Rigorous kinetic modelling with explicit radiation absorption effects of the photocatalytic inactivation of bacteria in water with titanium dioxide suspensions.

MARUGÁN, J.; VAN GRIEKEN, R.; PABLOS, C.; SATUF, M. L.; CASSANO, A. E.; ALFANO, O. M.

Praga

Conferencia; 6th European Meeting on Solar Chemistry and Photocatalysis: Environmental Applications; 2010

Oxidation of organic pollutants in water by semiconductor photocatalysis has been extensively studied in the last decades. More recently, photocatalytic technologies have been also applied to the inactivation of microorganisms with disinfection purposes. Most of the photocatalytic disinfection studies have been focused on the well-known Escherichia coli bacterium, whose presence is a widely used indicator of the faecal contamination of water. This work is focused on the rigorous kinetic modelling of the photocatalytic inactivation of microorganisms using an intrinsic kinetic model with explicit radiation absorption effects based on a proposed reaction mechanism. This approach has the advantage of using kinetic parameters independent of the irradiation form, as well as the reactor size and geometry, providing the necessary information for scaling-up and design of commercial-scale photoreactors for water disinfection.