Key Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Systems (Chongqing University), Ministry of Education , Chongqing 400030, China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2013 Dec 11;5(23):12548-53. doi: 10.1021/am403842b. Epub 2013 Nov 26.
Optofluidic microreactors are promising prospects for photocatalytic reactions. However, because the flow type in conventional designs is typically laminar, the mass transport mainly relies on diffusion, and thus the rate of mass transport is limited. Accordingly, poor mass transport reduces the photocatalytic reaction rate. To alleviate the limitation of mass transport, in this work, we proposed a novel optofluidic microreactor with TiO2-coated fiberglasses immersed in the microreaction chamber. Such a design enables enhanced mass transport by shortening the transport length and inducing the perturbation to liquid flow so as to improve the performance. We demonstrated the feasibility of the optofluidic microreactor with the TiO2-coated fiberglass by the photocatalytic water treatment of methylene blue under UV irradiation. Results showed that the proposed optofluidic microreactor yielded much higher degradation efficiency than did the conventional optofluidic microreactor as a result of enhanced mass transport. The microreactor with the TiO2-coated fiberglass showed a 2-3-fold improvement in the reaction rate constant as opposed to conventional ones. The maximal increment of the degradation efficiency can reach more than 40%.
光流控微反应器在光催化反应中具有广阔的应用前景。然而，由于传统设计中的流型通常为层流，质量传递主要依赖于扩散，因此质量传递的速率受到限制。因此，较差的质量传递会降低光催化反应速率。为了缓解质量传递的限制，在这项工作中，我们提出了一种新型的光流控微反应器，其将涂覆有 TiO2 的光纤浸入微反应室内。这种设计通过缩短传输距离和诱导液体流动的扰动来增强质量传递，从而提高性能。我们通过在紫外光照射下用光催化处理亚甲基蓝来验证涂覆有 TiO2 的光纤的光流控微反应器的可行性。结果表明，由于增强了质量传递，所提出的光流控微反应器的降解效率比传统的光流控微反应器高得多。与传统的光流控微反应器相比，涂覆有 TiO2 的光纤的微反应器的反应速率常数提高了 2-3 倍。降解效率的最大增量可达到 40%以上。
