122nd General Meeting of the KCS

Type Oral Presentation
Area Oral Presentation for Young Scientist in Environmental and Energy Chemistry
Room No. Room 306A
Time THU 09:35-:
Code ENVR.O-2
Subject Developing a highly sustainable photocatalyst for outdoor air purification by hydrophilic surface modification of TiO2
Authors Saqlain Shahid, Young Dok Kim1,*
Chemistry, SungKyunKwan University, Pakistan
1Department of Chemistry, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
Abstract Many TiO2 based photocatalysts are being used in various ways for indoor and outdoor air purification now a days. The stability of these photocatalysts is the prime issue for their application because excess of contaminants from outdoor atmosphere deactivate the surface of the photocatalysts quite easily. Particularly the oil contaminants are hard to clean when exposed to surface because TiO2 surface has good hydrophobicity. In current work by coating PDMS thin layer and subsequent heat treatment under vacuum conditions we modified the surface of commercially available TiO2 (P-25) into more hydrophilic. The surface modified TiO2 showed enhanced hydrophilicity attributed to the hydrophilic functional groups (e.g., C=O, C-OH, SiOx) on the surface. Thus, oil contaminants on the surface could be effectively washed off with water hence sustaining clean surface. We evaluated UV light driven photocatalytic activity of hydrophilic surface modified TiO2 towards degradation of acetaldehyde (one of the common air pollutants) under different humidity conditions. By increasing humidity, the absorption and photocatalytic activity of surface modified TiO2 also increased whereas in case of bare TiO2 both were decreased. But photocatalytic activities of bare as well as surface modified TiO2 were suppressed above 33.6% of relative humidity just because of excessive humidity level. Finally it was revealed that as compared to bare TiO2, the surface modified TiO2 sustained higher photocatalytic activity for decomposition of acetaldehyde. We believe that our hydrophilic surface modified TiO2 has much higher potential for long-term outdoor air purification.
E-mail shahidsaqlain@hotmail.com