Publication informationChemosphere, 72 (4): 673-677Publisher Elsevier

No abstract

Publication informationJournal of Hazardous Materials, 144 (1-2): 499-505 Publisher ElsevierLink to online version http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2006.10.071Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3175 Publisher's statement þÿ T h i s i s t h e a u t h o r s v e r s i o n o f a w o r k t h a t w a s a c c e p t e d f o r p u b l i c a t i o n i n J o u r n a l o fHazardous Materials. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, Abstract: In this paper, statistics-based experimental design with response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to investigate the effect of operation conditions on photoelectrocatalytic oxidation of fulvic acid (FA) using a Ti/TiO 2 electrode in a photoreactor. Initially, the Box-Behnken design was employed including the three key variables (initial pH, potassium peroxodisulphate (K 2 S 2 O 8 ) and bias potential). Thereafter, the mutual interaction and effects between these parameters and optimum conditions were obtained in greater detail by means of SAS and Matlab software. The results of this investigation reveal that: (1) the regression analysis with R 2 value of 0.9754 shows a close fit between the experimental results and the model predictions; (2) three-dimension response surface plot can provide a good manner for visualizing the parameter interactions; and (3) the optimum pH, K 2 S 2 O 8 and bias potential is found to be 3.8, 88.40mg/L, 0.88V respectively and the highest FA removal efficiency of 57.1% can be achieved.

Normal temperature catalytic ozonation (NTCO) is a promising yet challenging method for the removal of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) because of limited activity of the catalysts at ambient temperature. Here, we report a series of Pt/FeO x catalysts prepared by the co-precipitation method for NTCO of gaseous methanol. All samples were found to be active and among them, the Pt/FeO x -400 (calcined at 400 °C) catalyst with a Pt cluster loading of 0.2% exhibited the highest activity, able to completely convert methanol into CO2 and H2O at 30 °C. Extensive experimental research suggested that the superior catalytic activity could be attributed to the highly dispersed Pt clusters and an appropriate molar ratio of Pt0/Pt2+. Furthermore, electron paramagnetic resonance and density functional theory computational studies revealed the mechanism that the Pt/FeO x -400 catalyst could activate O3 and water effectively to produce hydroxyl radicals responsible for the catalytic oxidation of methanol. The findings of this work may foster the development of technologies for normal temperature abatement of VOCs with low energy consumption.