Multiscale Modelling Approach for a Fungal Biofilter Unit for the Hydrophobic Abatement of Volatile Organic Compounds

Currently, biofiltration has become a viable and potential alternative for the treatment of airstreams with low concentrations of hydrophobic volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can employ to this end, diverse microorganisms (such as, bacteria, fungal or microbial consortia, etc.) growing a biofilm. Usually, the design, analysis and scale-up of this kind of units have been mainly done via experimental approach, which can be costly in terms of time and resources. Therefore, the objective of this work is to introduce mathematical model for the prediction and simulation of a fungal biofilter through a systematic mathematical multiscale modeling approach, thereby describing the involved phenomena at different time and dimension levels of abstraction (from macroscale to microscale level).