Photocatalytic degradation of gaseous pollutants on nanostructured TiO2 films of various thickness and surface area

Abstract

AbstractThis work deals with the preparation of TiO2 nanoparticulate layers of various mass (0.05 mg/cm2 to 2 mg/cm2) from three commercial nanopowder materials, P90, P25 and CG 300, their characterisation (profilometry, BET and SEM) and evaluation of their photocatalytic activity in the gaseous phase in a flow-through photoreactor according to the ISO standard (ISO 22197-2). Hexane was chosen as a single model pollutant and a mixture of four compounds, namely acetaldehyde, acetone, heptane and toluene was used for the evaluation of the efficiency of simultaneous removal of several pollutants. A linear dependence between the layer mass and the layer thickness for all materials was found. Up to a layer mass 0.5 mg/cm2, the immobilisation P90 and P25 powder did not result in a decrease in BET surface area, whereas with an increase in layer mass to 1 mg/cm2, a decrease of the BET surface was observed, being more significant in the case of P90. The photocatalytic conversion of hexane was comparable for all immobilised powders up to a layer mass of 0.5 mg/cm2. For higher layer mass, the photocatalytic conversion of hexane on P25 and P90 differ; the latter achieved about 30% higher conversion. In the case of the simultaneous degradation of four compounds, acetaldehyde was degraded best, followed by acetone and toluene; the least degraded compound was heptane. The measurement of released CO2 revealed that 90% of degraded hexane was mineralised to CO2 and water while for a mixture of 4 VOCs, the level of mineralisation was 83%. Graphical abstract