Abstract
Photocatalytic coatings have the potential to contribute to the
purification of water via an advanced oxidation process (AOP) [1]. A
commonly used method for analyzing the mechanism of the photocatalytic
performance of a given reactor type is to document the degradation
behavior in a solution containing methylene blue. However, since
methylene blue is rather unstable, the degradation results should be
viewed critically. In this work, the degradation behavior of a test
solution with methylene blue on quartz glass surfaces coated with
photocatalytic titanium dioxide (TiO 2) of the anatase
modification was investigated through a variety of different light
sources. The coating was deposited by the reactive pulsed DC magnetron
sputtering (MSIP-PVD) method described in [2], while the quartz
glasses were coated with a 100 nm thick TiO 2 coating.
The same glasses were used for all experiments with TiO
2. In the determination of the degradation rate,
additional experiments were performed using pure quartz glass without
any coating, which made it possible to examine the influence of
different light sources on the degradation rate of methylene blue in
general. Three different light sources, namely UV-A, UV-C, and simple
fluorescent lamps were used in this study. The concentration of
methylene blue was recorded by photo spectrometer in 10-minute
increments throughout the experiment and the experiments were performed
for 24 hours in all cases.