Photoeletrocatalytic degradation of gaseous acetone using electrical glassfiber filter coated with nano-sized TiO 2 photoelectrocatalyst

Abstract

Abstract Electrical glassfiber filters coated with nano-sized TiO2 (TiO2/EGF) were developed to degrade volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) technique. Acetone was used as a target volatile organic compound for conducting the degradation experiments in a pan-type batch PEC reactor. The TiO2/EGF based PEC technique exhibited higher removal efficiency of acetone than that of traditional TiO2 photocatalytic (PC) technique. The degradation rate of acetone with PEC was about 2.79 times faster than that with PC. The degradation rate of acetone using PEC increased with electric field intensity from 0 to 6500 V. The correlation between the reaction rate and the initial concentration of acetone followed the first-order kinetics for acetone concentrations below 100 ppm, but followed the zero-order kinetics for acetone concentrations above 100 ppm. The reaction temperature in the range of 40–60 °C has a positive effect on the reaction rate of acetone. The reaction rate of acetone with PEC increased and then decreased with water vapor content. The Langmuir–Hinshelwood kinetic model can be successfully applied to simulate the PEC reaction of acetone degraded by the TiO2/EGF photoelectrocatalyst. The L–H kinetic model was further applied to explore the variation of reaction rate and equilibrium constants with operating parameters.