merged

Solar Photocatalytic Degradation of an Organic Pollutant in a Fixed-bed
Reactor
Noor Fathin Farhana binti Zulkifli
Supervisor: Dr. Wan Salida binti Wan Mansor
Bachelor of Technology (Environment)
School of Ocean Engineering
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu
Nowadays, dyeing activities are widely used in many applications. However, dyes can
cause problems if they are not treated before discharging to the water bodies.
Photocatalytic process is commonly used for water purification as it is highly effective
and cheap. This study was conducted to investigate the combination of immobilized
catalyst in cement and solar light for the treatment of organic dye solution. Thus, the
effectiveness of using fixed-bed reactor to remove methylene blue (MB) was
investigated as well as effect amount of catalyst and also initial concentration of
pollutant. The organic dye was exposed under the solar radiation for 3, 5 and 7 hours
with immobilized cement that contain different amount of titanium dioxide (TiO2)
powder. Results showed that the highest rate of degradation occured at 5 mg/L MB
with 5 g TiO2. This indicates that reactor and photocatalyst surface can lead to an
increase in efficiency of photocatalytic treatment.
55 | U M T U N D E R G R A D U A T E R E S E A R C H D A Y 2019