Feng Xia, Wei Li

Index: Environ. Sci. Technol. 46(22) , 12640-7, (2012)

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Abstract

A promising technique called chemical absorption-biological reduction (CABR) integrated approach has been developed recently for the nitrogen oxides (NO(x)) removal from flue gases. The major challenge for this approach is how to enhance the rate of the biological reduction step. To tackle the challenge, a three-dimensional biofilm-electrode reactor (3D-BER) was utilized. This reactor provides not only considerable amount of sites for biofilm, but also many electron donors for bioreduction. Factors affecting the performance of 3D-BER were optimized, including material of the third electrode (graphite), glucose concentration (1000 mg·L(-1)), and volume current density (30.53 A·m(-3) NCC). Experimental results clearly demonstrated that this method significantly promotes the bioreduction rate of Fe(II)EDTA-NO (0.313 mmol·L(-1)·h(-1)) and Fe(III)EDTA (0.564 mmol·L(-1)·h(-1)) simultaneously. Experiments on the mechanism showed that Fe(II)EDTA serves as the primary electron donor in the reduction of Fe(II)EDTA-NO, whereas the reduction of Fe(III)EDTA took advantage of both glucose and electrolysis-generated H(2) as electron donors. High concentration of Fe(II)EDTA-NO or Fe(III)EDTA interferes the bioreduction of the other one. The proposed methodology shows a promising prospect for NO(x) removal from flue gas.