Photocatalytic Reactor Employing Titanium Dioxide: From a Theoretical Model to Realistic Experimental Results

The performance of a reacting system for degradation of trichloroethylene (TCE) in a pilot-size annular photocatalytic reactor having a tubular lamp located at its centerline was studied. The reactor operation was carried out with commercial catalytic particles of titanium dioxide (Aldrich) in a water suspension. The description of the reactor performance was made by employing a kinetic model developed in a laboratory reactor of different size and configuration, irradiated with similar lamps of lower output power. The annular reactor was operated in the continuous mode but inside the loop of a recirculation system.The performance of the annular reactor was modeled by assuming three different behaviors: (i) a well-stirred tank reactor, (ii) a pseudo-steady-state laminar flow reactor in a batch recycle, and (iii) a transient-state laminar flow reactor in a recycle. Case iii produced the best representation of the experimental data. Along with the experimental validation of the developed theoretical models, ...