Design of Large-Scale Photocatalytic Reactors for Water Disinfection from Laboratory-Scale Kinetic Data

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

Congreso; 7th European Meeting on Solar Chemistry and Photocatalysis: Environmental Applications-SPEA7; 2012

A scaling-up methodology for the design of large-scale slurry reactors for the photocatalytic disinfection of water is proposed. The only experimental information required to be determined at laboratory-scale is the intrinsic kinetics that describes the explicit dependence of the reaction rate with the local volumetric rate of photon absorption (LVRPA). Based on the kinetic model and the information about the geometry, irradiation source and the bacteria and catalyst concentrations as operation conditions, the performance of a larger scale reactor has been simulated following a predictive procedure with no adjustable parameters. The validation of the method has been carried out in a bench-scale reactor with a higher irradiated volume.