Studies on the development of a novel UV-LED strip photocatalytic reactor and performance on dye removal

The challenges of photocatalytic reactor design are addressed in the present study, focusing on developing novel reactor configurations for uniform light intensity, high photon, and mass transfer efficiencies. This work developed a scalable compact UV-LED strip photocatalytic reactor comprising of a quartz tube placed inside the aluminum shell. The light source, i.e., 300 LEDs (lambda max = 365 nm) circumferentially disposed in the inner walls of shell and reactor's performance was evaluated for 3.12 x10-5 mol/dm3 methylene blue for 80% dye removal in 60 min for optimized conditions. Hydrodynamic cavities were induced by the constricted geometry and inlet pressure, which may increase the dye removal. Actinometry was performed and photonic efficiency was evaluated to be 25%, which proves that the present reactor is an efficient configuration allowing maximum dye degradation.