Photocatalyst-coated optical fibers (P-OFs) using UV-A LEDs offer a highly promising solution for the degradation of micropollutants within municipal, reuse, industrial or home distribution systems, by integrating P-OFs into water storage tanks. P-OFs have photocatalysts attached to bundles of optical fibers, enabling their direct deployment within tanks. This eliminates the necessity for photocatalyst slurries, which would require additional membrane or separation systems. However, a current limitation of P-OFs is light management, specifically light oversaturation of the coated photocatalysts and short light transmission distances along fibers. This study overcomes this limitation and reveals strategies to improve the light dissipation uniformity along P-OFs, and demonstrates the performance of P-OFs on degrading a model micropollutant, carbamazepine (CBZ). Key tunable variables of fibers and light emission conditions, including photocatalyst coating patchiness (), minimum light incident angles (), radiant flux launched to fibers (Φ), and fiber diameters (), were modeled to establish their relationships with the light dissipation uniformity in TiO-coated quartz optical fibers (TiO-QOFs). We then validated modeling insights by conducting experiments to examine how these variables influence the generation of evanescent waves which are localized energy on fiber surfaces, leading to either photocatalyst activation or the recapture of unused light back into fibers. We observed substantial enhancements in evanescent waves generation by decreasing and increasing , resulting in uniform light dissipation which reduces light oversaturation and improves light transmission distances. Moreover, these optimizations led to a remarkable three-fold improvement in CBZ degradation rates and a 65% reduction in energy consumption. Such improvement substantially reduces the capital and operational cost and enhances practicality of energy-efficient photocatalysis without additional chemical oxidants for micropollutant degradation in water storage tanks.

中文翻译：

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使用原位 TiO2 涂层石英光纤防​​止储水箱中的微污染物


通过将 P-OF 集成到储水箱中，使用 UV-A LED 的光催化剂涂层光纤 (P-OF) 为市政、再利用、工业或家庭分配系统中的微污染物降解提供了一种非常有前景的解决方案。 P-OF 将光催化剂附​​着在光纤束上，使其能够直接部署在储罐内。这消除了对光催化剂浆料的需要，光催化剂浆料需要额外的膜或分离系统。然而，P-OF 目前的局限性在于光管理，特别是涂层光催化剂的光过饱和和沿光纤的光传输距离短。这项研究克服了这一限制，揭示了改善 P-OF 光耗散均匀性的策略，并展示了 P-OF 降解模型微污染物卡马西平 (CBZ) 的性能。对光纤和光发射条件的关键可调变量，包括光催化剂涂层斑块 ()、最小光入射角 ()、发射到光纤的辐射通量 (Φ) 和光纤直径 () 进行建模，以建立它们与光耗散均匀性的关系TiO 涂层石英光纤 (TiO-QOF)。然后，我们通过进行实验来验证建模见解，以检查这些变量如何影响倏逝波的产生，倏逝波是纤维表面上的局部能量，从而导致光催化剂激活或将未使用的光重新捕获回纤维中。我们观察到，通过减少和增加 ，倏逝波的产生显着增强，从而导致均匀的光耗散，从而减少光过饱和并提高光传输距离。 此外，这些优化使 CBZ 降解率显着提高了三倍，能耗降低了 65%。这种改进大大降低了资金和运营成本，并增强了节能光催化的实用性，无需额外的化学氧化剂即可降解储水箱中的微污染物。