Affiliations: [a] Laboratoire d'Ingénierie et Fonctionnalisation
des Surfaces (IFoS), ECL, 36 avenue Guy de Collongue, 69134 Ecully Cedex,
France | [b] Laboratoire d'Application de la Chimie à
l'Environnement (LACE), UCBL, bât Raulin, 43, boulevard du 11 novembre
1918, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France | [c] Institut National des Sciences Appliquées et de
Technologie; BP 676, 1080 Tunis Cedex, Tunisia
Abstract: A TiO_{2}-coated optical fiber photoreactor was
built and studied in order to optimize different parameters before the
development of a multi-optical fiber reactor. The physico-chemical properties
of the TiO_{2} film prepared by a sol-gel method on an
optical fiber were first determined. A thickness of about 30 nm per layer and a
roughness of 2 nm were estimated by ESEM and AFM, respectively. The refractive
index of the TiO_{2} coating was determined by a simulation
method. Then, the influences of the film thickness, coating length and coating
volume on the light transmission within the fiber were investigated. The
intensity of transmitted light was found to decrease exponentially as the
volume of TiO_{2} increased. Afterward, the dependence of
the photocatalytic degradation of hydroxybutanedioic acid on the incident light
intensity, the TiO_{2} coating thickness and the coating
volume was studied and modelized. The photocatalytic degradation was found to
be stabilized above a TiO_{2} volume of 200 μ
m^{3} for a fiber of 1 mm and 100 μ
m^{3} for a fiber of 0.6 mm. Finally, a multi-fiber reactor
was built and its degradation rate of hydroxybutanedioic acid was compared to
that obtained in a single optical fiber reactor.
