The combination of rotating disk photocatalytic reactor and TiO2 nanotube arrays for environmental pollutants removal

A combined photocatalytic system on one single TiO2-nanotube (TNT)/Ti photocatalyst, which was indeed the functional combination of photon-efficient thin-film and conventional bulk-phase photocatalysis processes, was effectively developed in rotating disk photocatalytic reactor for environmental purification applications. The TNT/Ti rotating disk, of uniform size and well-aligned, was successfully prepared by direct anodic oxidation on a dominantly large surface area of 38 cm2, compared to the typical 1 cm2 in available literature. To estimate the potentials of combined photocatalytic system for environmental applications, the degradation of rhodamine B was carried out under the optimized conditions, a substrate removal efficiency of nearly 90% and a mineralization efficiency of 56% were observed for initial 20 mg/L solution after 3 h treatment. Compared with the combined photocatalytic system on TiO2 nanoparticle disk, a significant improvement in substrate removal efficiency of about 25-40% was observed on TNT/Ti disk. It was confirmed that the main degradation of rhodamine B occurred on the upper half of TNT/Ti disk above the heavily colorized sample solution, which was attributed to the superior UV utilization efficiency and the resultant high interfacial photoactivity.