A novel fountain photocatalytic reactor: model development and experimental validation

The application of photocatalysis for water treatment and purification on a n industrial scale can be accelerated by the development of both new photor eactor designs and mathematical models. A novel, pilot-plant, thin-film, sl urry photocatalytic reactor for water treatment and purification is present ed in this paper. The reactor is a "fountain" photocatalytic reactor, consi sting of a flattened water bell irradiated from above. Such a reactor confi guration is particularly suitable for large-scale solar applications of pho tocatalysis. A dimensionless mathematical model for the fountain photocatal ytic reactor is presented in this paper. The model was developed using para meters that can be estimated easily from real systems and model solutions c an be obtained with little computational effort. The model was validated wi th experimental results from the photocatalytic oxidation of salicylic acid in a pilot-scale reactor using titanium dioxide (TiO2) as the photocatalys t. Experiments were performed under a number of different conditions by var ying substrate concentration, intensity of the incident radiation, catalyst loading, flow rate, recycle ratio and water fountain diameter. The model r esults were found to fit the experimental data well in all cases. The model ing approach can be extended to other thin-film slurry photocatalytic react ors. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.