A MATLAB-Based Application for Modeling and Simulation of Solar Slurry Photocatalytic Reactors for Environmental Applications

Abstract

Because of the complexity caused by photochemical reactions and radiation transport, accomplishing photoreactor modeling usually poses a barrier for young researchers or research works that focus on experimental developments, although it may be a crucial tool for reducing experimental efforts and carrying out a more comprehensive analysis of the results. This work presents PHOTOREAC, an open-access application developed in the graphical user interface of Matlab, which allows a user-friendly evaluation of the solar photoreactors operation. The app includes several solar photoreactor configurations and kinetics models as well as two variants of a radiation absorption-scattering model. Moreover, PHOTOREAC incorporates a database of 26 of experimental solar photodegradation datasets with a variety of operational conditions (model pollutants, photocatalyst concentrations, initial pollutant concentrations); additionally, users can introduce their new experimental data. The implementation of PHOTOREAC is presented using three example cases of solar photoreactor operation in which the impact of the operational parameters is explored, kinetic constants are estimated according to experimental data, and comparisons are made between the available models. Finally, the impact of the application on young researchers’ projects in photocatalysis at the University of Cartagena was investigated. PHOTOREAC is available upon request from Professor Miguel Mueses.

Keywords

• computer-based learning
• solar photocatalysis
• water contaminants
• kinetic modeling
• photoreactor design