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Updated: Apr 27, 2026

Analyzing the Photo-oxidation of 2-propanol at Indoor Air Level Concentrations Using Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry
Published on: June 14, 2018
Artificial sunlight and ultraviolet light induced photo-epoxidation of propylene over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst
Van-Huy Nguyen1, Shawn D Lin1, Jeffrey Chi-Sheng Wu2
1Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan.
Abstract:
The light irradiation parameters, including the wavelength spectrum and intensity of light source, can significantly influence a photocatalytic reaction. This study examines the propylene photo-epoxidation over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst by using artificial sunlight (Xe lamp with/without an Air Mass 1.5 Global Filter at 1.6/18.5 mW·cm(-2)) and ultraviolet light (Mercury Arc lamp with different filters in the range of 0.1-0.8 mW·cm(-2)). This is the first report of using artificial sunlight to drive the photo-epoxidation of propylene. Over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst, the propylene oxide (PO) formation rate is 193.0 and 112.1 µmol·gcat (-1)·h(-1) with a PO selectivity of 35.0 and 53.7% under UV light and artificial sunlight, respectively. A normalized light utilization (NLU) index is defined and found to correlate well with the rate of both PO formation and C3H6 consumption in log-log scale. The light utilization with a mercury arc lamp is better than with a xenon lamp. The selectivity to PO remains practically unchanged with respect to NLU, suggesting that the photo-epoxidation occurs through the same mechanism under the conditions tested in this study.
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