Investigation of the reaction kinetics of photocatalytic pollutant degradation under defined conditions with inkjet-printed TiO2 films – from batch to a novel continuous-flow microreactor

Abstract

Pollutants accumulating in natural and drinking water systems can cause severe effects to the environment and living organisms. Photocatalysis is a promising option to degrade such pollutants. When immobilizing the photocatalyst, additional catalyst separation steps can be avoided. Among various reactor types, the use of microreactors in photocatalysis has proven advantageous regarding process intensification. However, so far the local conditions are not well understood and described in literature and there is little quantitative understanding of the relevant phenomena. In this work, inkjet-printing was used to immobilize TiO₂ as a thin film with a precisely tuneable thickness and catalyst loading. In a batch reactor, the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) as a model pollutant was performed for different initial concentrations and catalyst layer thicknesses. By employing the Langmuir–Hinshelwood model and a light irradiation model, the kinetic parameters were determined. The influence of the light intensity at different positions inside the immobilized photocatalyst on the reaction kinetics is quantified. RhB degradation was tested under defined operational conditions using an in-house developed continuous-flow microreactor with advanced fiber optics for precise light introduction. The models derived from batch experiments were used to simulate the degradation in the continuous-flow microreactor. Results show that the simulation allows prediction of the performance with less than 20% deviation to the experimental data. An analysis of mass transport effects on the reaction rate indicates that external mass transfer is a limiting factor in the microreactor experiment. This study further demonstrates the potential of the new reactor system (microreactor, fiber optics and printed catalyst) for detailed investigations on photocatalytic reaction kinetics.