Determination of photocatalyst lifetime by continuous-flow photocatalytic treatment in photocatalysis membrane reactor

摘要

TiO_2 catalyst can be deactivated as the photocatalytic reaction proceeds, which restricts its industrial application. Therefore, it is necessary to study the lifetime of the photocatalyst. Most experimental studies have been conducted in batch systems, in which lifetimes of photocatalysts are expressed by runs. In this paper, Methyl orange (MO) solution is selected as target contaminant. A photocatalytic membrane reactor (PMR), realizing continuous-flow photocatalytic degradation, is adopted to study lifetime ofphotocatalysts. The photocatalyst lifetime is described by the treated volume when the color removal of the continuous photocatalytic degradation process is the same as that in continuous photolytic degradation process under identical experimental conditions. The results indicate that the photocatalyst lifetime described by the treated volume is 119.5 L, when the concentration of methyl orange is 10 mg/L.