Engineering of solar photocatalytic collectors

A combined solar photocatalytic-biological field system for the mineralization of an industrial pollutant at pilot scale

“…It is worth mentioning that heterogeneous photocatalysis with TiO 2 has been demonstrated, as reported in previous publications, to be less efficient than homogeneous photocatalysis by photoFenton for treating this type of waste water [21]. On the other hand, photo-Fenton at 20 mg L À1 of Fe 2+ has previously been found optimum for the specially designed solar photoreactor used in this work, not only from the point of view of degrading specific contaminants [22], but also from the point of view of the solar photoreactor optical behaviour [23]. In any case, as the purpose of our work was to evaluate the feasibility of integrating a photoreactor and a biological system, photoFenton also was tested with only 2 mg L À1 of Fe 2+ to determine whether waste water biocompatibility could be reached in a reasonable length of time, as low iron concentrations are enough for the photocatalytic pre-treatment step.…”

Detoxification of wastewater containing five common pesticides by solar AOPs–biological coupled system

“…2). These catalyst concentrations were selected based on previous results [26] pointing to 200 mg L À1 of TiO 2 and 0.2-1 mM of Fe 2+ as optimum for experiments in the 35-L pilot plant and 75-L pilot plant, respectively. The comparison of these three methods made it possible to select the most efficient AOP for enhancing biodegradability for subsequent combination with an aerobic biological treatment (IBR).…”

Environmental Catalysis: Present and Future

“…Firstly, the methods for the increment of visible light absorption of traditional photocatalysts such as TiO 2 or ZnO is still an open research line. In fact, many reviews present this issue as one of the most important pending bottlenecks ,,,. The low absorption of the solar energy showed by TiO 2 (Figure ) which is the material par excellence in photocatalysis, as well as the typical low quantum efficiencies obtained for most reaction studied suggest the need to approach from new perspectives .…”