Design and control of air scrubbers for animal housing systems
Design and control of air scrubbers for animal housing systemsDesign and control of air scrubbers for animal housing systems - Department of Biosystems Engineering - Ghent University
Design and control of air scrubbers for animal housing systems
Summary
Background
Since 2004, newly built pig and poultry housing facilities in Belgium are legally required to be emission-low with respect to ammonia. This can be achieved by applying air scrubbers that remove ammonia from the outgoing air through absorption in water, followed by chemical and/or biological conversions. Despite the widespread use of chemical, biological and combined air scrubbing systems, there is still insufficient knowledge of process engineering aspects such as removal efficiency, energy consumption, water consumption, and their relationship with process design and process control. Besides, air scrubbers are primarily developed for ammonia reduction, while their performance in terms of odor reduction remains suboptimal. The livestock sector is also responsible for the emission of the greenhouse gases nitrous oxide and methane. Up till now, little is known about the removal of these gases in air scrubbers. Moreover, the formation of nitrous oxide in (biological) air scrubbing systems cannot be excluded.
Research objectives
Optimization of air scrubbers for pig housing facilities in view of minimal ammonia (NH3), odour (H2S) and greenhouse gas (N2O and CH4) emissions :
Focus on process engineering aspects, i.e. process design and control
Investigate relationships between various types of emissions in this respect
Methodology
Construction, calibration and validation of a mechanistic model for chemical and biological air scrubbers
Simulation study in view of process optimization
Full-scale monitoring campaigns
Keywords
waste gas treatment; air scrubbers, ammonia removal; greenhouse gases (N2O)
Project administration
Researcher: Caroline Van der Heyden
Funding: PhD fellowship of Flanders agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT)
