The final goal of this research is to develop a miniaturized botanical biofilter using a wick-typed automatic humidifier for stabilizing soil moisture content (SMC) and purifying indoor air pollutants by the biofilter. This new biofilter equipped with wick-typed automatic humidifier was manufactured as more compacted design removing an absorption tower-typed humidifier compared with the previous big-sized biofilter made in 2015. This study was performed to compare changes of SMCs among floors depending on the number of wicks installed on the humidifier within the novel biofilter, and to compare changes of SMCs and plant growth parameters before and after planting Spathiphyllum wallisii ‘Mauna Loa’ on the biofilter. SMCs among floors depending on the number of wicks were similar, and all regression lines of SMCs showed almost horizontal lines because of long-term stability on SMCs. Comparing plant growth parameters of S. wallisii ‘Mauna Loa’ before planting and at 30 days after planting on the biofilter, all growth parameters were not statistically significant. Thus, SMCs of the biofilter were more stabilized using this humidifying appar

Soil biofiltration is an environmentally-sound technology for elimination of VOCs, odorous and NOx compounds from a low concentration, high volume waste gas streams because of its simplicity and cost- effectiveness. This study investigated the optimal mixture fraction of briquet ash, compost, soil and loess for NOx degradation. Extreme vertices design was used to examine the role of four components on NOx degradation. Under our experimental conditions, 74.5% of NOx degradation was observed, using a model mixture(25% briquet ash, 10% compost, 30% soil and 40% loess) containing 100 ppb of NO. It was shown that experimental design analysis could allow selecting optimal conditions in such biodegradation processes in this study.

Soil biofiltration is an environmentally-sound technology for elimination of VOCs, odorous and NOx compounds from a low concentration, high volume waste gas streams because of its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. This study was performed to evaluate effect of removal of gaseous NOx using a soil and a yellow soil. Over 60% and 48% of NOx from a soil and a yellow soil was removed at the inlet NO concentrations of 423~ 451ppb, respectively. The bio-filter using a soil media was capable of purifying NOx with a different natural processes. Although some of the processes are quite complex, they can broadly be summarized as adsorption into soil pore water, and biochemical transformations by soil bacteria. When the filteration bio-reactor was applied to a soil and a yellow soil, effective NOx removal was obtained for several times and months. These results show that a soil biofilter can be of use as an alternative advanced NOx treatment system.