Determination of phenol in the presence of its principal degradation products in water during a TiO2-photocatalytic degradation process by three-dimensional excitation–emission matrix fluorescence and parallel factor analysis

This paper describes a simple and rapid way of monitoring a photocatalytic degradation of phenol in aqueous suspensions of TiO2. A three-way analytical methodology based on fluorescence excitation–emission matrix (EEM) and parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) was developed to resolve the species present in the reaction mixture and quantify the concentration of phenol and its principal degradation products throughout the degradation. Parameters such as core consistency, fit% and correlation coefficients between recovered and pure spectra were used to determine the appropriate number of factors for the PARAFAC model. The accuracy of the model was evaluated by the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP). Using a four-factors PARAFAC model, phenol, hydroquinone, resorcinol and catechol, were satisfactorily determined. The proposed method is an interesting alternative to the traditional techniques normally used for monitoring degradation reactions.