Numerical Simulation of a UV-PCO Plate Reactor

Abstract

Ultraviolet photocatalytic oxidation (UV-PCO) system has gained increasing attention in indoor air treatments, of which the PCO reaction kinetics mainly depend on the radiation and airflow (contaminants) fields. It is recognized that the airflow rate has a significant influence on the PCO kinetics with the balance of the VOC mass transfer process. However, there are few discussion for the airflow rate dependency in the PCO kinetic reaction model. In addition, most of the studies in the literature assumed the incident surface irradiance was the energy participating in PCO reactions, which is not accurate. Hence, a 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model, including catalyst photon absorption coefficient, the conservation of mass, momentum, energy, and species, as well as PCO reaction kinetics, was introduced in this study. The determined model parameters were verified by the experimental data for a plate reactor challenged with 10 ppm acetone. The airflow rate dependency was examined in conjunction with CFD providing local flow field information, and the catalyst absorbed light intensity was quantified by a validated radiation model. It was found that the PCO removal efficiency predictions from the developed mathematical model agree with experimental data.