Ultraviolet photocatalytic oxidation technology for indoor volatile organic compound removal: A critical review with particular focus on byproduct formation and modeling

Photocatalytic oxidation (PCO)-based air filters are gaining attention owing to their capacity for indoor pollutant removal. This review summarized the application of ultraviolet-photocatalytic oxidation (UV-PCO) in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, including the modeling studies, reactor designs, the influence of operational conditions, with emphasis on the common issue of byproduct generation, and the resulting indoor byproduct exposure levels. As a result, the concentrations of the typical byproducts for the most challenging pollutants were relatively low, except for the PCO of ethanol. Hence, UV-PCO is not recommended for buildings with high ethanol concentrations. Based on the formation of the formaldehyde, a new exposure-based evaluation standard for UV-PCO was developed to evaluate the feasibility of integrating UV-PCO reactors into an HVAC system. Then, applying the newly developed evaluation standard on a developed database (data size: 174) from the literature, 32.5% of the cases were identified as suitable for HVAC system applications in residential and commercial buildings, and all cases could be used for industrial buildings. Finally, a case study was conducted to develop a support vector machine (SVM) classification model with good accuracy, and challenging compound types, inlet concentrations, and air velocity were found to be the main parameters affecting the applicability of UV-PCO.

Automated summary

UV-PCO air filters have low concentrations of typical byproducts for most pollutants, but are not recommended for buildings with high ethanol levels. A new exposure-based evaluation standard was developed based on formaldehyde generation, with 32.5% of cases identified as suitable for residential and commercial HVAC system applications and all cases suitable for industrial buildings. Parameters such as challenging compound types, inlet concentrations, and air velocity were found to be the main factors affecting the applicability of UV-PCO.