Degradation of organic pollutants in water by photochemical reactors

The degradation of glycolic acid in aqueous media was performed by homogeneous photochemical and heterogeneous photocatalytic processes using different kinds of chemical reactors. The efficiency of the degradation processes was evaluated by measuring both the reactant conversion and the decrease of the total organic carbon (TOC) of the solution. The best results were obtained by using a continuous reactor with a fixed supported photocatalyst.