Photocatalytic Degradation of Bisphenol A using Different Titania Catalysts

MANASSERO, A.; ALFANO, O.M.; SATUF, M.L.

Encuentro; VI Encontro sobre Aplicações Ambientais de Processos Oxidativos Avançados-6° EPOA; 2011

In recent years, the pollution of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in water sources and factory effluents has aroused the public concern (Klavarioti et al., 2009). Among numerous EDCs used in industrial processes, bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the most important compounds and, in general, it is considered to be incompletely removed by conventional wastewater treatment processes (Tsai et al., 2009). Recently, photocatalysis has been found to be effective for the degradation of EDCs in wastewater. In this work, different catalysts containing TiO2 were evaluated: the commercial catalysts TiO2 Degussa P25, Kronos vlp 7000 and a TiO2 loaded Cr-MCM-41 (a mesoporous molecular sieve belonging to the M41S family, modified with chromium and loaded with TiO2). The last two catalysts are active under UV and visible radiation while the first one is only active under UV radiation. In order to compare their performance, the apparent quantum efficiency, ηapp, was calculated. This parameter relates the number of molecules of reactant degraded to the number of incident photons during a defined period of time, over a defined spectral range.