Artificial sunlight and ultraviolet light induced photo-epoxidation of propylene over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst

• Main Authors: Van-Huy Nguyen, Shawn D. Lin, Jeffrey Chi-Sheng Wu, Hsunling Bai
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beilstein-Institut 2014-05-01
• Series: Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology
• Subjects: artificial sunlight; light irradiation effects; photo-epoxidation; ultraviolet (UV) light; V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3762/bjnano.5.67

The light irradiation parameters, including the wavelength spectrum and intensity of light source, can significantly influence a photocatalytic reaction. This study examines the propylene photo-epoxidation over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst by using artificial sunlight (Xe lamp with/without an Air Mass 1.5 Global Filter at 1.6/18.5 mW·cm−2) and ultraviolet light (Mercury Arc lamp with different filters in the range of 0.1–0.8 mW·cm−2). This is the first report of using artificial sunlight to drive the photo-epoxidation of propylene. Over V-Ti/MCM-41 photocatalyst, the propylene oxide (PO) formation rate is 193.0 and 112.1 µmol·gcat−1·h−1 with a PO selectivity of 35.0 and 53.7% under UV light and artificial sunlight, respectively. A normalized light utilization (NLU) index is defined and found to correlate well with the rate of both PO formation and C3H6 consumption in log–log scale. The light utilization with a mercury arc lamp is better than with a xenon lamp. The selectivity to PO remains practically unchanged with respect to NLU, suggesting that the photo-epoxidation occurs through the same mechanism under the conditions tested in this study.