Photocatalytic Reactor Configurations for Water Purification: Experimentation and Modeling

Abstract

Abstract Heterogeneous photocatalysis on semiconductor particles has been shown to be an effective means of removing toxic organic pollutants as well as toxic metal ions from water. The problem of scale-up of multiphase photocatalytic reactors is considerably more complex than that of conventional chemical reactors. The demand for catalyst illumination is an additional engineering factor in the reactor design, besides conventional reactor scale-up factors such as mixing and mass transfer, reactant–catalyst contacting, fluid flow patterns, and catalyst installation. Photocatalytic reactor design must address important parameters, such as uniform light distribution, providing high illuminated catalyst surface area, and mixing inside the reactor. Several novel reactor designs (multiple tube reactor, tube light reactor, rotating tube reactor, Taylor vortex reactor) addressing the above issues as well as other important challenges are discussed in this chapter.