ORGANIC
CHEMISTRY DIVISION
COMMISSION ON PHOTOCHEMISTRY
Figures-of-merit for the technical development and application of
advanced oxidation technologies for both electric- and solar-driven
systems (IUPAC Technical Report)
James R. Bolton1, Keith G. Bircher2, William Tumas3,
and Chadwick A. Tolman4
1Bolton Photosciences Inc., 92 Main St., Ayr, ON, Canada
N0B 1E0; 2Calgon Carbon Corporation, 500 Calgon Carbon Drive, P.O. Box
717, Pittsburgh, PA 15230-0717, USA; 3Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Chemical Science and Technology Division, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA;
4National Science Foundation, Chemistry Division, 4201 Wilson Blvd.,
Arlington, VA 22230, USA
Abstract: Advanced oxidation technologies (AOTs),
which involve the in situ generation of highly potent chemical oxidants,
such as the hydroxyl radical (áOH), have emerged as an important class
of technologies for accelerating the oxidation (and hence removal) of
a wide range of organic contaminants in polluted water and air. In this
report, standard figures-of-merit are proposed for the comparison and
evaluation of these waste treatment technologies. These figures-of-merit
are based on electric-energy consumption (for electric-energy-driven
systems) or collector area (for solar-energy-driven systems). They fit
within two phenomenological kinetic order regimes: 1) for high contaminant
concentrations (electric energy per mass, EEM, or
collector area per mass, ACM) and 2) for low concentrations
(electric energy per order of magnitude, EEO, or collector
area per order of magnitude, ACO). Furthermore, a
simple understanding of the overall kinetic behavior of organic contaminant
removal in a waste stream (i.e., whether zero- or first-order) is shown
to be necessary for the description of meaningful electric- or solar-energy
efficiencies. These standard figures-of-merit provide a direct link
to the electric- or solar-energy efficiency (lower values mean higher
efficiency) of an advanced oxidation technology, independent of the
nature of the system, and therefore allow for direct comparison of widely
disparate AOTs. These figures-of-merit are also shown to be inversely
proportional to fundamental efficiency factors, such as the lamp efficiency
(for electrical systems), the fraction of the emitted light that is
absorbed in the aqueous solution, and the quantum yield of generation
of active radicals.
> Download full text of the report - [pdf
file - 60KB]
> View corresponding
project
[Back to Contents]
