Fixed Bed Reactor Performance for Herbicide Degradation Under Solar Radiation

Abstract

Photocatalysis has the best potential to replace the traditional wastewater treatment techniques such as activated carbon adsorption, chemical oxidation, and biological treatment. Photocatalysis is a combination of a catalyst semiconductor is titanium dioxide TiO2 with an ultraviolet light source as the sun. It has the added advantage of not introducing additives in the medium to be treated. However, when applied in slurry form, agglomeration of nanoparticle will lead to serious decrease in photocatalytic performance due to hinderance effect. Further, the present study has made an effort to use a support for the immobilization of catalyst for treating the pesticide polluted water by photocatalytic degradation. In the present paper, we present the performance of 2 kinds of Titanium dioxide (Commercial Media Ahlstrom and impregned TiO2 on glass) as photocatlytic support in fixed bed reactor for the degradation of Metribuzin herbicide under solar radiation. The degradation Performance was studied under various conditions such as substrate and pH solution. Solar photocatalytic degradation rate can reach 100% during 180 min of treatment with using TiO2 immobilized on commercial support media 1048.