The chemical kinetics studies of methylene blue degradation treated in dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma with and without TiO2 photocatalyst

Abstract

The presence of textile industry color-wastewater in a toxic environment needs to be treated to reduce the toxicity. The wastewater treatment can be performed by the combination technique of photocatalysis and plasma ozonation. The kinetics studies of these techniques are interesting to be studied to investigate which process is more dominant when playing a role in pollutant degradation. In this study, the kinetic study of a combination technique of plasma ozonation and photocatalysis using TiO2 was analyzed using a methylene blue (MB) dye pollutant model. The study was compared to the kinetic study of the plasma ozonation alone. The plasma ozonation was generated by a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma reactor, which used two electrodes separated by a dielectric barrier of quartz glass, which high voltage 5 kV (AC power supply) and an airflow rate of 1 L/min. The results of the experiment show that MB concentration after DBD treatment decreased. The chemical kinetics test is able to determine the reaction order, in which the treatment process using DBD plasma with photocatalyst TiO2 follows the second order. In contrast, those using DBD treatment without TiO2 follows the first order.