Technical Papers and Presentations

Heterogeneous photocatalysis an advanced oxidation process (AOP) which in combination with a catalyst and UV irradiation completely mineralizes organic pollutants from water or gases into harmless compounds such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). Photocatalysis as a process is highly effective and sustainable in air and water purification. The main idea is to test photocatalytic degradation of gas-phase pollutants in custom made photocatalytic wind tunnel (PWT). Rubber tiles, made from recycled rubber, were placed inside of the PWT reaction chamber and were immobilized with commercially available titanium dioxide (TiO2) as a photocatalyst to get photocatalytic active layer on its surface where the degradation would occur. In order to simulate the photocatalytic degradation in COMSOL Multiphysics® software several modules are used. The Ray Optics Module is used to visualize ray propagation through PWT reaction chamber on the surface of rubber tiles. The Chemical Reaction Engineering Module is used to model chemical reaction kinetics (adsorption and desorption) with addition of the CFD Module for fluid flow simulations to determine pollutant distribution throughout the tunnel. For better understanding of modelling such reactors used for this type of processes several models from Application Libraries are used. For instance, “Porous Catalytic Reactor with Injection Needle”, “NOX Reduction in a Monolithic Reactor” and “Hydrocarbon Dehalogenation in a Tortuous Microreactor” where mass transport, reactions such as adsorption, desorption, surface reactions and concentration distribution are described. The photocatalytic degradation of pollutants in PWT was achieved experimentally in a laboratory in PWT. Therefore, the aim is to build 3D geometry and set up certain physics in COMSOL® to validate CFD simulations with experimental results for future applications. This work has been supported by the following projects „Recycled rubber & solar photocatalysis: ecological innovation for passive air and health protection”, KK.01.1.1.07.0058 and “Waste & Sun for photocatalytic degradation of micropollutants in water ”(OS-Mi), KK.01.1.1.04.0006, both supported by European Regional Development Fund