Volatile sulfur compounds are cause of concern because, when present in high concentrations, they constitute a danger for health because of their strong toxicity. Furthermore, for low concentrations, they are often a cause of complaint, because of their low odor threshold. In this context, the purpose of this Thesis is to evaluate a new technology for the abatement of sulfur-based malodorous compounds. The investigated technology consists in the use of ozone generating low-pressure UV mercury lamps, operating at room temperature. Hydrogen sulfide is often found in industrial processes, (e.g. WWTPs (Wastewater Treatment Plants), leather production, sewage treatment, garbage disposal, etc). Moreover, it presents both a very high toxicity a low odor threshold. Thus, due to its high representativeness of the case, hydrogen sulfide was chosen as reference compound for the purposes of this project. In order to evaluate a wide range of cases, several experiments using different residence times, humidity contents and inlet concentrations of the pollutant were conducted. The obtained results show that this technology generally presents discrete conversion efficiencies, although not suffcient to be used as freestanding process. For this reason, a pretreatment is revealed to be necessary. The best conversion efficiency was obtained for low flow rates and high moisture content. At the end of the project, as side-study, a possible pretreatment using an adsorbent bed constituted by granular ferric oxide was evaluated.

Poor heat and mass transfer inside the adsorbent bed of thermal wave adsorption cooling cycles cause low system performance and is an important problem in the adsorbent bed design. In this thesis, a new adsorbent bed is designed, constructed and tested to increase the heat and mass transfer in the adsorbent bed. The adsorbent bed is constructed from a finned tube in order to enhance the heat transfer. Additionally, the finned bed geometry is theoretically modeled and the model is solved time dependently by using Comsol Multiphysics software program. The distributions of dependent variables, i.e. temperature, pressure and amount adsorbed, are simulated and plotted in Comsol Multiphysics. In the model, the dependent variables are computed by solving the energy, mass and momentum transfer equations in a coupled way and their variations are investigated two-dimensionally. The results are presented with multicolored plots in a 2-D domain. Furthermore, a parametric study is carried out for determining factors that enhance the heat and mass transfer inside the adsorbent bed. In this parametric study, the effects of several design and operational parameters on the dependent variables are investigated. In the experimental study, the finned tube is tested using natural zeolite-water and silica gel-water working pairs. Temperature, pressure and amount adsorbed variations inside the adsorbent bed at various operating conditions are investigated. After that, a second adsorbent bed with a larger size is constructed and tested. The effect of the particle diameter of the adsorbent is also investigated. The experimental and theoretical results are compared.