INTENSIFICATION OF SOLAR-DRIVEN PHOTOCATALYTIC PROCESSES FOR TREATMENT OF CONTAMINATED WATERS THROUGH MICRO-STRUCTURISATION OF REACTION SPACES.

• Grant number: 15/21421-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: August 01, 2016
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Chemical Engineering - Industrial Operations and Equipment for Chemical Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Carlos Silva Costa Teixeira
• Grantee: Bruno Ramos
• Host Institution: Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 17/11583-8 - Mathematical modelling of intensified heterogeneous photocatalytic reactors for treating water bodies contaminated with pharmaceutical wastes, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

As part of the efforts aiming at reducing the cost and boosting the efficiency of photocatalytic water treatment technologies, this proposal aims at deepening the study of microstructurisation of reaction spaces as a tool for maximising the efficiency of such processes, while lowering their cost and thus increasing their appeal for commercial applications. We propose a detailed investigation of the main parameters considered into the design of a packed bed reactor (catalytic area, size and nature of the catalyst support), and of some of the most important operation parameters (feed flowrates, initial pollutant concentration, and irradiance) in order to build supporting mathematical models useful for designing equipment and processes for photocatalytic water treatments. To achieve this goal, we identified six targets, grouped into three investigation areas: (i) of the criteria for an effective structurisation of the reaction space, where the properties of the structurisation elements (packings) will be studied regarding their effects on the equipment's ability to collect photons and to efficiently promote photocatalysis; (ii) of process parameters and their effects on the operation and the efficiency of the reactor, where the process parameters will be investigated regarding their impacts on the stability of the photocatalytic layer and on the pollutant's degradation profile; and (iii) of the model's applicability and validation, which proposes the verification of the validity of the developed mathematical models to different photocatalysts. The empirical investigation will make use of a tubular reactor packed with borosilicate glass (and PFA) microspheres of various diameters as structuring material and support for the photocatalytic bed. The spheres will be coated with titanium dioxide (TiO¬2) as photocatalytic material, and the whole system will be irradiated with an artificial solar simulator at a suitable intensity. The degradation tests will be carried out with a simulated wastewater containing traces of acetaminophen, and the main responses will be the reaction rates and the concentrations of degradation intermediates in the water phase. These responses shall then be used for the proposal and verification of phenomenological models developed throughout the work.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

RAMOS, BRUNO; SILVA, ARTHUR O. G.; TEIXEIRA, ANTONIO C. S. C.. Immobilization of ZnO nanoparticles onto glass spheres: effects of annealing temperature, zinc oxide concentration, and number of coating rounds on the photocatalytic activity under visible light. Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering, SEP 2021. (18/21271-6, 15/21421-0)

RAMOS, BRUNO; COURI, ATIEH PARISI; OOKAWARA, SHINICHI; SILVA COSTA TEIXEIRA, ANTONIO CARLOS. Micro-structured packed bed reactors for solar photocatalysis: impacts of packing size and material on light harnessing. PHOTOCHEMICAL & PHOTOBIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, v. 18, n. 2, p. 577-582, FEB 1 2019. (15/21421-0, 13/50218-2)