LAUSR

Porous platinum ion-doped TiO2 (Pt–TiO2) was prepared by a sol–gel method and demonstrated to have superior photocatalytic activity for the photodegradation of gaseous trichloroethylene (TCE) under visible light (VL) irradiation from a xenon lamp equipped with 422-nm cut-off filter. Kinetic studies were performed to clarify the effect of the doping amounts, space times, VL intensity, and mole fractions of TCE, O2, and H2O on the degradation of TCE. Under ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, the photocatalytic activity of Pt–TiO2 was the same as that of TiO2, indicating that the doped Pt ion did not act as a recombination center for the photogenerated holes and electrons. Based on the kinetic data and reaction products, we conclude that the photocatalytic degradation of TCE on Pt–TiO2 under VL irradiation proceeds similarly to TiO2 under UV irradiation. We also performed the photocatalytic degradation of TCE at the space time of 7.5 × 107 g s mol−1 in a tubular reactor packed with the Pt–TiO2 pellets which are more suitable than the Pt–TiO2 powder for the practical remediation of the contaminated gas. TCE was completely degraded, i.e. 100% conversion was achieved under VL irradiation but only a small quantity of CO2 was formed with the stoichiometric ratio of [CO2]formed/[TCE]degraded of ca. 0.33. By switching the gas stream containing TCE to humid air, more CO2 was formed, indicating that the dichloroacetates accumulated on the Pt–TiO2 surface are photodegradable to CO2 under VL irradiation.