An optofluidic planar microreactor for photocatalytic reduction of CO2 in alkaline environment

Xiao Cheng, Rong Chen, Xun Zhu, Qiang Liao, Liang An, Dingding Ye, Xuefeng He, Shuzhe Li and Lin Li

Energy, 2017, vol. 120, issue C, 276-282

Abstract: The development of highly efficient photocatalytic reactor is of importance to improve the performance of the photocatalytic reduction of CO2. In this work, an optofluidic planar microreactor is designed and fabricated for the photocatalytic reduction of CO2 with liquid water in alkaline environment. Such design offers several advantages of large surface-area-to-volume ratio, enhanced mass and photon transfer and more uniform light distribution. The performance of the developed planar microreactor is evaluated by measuring the methanol concentration to estimate the methanol yield under various operating parameters, including the liquid flow rate, light intensity, catalyst loading and NaOH concentration. It is shown that increasing the liquid flow rate firstly improves and then decreases the methanol concentration while the methanol yield continuously increases as the liquid flow rate increases. The increase of the light intensity and NaOH concentration increases both the methanol concentration and yield. Increasing the catalyst loading firstly improves the performance and then results in the reduction of the performance. A maximum methanol yield of 454.6 μmole/g-cat·h is achieved under a liquid flow rate of 50 μL/min, 0.2 M NaOH, and the light intensity of 8 mW/cm2.

Keywords: Optofluidic planar microreactor; Photocatalytic reduction of CO2; Methanol concentration; Methanol yield (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421631711X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:120:y:2017:i:c:p:276-282

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.11.081

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().