Degradation of di-n-butyl phthalate using photoreactor packed with TiO2 immobilized on glass beads

This study evaluated the performance of a photoreactor packed with TiO2/glass, TiO2 immobilized on glass beads, initiated by UV irradiation, denoted as UV/TiO2/glass, to decompose di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) in an aqueous solution. The photodegradation rate of DBP by this UV/TiO2/glass process was found to obey pseudo first-order kinetics represented by the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model. The experimental results of this study show that the influence of pH value of an aqueous solution to reaction rate was negligible at the pH values 4.5-9. The effect of cations on the photodegradation rate of DBP reveals that the larger the charge and size of cations contained, the more the inhibition of reaction rate increased. The UV/TiO2/glass process yielded a 75% degradation efficiency of DBP with initial concentration of 5 mg L-1 at 80 min reaction time. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.