A Remarkable Photocatalyst Filter for Indoor Air Treatment

Abstract

A crucial environmental public health risk is air pollution caused by organic contaminants, bio-aerosols, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5–10). A multi-purpose photocatalyst filter with photocatalytic nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide (PNT) incorporated into non-woven polymer fibers (NWPF) with wide applications is focused on in detail in this work. Loading of PNT on NWPF is carried out by the simple dip coating method. Para-xylene is selected as the target pollutant for the removal of organic contaminants. Higher removal efficiency of p-xylene (94.2%) is achieved under fluorescent daylight. The filtration efficiency of PNT is also evaluated to capture PM2.5–10, which is increased with higher loading content of PNT. At a high air flow rate, the filtration efficiency of the photocatalyst PNT/NWPF is 97.33%, whereas the efficiency of the pristine NWPF is 91.1%. Moreover, the PNT/NWPF filter exhibits excellent antibacterial activity (99.9%) under visible light irradiation, but the pristine NWPF filter has negligible destruction effects on pathogens. These results clearly indicate that a PNT-coated NWPF filter would be an outstanding multi-purpose material for indoor air purification systems.

Keywords

• PNT nanospheres
• PM_2.5–10
• dust capture
• VOC removal
• <i>p</i>-xylene
• pathogen