I. Gassiot et al., VUV GAS-PHASE PHOTOOXIDATION - A NEW TOOL FOR THE DEGRADATION OF VOCSIN AIR, Journal of information recording, 24(1-2), 1998, pp. 129-132
The growing concern about emissions of hazardous Volatile Organic Comp
ounds (VOCs), particularly in urban areas, has strengthened the requir
ements for purification of exhaust gases and waste effluents. Conventi
onal procedures to treat contaminated water just transfer the pollutan
ts to other phases (gaseous, adsorption on solids), but do not elimina
te them. Improvements made in the fields of membrane technique and pho
tooxidation allow the combination of both procedures to open an effect
ive way to treat waste water and degrade the separated contaminants in
a continuous process. Membrane pervaporation permits to remove organi
c pollutants from water and transfers them into the gas phase which pa
sses through a Vacuum-UV irradiation zone leading to their complete ox
idative degradation. In this paper the VUV gas phase photooxidation of
tetrahydrofurane (THF) is examined.