Biological Systems

'state-of-the-art'

By combining the environmental engineering expertise of the Company with the scientific resources of the prestigeous A.N.Bakh Institute of Biochemistry in Moscow, Sutcliffe Speakman has developed a series of biological treatment systems which provide safe and effective removal of a wide range of commonly used solvent contaminants and odoriferous compounds.

The SC Bioreactor™ and SC Bioscrubber incorporate design features which optimise the biological degradation process incorporating the high standards of engineering associated with the Company's alternative emission control systems.

We offer systems which:

Minimise space requirements
Provide competitive capital cost with low operational costs
Provide a modular approach to system design facilitating the treatment of a wide range of industrial process emission exhausts
Comply with legislation
Provide high efficiency
Do not requuire airflow optimisation which is frequently a necessity for thermal or catalytic oxidation processes to be economic

SC Bioreactor ™

SC Biosystems

Biological Treatment Systems in effect operate as low temperature catalytic oxidisers. Contaminant compounds are contacted with selected microbes either as a single organism or as consortia which have a high degradation efficiency with respect to a wide range of VOC and odour-forming compounds. These compounds are oxidised to carbon dioxide and water by the action of microbial enzymes (biological catalysts) which allow the microbes to use the contaminants as a source of energy for cell growth.

The fully automated nature of SC Biosystems offers:

Minimum maintenance requirements contributing to the very low operating costs of the system
Monitoring and control of essential parameters such as tmperature, pH and nutrient levels ensuring continued high levels of degradation efficiency
high efficiency as a result of the selective organism or consortia

Process Characteristics

In SC Biosystems, VOC-laden air from the process exhaust stream is fed to the system where the biotechnology selection is determined by the VOC type, concentration characteristics and their solubility in water.

The air is then either humidified (SC Bioreactor™) or scrubbed with the liquid phase (SC Bioscrubber) before being contacted with a selected, high efficiency biomass which implements the VOC degradation.

SC Bioreactor ™

This technology can be applied to a wide variety of gaseous phase abatement applications from Formaldehyde degradation to highly hydrophobic solvents such as Styrene and Toluene.

SC Bioreactor™ - Flow Diagram

SC Bioscrubber - Flow Diagram

SC Bioscrubber

The SC Bioscrubber is highly effective for a variety of mixed solvent abatement applications. In applications involving relatively water soluble solvents such as alcohols, esters, ketones, aldehydes and amines).

The contaminants are initially scrubbed into the liquid phase before being fed to one or more second-stage liquid phase reactor vessels for further degradation to carbon dioxide and water.

The solvents are transferred to the aqueous phase prior to their introduction to a Biotricking Filter. This step provides extremely effective buffering of the solvent peaks which are experienced in a wide range of batch or intermittent processes.