Optical density and photonic efficiency of silica-supported TiO2 photocatalysts

Over the last years, many research groups have developed supported TiO2-based materials in order to improve the engineering applications of photocatalytic technologies. However, not many attempts have been made to evaluate the optical behavior of these materials. This work focuses on the study of the photonic efficiencies of silica-supported TiO2 photocatalysts following the photodegradation of dichloroacetic acid (DCA) as model compound. Catalysts with different types of silica support and titania loadings were tested and their activity was found to be in correlation with the results of the clusters size distribution of the TiO2 nanocrystals. The photonic efficiency of the supported photocatalysts depends extremely on the optical density of the solid suspensions. Influence of the textural properties of the support and the titania loading on the optical density as well as on the photonic efficiency of the materials are discussed. The dependence of the absorption of radiation by the suspension on the catalyst concentration is also analyzed.