Department of Chemical Engineering, American University of Sharjah, P.O. Box: 26666, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2019 Feb;26(6):5372-5380. doi: 10.1007/s11356-018-4051-2. Epub 2019 Jan 9.
This research paper presents the results of an experimental investigation of the degradation of three different contaminants including progesterone (PGS), ibuprofen (IBU), and naproxen (NAP) using ZnO as the photocatalyst and ultraviolet (UV) light as a source for catalysts activation. Two operating parameters, namely, catalyst loading and initial concentration of contaminants, were tested in a batch photocatalytic reactor. To demonstrate the large-scale applications, experiments were also conducted in a submerged membrane photocatalytic reactor. It has proven that ZnO photocatalyst degraded the three contaminants very efficiently under almost all the studied experimental conditions, with efficiency rates of 92.3, 94.5, and 98.7 % for PSG, IBU, and NAP, respectively. The photodegradation kinetics study was performed to calculate the reaction rate constant, which is found to follow pseudo-first order kinetics. The membrane photocatalytic reactor was efficient to remove pollutants and it is observed that the degradation rate increases with increasing the membrane oscillation frequency approaching that of the stirred reactor.
本研究论文展示了使用 ZnO 作为光催化剂，使用紫外线 (UV) 光作为催化剂激活源，对包括孕酮 (PGS)、布洛芬 (IBU) 和萘普生 (NAP) 在内的三种不同污染物进行降解的实验研究结果。在批式光催化反应器中测试了两个操作参数，即催化剂负载量和污染物初始浓度。为了展示大规模应用，还在浸没式膜光催化反应器中进行了实验。结果证明，在几乎所有研究的实验条件下，ZnO 光催化剂对三种污染物的降解效率非常高，分别为 92.3%、94.5%和 98.7%。进行了光降解动力学研究以计算反应速率常数，发现其遵循准一级动力学。膜光催化反应器能够有效地去除污染物，并且观察到降解速率随着膜振荡频率的增加而增加，接近搅拌反应器的降解速率。
