Katie Mowat - Thesis Defense Announcement
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Announces the Master’s in Environmental Engineering Thesis Defense of Katie Mowat (Donesky)
“BIOFILTRATION APPLICATION AT ETHANOL PLANTS: ANALYSIS OF AQUEOUS STREAMS AND TREATMENT OF VOCS”
Advisors: Professor Ashraf Aly Hassan and Professor Bruce Dvorak
"The United States used 14.5 billion gallons of the biofuel ethanol in 2019. Ethanol is produced primarily (82%) in dry mill corn ethanol plants where volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are produced during fermentation and the drying of distiller gains. Traditional treatment methods use a large quantity of water or natural gas. Thus, a bio-trickling filter (BTF) is being considered as an innovative alternative treatment method. A lab-scale BTF was used in this study to look at the effect of ethanol concentration and temperature on the treatment of a hazardous air pollution (HAP) mixture. This thesis also looks at the aqueous and gas testing results of select aqueous streams from two different ethanol plants. These results can give insight on how the streams can be reused or further treated to meet final product needs.”
9:00 AM
July 22, 2021
Room: W150 NH and via
Zoom: (https://unl.zoom.us/j/99007836505)