Photocatalytic Reaction Engineering

This is a comprehensive piece of work providing the reader a powerful resource for the design, development and performance evaluation of photocatalytic reactors. This book will be used as a reference for a graduate course in photocatalysis. It will also be valuable to undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers, environmental consultants or advisors, environmental auditors, engineers, technicians, scientists, governmental agencies, and environmental agencies or institutions interested in photocatalysis. This book will be a guide to the understanding of the principles and of the applications of photocatalysis technology. The book is also organized in such a manner that there is always good integration of basic principles, literature review, and applications.

The main focus of this book is on the chemical reaction engineering aspects of the heterogeneous photocatalysis. Special attention is addressed to kinetic modeling, reactor irradiation, and reactor design of photochemical reactors. The book also reports an interesting review of practical applications of pollutant conversion in water and air.

Heterogeneous photocatalysis is a novel technique for water purification. Publications on photocatalysis span a relatively recent period of not more than 25 years. This is a technique that, according to our extensive experience on the development of laboratory scale and pilot plant units, has great promise to eliminate water and air pollutants. Photocatalysis offers much more than competitive techniques where pollutants are transferred from phases; photocatalysis can achieve complete mineralization of pollutants leaving non-toxic species such as CO2 and H2O and can be exploited at close to room temperature and ambient pressure.