Optoelectronic optimization of photocatalytic processes for wastewater treatment
- Autores: Tecilli Tapia Tlatelpa
- Directores de la Tesis: José Francisco Trull Silvestre (dir. tes.), José Luis Romeral Martínez (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jordi García-Ojalvo (presid.), Juan Antonio Ortega Redondo (secret.), Anna Casadellà (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Electrónica por la Universidad de las Illes Balears y la Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Water pollution is an alarming problem that endangers the health of all living beings. The textile industry is listed as one of the most contaminating industries, since in order to carry out its dyeing and finishing processes, it requires a large amount of water resources; by decades, this industry has used Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs), since they have several advantages (e. g. destruction of toxic substances, reduction of heavy metals, allowing their use in conjunction with other processes, among others). Among the AOPs, heterogeneous photocatalysis stands out for its high efficiency for the removal of contaminants, including azo dyes.
In order to perform a photocatalytic process, it is necessary to have a photoreactor, which will require a photocatalyst and at least one light source that activates the catalyst. This type of photoreactors can present several problems, such as the use of high cost photocatalysts, the generation of toxic byproducts in some low photocatalysts, the high electrical consumption caused by the use of traditional lighting sources and even difficulties with the geometry of the photoreactors.
Hence the scientific community has tried to optimize the photocatalytic processes, some scientists have worked in the generation of new photocatalysts to be able to use them in wavelengths generated by low cost lighting sources (e. g. visible light), nevertheless, which in many times it increases the price of the photocatalyst. Another approach is to reduce electricity consumption by opting for the replacement of traditional lamps with low consumption lighting, for example, LED lighting; However, this substitution is currently done arbitrarily, so sometimes some authors doubt the ability to use these sources in this type of process. Moreover, when trying to improve the lighting sources, the photoreactor can be altered, so it is important to take into account its characteristics in order to achieve a significant improvement.
This thesis focuses on an optoelectronic optimization to improve the efficiency of the lighting sources used in photocatalytic reactors. For this, a methodology has been generated to calculate LED arrays using uniform irradiance models, this irradiance must be homogeneous, with enough energy to photoactivate the catalyst with the aim to replace the traditional lamps, avoiding the chemical alteration of the photocatalysts; Likewise, a photocatalytic reactor has been designed and implemented on a laboratory scale with ultraviolet illumination adjusted to its characteristics (i.e. geometry, dimensions, among others) to work with a low cost photocatalyst (TiO2) in the decolorization of wastewater with textile dyes. Finally, in-situ monitoring has been designed and implemented in order to analyze the decolorization of textile water, this type of monitoring avoids the collection of water samples during the process, without altering the geometry of the reactor or reducing the volume of treated water in the reactor.
