Degradation of UV-filter Benzophenon-3 in aqueous solution using TiO2 coated on quartz tubes

BackgroundBenzophenone-3 (BP-3), one of the emerging pollutants, is commercially synthesized as UV filter used in cosmetics and other personal care products and its occurrence in the aquatic environment has widely been reported. The goal of this study was to enhance an AOP method for degradation of UV filter Benzophenone-3 in aqueous solutions.MethodIn this study, sol-gel method was applied to synthesis TiO2 nanoparticles. Subsequently, the nanoparticles were successfully coated on quartz tubes. The synthesized catalyst was characterized using XRD, FE-SEM and EDX analysis. Then, the efficiency of photocatalytic process using TiO2 coated quartz tubes for BP-3 degradation from synthetic and real aqueous solution was assessed.ResultThe optimum contact time and solution pH for the highest BP-3 degradation in the synthetic solution were found at 15min and 10, respectively. The maximum degradation (98%) of BP-3 by photocatalytic process was observed at 1mg/L initial BP-3 concentration using 225cm(2) of catalyst surface area. Among the three applied kinetic models, the experimental data were found to follow the first-order equation more closely with the rate constant of 0.2, 0.048 and 0.035 1/min for 1, 3 and 5mg/L of initial BP-3 concentration, respectively. In order to investigate the potential of this process for real effluent, the treatment of swimming pool water and wastewater treatment plant was examined and BP-3 degradation close to 88% and 32.1 was achieved, respectively.ConclusionBased on the obtained data, the photocatalytic process could successfully be applied for water treatment in swimming pools and other effluent containing BP-3 with low turbidity. The advantage of this study is that the synthesized catalyst can be used repeatedly needless to remove catalyst from the treated solution. In addition, AOP(s) can effectively eliminate organic compounds in aqueous phase, rather than transferring pollutants into another phase. The limitation of this study is that in solution with high turbidity photocatalytic degradation can be hampered and pre- treatment is needed to reduce turbidity.