Microbial cellulose as a support for photocatalytic oxidation of toluene using TiO2 nanoparticles

The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of toluene degradation using impregnated microbial cellulose (MC) with titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanoparticles (MC/TiO₂). The effects of the initial toluene concentration and ultraviolet (UV) source on the degradation efficiency of toluene have been evaluated. The experimental results showed that the rate of toluene degradation decreased with an increasing of the inlet toluene concentration. After 40 min reaction time, the decomposition rate (%) of toluene decreased from 72.3% to 36.02% for experiments conducted at 100 and 500 ppm, respectively. The degradation efficiency of toluene decreased with application of UVA source instead of UVC source. The toluene degradation efficiency (%) reached to 87.79% and 76.87% for UVC and UVA irradiation, respectively. At initial toluene concentration of 100 mg/L, toluene degradation efficiency for photocatalysis and photolysis processes were 70.2% and 10.65%, respectively; indicating that the photocatalytic degradation efficiency is significantly higher than that of photolytic degradation efficiency. Furthermore, photocatalytic degradation kinetics of toluene was studied and the rates of degradation were found to conform to pseudo‐second‐order kinetic. As shown in the present study, impregnation of TiO₂ nanoparticles on MC/TiO₂ significantly increases toluene removal for short exposure time. It can be concluded that the MC acted as a local toluene concentrator by adsorbing pollutants from the air stream, and thereby diffusing them to the TiO₂ nanoparticles for photodegradation. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 43051.