Reilly Kevin, Adeli Babak, Fang Baizeng, Wilkinson David P, Taghipour Fariborz
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of British Columbia 2360 East Mall Vancouver British Columbia V6T 1Z3 Canada
Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), University of British Columbia 2360 East Mall Vancouver British Columbia V6T 1Z3 Canada.
RSC Adv. 2022 Feb 2;12(7):4240-4252. doi: 10.1039/d1ra07681g. eCollection 2022 Jan 28.
In photocatalytic water splitting, fluidization is known to minimize the adverse effects of mass-transfer, poor radiation distribution, parasitic back-reactions and photocatalyst handling difficulties, which limit the scalability of immobilized-film and suspended slurry photocatalysts. Fluidization of one-dimensional TiO photocatalyst particles, such as nanorods, -wires and -ribbons, is highly desired as it further enhances the efficiency of photocatalytic reaction, due to their peculiar photo-electrochemical characteristics that result in more effective separation of photo-generated charges and absorption of photons. However, the harsh physical environment of a fluidized bed reactor does not readily allow for nanostructured TiO photocatalysts, as the fine features would be quickly removed from the particle surface. Here, we propose a scalable method for fabrication of rutile TiO nanorods on porous glass beads as a 3D protective substrate to reduce the attrition rate caused by fluidization. The quality of the synthesized nanorod films was optimized through controlling a growth quality factor, , allowing for good quality films to be grown in different batch amounts and different hydrothermal reactor sizes. The utilization of porous glass beads substrate has reduced the attrition rate, and the protective features of the particles reduced the rate of attrition by an order of magnitude, compared to a particulate photocatalyst, to near negligible levels. Such considerably reduced attrition makes the as-developed porous glass beads supported rutile TiO nanorods a viable fluidizable photocatalyst candidate for various applications, including water splitting and degradation of organic compounds.
在光催化水分解中，流化作用已知可将传质、辐射分布不佳、寄生逆反应以及光催化剂处理困难等不利影响降至最低，而这些不利影响限制了固定膜和悬浮浆料光催化剂的可扩展性。一维TiO光催化剂颗粒（如纳米棒、纳米线和纳米带）的流化非常理想，因为其独特的光电化学特性可导致光生电荷更有效地分离以及光子吸收，从而进一步提高光催化反应的效率。然而，流化床反应器的恶劣物理环境并不容易容纳纳米结构的TiO光催化剂，因为其精细特征会很快从颗粒表面去除。在此，我们提出一种可扩展的方法，用于在多孔玻璃珠上制备金红石TiO纳米棒，作为三维保护基质，以降低流化引起的磨损率。通过控制生长质量因子对合成的纳米棒薄膜质量进行了优化，从而能够在不同的批量和不同尺寸的水热反应器中生长出高质量的薄膜。与颗粒状光催化剂相比，多孔玻璃珠基质的使用降低了磨损率，并且颗粒的保护特性将磨损率降低了一个数量级，降至几乎可以忽略不计的水平。如此大幅降低的磨损率使得所开发的多孔玻璃珠负载金红石TiO纳米棒成为各种应用（包括水分解和有机化合物降解）中可行的可流化光催化剂候选物。
