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Published September 1996 | public
Journal Article

Chemical and Physical Characterization of a TiO_2-Coated Fiber Optic Cable Reactor

Abstract

Practical application of metal oxide photocatalysts for the remediation of contaminated wastestreams often requires immobilization of the photocatalyst in a fixed-bed reactor configuration that allows the continuous use of the photocatalyst by eliminating the need for post-process filtration. A novel optical fiber cable reactor (OFR) is used to transmit UV light to solid-supported TiO_2 in order to investigate the photocatalytic degradation of pentachlorophenol (PCP), 4-chlorophenol (4-CP), dichloroacetate (DCA), and oxalate (OX). The distribution of light as a function of fiber diameter and the quantum efficiencies as a function of incident light intensity are investigated. Light propagation down individual fibers is found to increase with increasing fiber diameter. An increased linear transmission of light results in increased quantum efficiencies, while a 2-order of magnitude reduction in incident light intensity results in a 4-fold increase (φ = 0.010−0.042) in quantum efficiency for the degradation of 4-chlorophenol. The rates of degradation of dichloroacetate and oxalate have strong pH de pendencies. Relatively high apparent quantum efficien cies of φ = 0.010, 0.015, 0.08, and 0.17 for PCP, 4-CP, DCA, and OX, respectively, and complete mineralization to CO_2, H_2O, and HCl are observed in the OFR system.

Additional Information

© 1996 American Chemical Society. Received for review January 18, 1996. Revised manuscript received April 22, 1996. Accepted May 7, 1996. Publication Date (Web): August 27, 1996. We are grateful to ARPA and ONR (NAV 5 HFMN N000149J1901) for financial support and to Tim Wu, Janet Kesselman, Scot T.Martin, and Wonyong Choi for scientific support. We would also like to thank 3M and Degussa for their donations of the optical fiber samples and the P25 photocatalyst, respectively.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023