Due to the environmental and health-related hazards of airborne VOC emissions, Federal regulations will require improved VOC control technologies. Photocatalytic oxidation using UV illuminated titania catalysts has demonstrated the capability of destroying a wide range of organics, in particular halogenated compounds. Many bench scale reactor designs have been tested and show promise in some applications but are characterized by relatively poor light utilization and limited air treatment capacities. The proposed reactor design, which incorporates a suspended catalyst reactor combined with a ceramic filtration system for catalyst recycle, is very easily scaleable to high flow rates found in many VOC applications. The reactor design is a simple plug flow reactor in which suspended titania catalyst is periodically illuminated in the presence of VOC contaminated air. The suspended titania particulates are filtered using chemically durable, high efficiency, backpulsable ceramic filters which have a very high packing density. The resulting systems are very compact and allow the recycle of high activity suspended catalysts back to the photocatalytic reactor.
