Determination of the hydraulic residence time in a trickling biofilter filled with organic matter

Biofiltration process using peat as media has been shown to be efficient for the treatment of agroindustrial, chemical and municipal effluents. However, determining the hydraulic retention time of this process is difficult due to many factors. Generally tracer techniques are used, but they measure the molecular retention time instead of the hydraulic retention time; and depending on the case, the results can be wrong. In order to contribute to solving this problem, the objective of this research was to find a trustworthy and adequate technique to determine the hydraulic retention time for a process using a very adsorbent filter bed material (peat). An overview of the hydraulic behaviour of a peat bed filter related to their particular structural composition is presented. Then, based on these characteristics, two different techniques to determine the hydraulic retention time were developed and tested. The first, an indirect modified tracing technique and, the second, a direct one which determines the volume of liquid in treatment into the filter bed through the establishment of a relation between the volume of porosity and the volume of empty spaces (or not occupied by liquid) into the filter bed. The results obtained showed that the proposed techniques gave similar results and proved adequate.