Performances, mechanisms, and strategies for methane removal via gas biofiltration

Highlights

	● Mechanisms and removal pathways of CH4 via biofiltration were reviewed and discussed.
	● Interactions between methane and coexisting substances were examined and described.
	● Applications and inspirations of CH4 biofiltration were put presented and analyzed.
	● Strategies for enhanced removal of methane by biofiltration are proposed.

Abstract

Control of methane emissions has attracted widespread attention in the context of worldwide efforts to alleviate the greenhouse effect. Biofiltration, a green and cost-effective treatment process, has been widely used for the purification of methane. Currently, there is still a lack of comprehensive information on methane biofiltration. Herein, the state-of-the-art development trends of methane removal via biofiltration were comprehensively reviewed and commented on. First of all, this article reviewed the mechanisms of methane removal and the possible degradation pathways in biofilters. Secondly, the removal characteristics of single methane, methane mixed with volatile organic compounds or gaseous inorganic compounds by biofiltration, were summarized and discussed. Thirdly, the practical applications of methane biofiltration were summed up and some inspirations were proposed. Finally, the effective measures to improve the performance of methane biofiltration were put forward, and corresponding insights and future research directions for methane biofiltration were provided. This article can provide references for the practical applications of methane biofiltration and the mitigation of greenhouse effects.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Biofilter / Methane / VOC / Greenhouse effect / Carbon reduction

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CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement

Xin Wu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing. Chunping Yang: Conceptualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing. Yan Lin: Conceptualization, Resources, Validation, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing. Xiang Li: Resources, Writing-review and editing. Shaohua Wu: Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing. Piotr Rybarczyk: Methodology, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing. Jacek Gębicki: Conceptualization, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing.

Conflict of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province of China (No. 2024A1515010837), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52200093, 52270064, 51978178, and 51521006), the Program for Innovative Research Teams of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes of China (No. 2021KCXTD043), the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Hunan Province of China (No. 2023RC3120), the Startup Fund of Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology (China) (No. 2018rc63), and the Postgraduate Scientific Research Innovation Project of Hunan Province (China) (No. QL20230078).

Data Availability Statement

The data will be made available on request.

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