Visible light-driven degradation of Acid Orange 7 by light modulation techniques

The impact of light modulation on the decolorization of Acid Orange 7 (AO7) in aqueous solution was examined in this paper. A fixed bed batch photocatalytic reactor with a flat plate geometry, irradiated by 240 white-light LEDs, was used. A successful transfer of visible active photocatalyst (N-TiO2) in powder form on a polystyrene (PS) transparent plate was realized. The structured photocatalyst was characterized through SEM–EDX, Raman and UV-DRS analyses, evidencing the formation of a coating of N-TiO2 in the anatase phase, with a band-gap energy of 2.5 eV, and almost uniform distribution on the PS surface. Different LED dimming techniques, with fixed and variable duty-cycle values, were tested, and four types of light modulation were compared: fixed duty cycle (constant irradiation), sinusoidal variable duty cycle (sinusoidal variable irradiation), triangular variable duty cycle (triangular variable irradiation), and square wave variable duty cycle (square wave variable irradiation). The resulting responsiveness/efficiency of the LED versus the current intensity was evaluated, and the stability of the photocatalyst activity and the influence of optimized irradiation waveforms were examined in the decolorization of 400 mL of 10 ppm AO7 solution. The sinusoidal modulation, with current between 50 and 100 mA and 10 s as the period, shows the highest value of the apparent pseudo-first-order kinetic constant, resulting equal to 0.0044 min−1, at parity of total transmitted photons. An energy saving with the application of sinusoidal irradiation is highlighted with respect to the literature.