Removal of hydrogen sulfide from an air stream using UV light

Sammanfattning: Volatile sulfur compounds are cause of concern because, when present in high concentrations, they constitute a danger for health because of their strong toxicity. Furthermore, for low concentrations, they are often a cause of complaint, because of their low odor threshold. In this context, the purpose of this Thesis is to evaluate a new technology for the abatement of sulfur-based malodorous compounds. The investigated technology consists in the use of ozone generating low-pressure UV mercury lamps, operating at room temperature. Hydrogen sulfide is often found in industrial processes, (e.g. WWTPs (Wastewater Treatment Plants), leather production, sewage treatment, garbage disposal, etc). Moreover, it presents both a very high toxicity a low odor threshold. Thus, due to its high representativeness of the case, hydrogen sulfide was chosen as reference compound for the purposes of this project. In order to evaluate a wide range of cases, several experiments using different residence times, humidity contents and inlet concentrations of the pollutant were conducted. The obtained results show that this technology generally presents discrete conversion efficiencies, although not suffcient to be used as freestanding process. For this reason, a pretreatment is revealed to be necessary. The best conversion efficiency was obtained for low flow rates and high moisture content. At the end of the project, as side-study, a possible pretreatment using an adsorbent bed constituted by granular ferric oxide was evaluated.