Characteristics of Photocatalytic Oxidation of Toluene, Benzene, and Their Mixture

• Published in: Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (1995) Vol. 57; no. 1; pp. 94 - 101
• Main Authors: Zhang, Yin-ping, Yang, Rui, Xu, Qiu-jian, Mo, Jin-han
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pittsburgh, PA Taylor & Francis Group 01.01.2007; Air & Waste Management Association; Air and Waste Management Association; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Algorithms; Applied sciences; Atmospheric pollution; Benzene - chemistry; Catalysis; Catalytic reactions; Chemical engineering; Chemical Phenomena; Chemical properties; Chemistry; Chemistry, Physical; Competition; Conversion; Exact sciences and technology; General and physical chemistry; Heat and mass transfer. Packings, plates; Indoor pollution and occupational exposure; Kinetics; Measurement errors; Organic photochemistry; Oxidation; Oxidation-Reduction; Photochemistry; Pollution; R&D; Ratings & rankings; Reaction kinetics; Reactors; Research & development; Sick building syndrome; Theory of reactions, general kinetics. Catalysis. Nomenclature, chemical documentation, computer chemistry; Toluene - chemistry; Volatile organic compounds; United States; Adsorption; Pollutant behavior; Photocatalysis; Indoor pollution; Volatile organic compound; Oxidation; Mass transfer; Organic compounds; Photochemical degradation
• ISSN: 1096-2247; 2162-2906
• DOI: 10.1080/10473289.2007.10465302

The investigation of the photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) of multicomponent volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is very important to the application of PCO technology, because there is seldom a single VOC component in indoor air. In this paper, the characteristics of binary indoor VOCs, toluene and benzene, were experimentally studied using a mass transfer based method that we developed. The concentration ranges for toluene and benzene were 4.48-27.4 mg/m 3 and 1.82-4.08 mg/m 3 , respectively. We found the following: (1) the PCO of each individual contaminant studied obeys the unimolecular form of the Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) rate form; (2) the PCO of the binary contaminants follow the competitive adsorption L-H rate form; (3) the reaction-coefficient for PCO of individual contaminants differs from that in the competitive adsorption L-H rate form; and (4) the component impact factor of A to B, put forward in this paper, is a useful parameter describing the influence of A on the reaction coefficient of B, and it was found that the impact factor of toluene (a chemically active component) on benzene (a chemically stable component) is high, and the impact factor of benzene on toluene is low.