Fast purification of air from diethyl sulfide with nanosized TiO₂ aerosol

TiO₂ aerosol generated by a sonic method has been applied for fast purification of air from diethyl sulfide (DES) vapors inside a closed chamber. Two types of experiments modeling the possible real situations were conducted - (1) aerosol spraying without irradiation followed by UV irradiation after aerosol deposition and (2) aerosol spraying under UV irradiation. Adsorption of DES on TiO₂ particles was complete and fastest at the lowest air relative humidity (RH) while photocatalytic oxidation was fastest at RH 37%. The minimal TiO₂ aerosol surface area needed to remove from air one DES molecule is 2.3nm² at the adsorption and 1.5nm² at the photocatalytic oxidation. The quantum efficiency of the DES consumption increases from 4.7 to 20% when the initial DES concentration increases from 100 to 1000ppm. The overall quantum efficiency of the DES deep oxidation reached 41 and 58% for the initial concentration 100 and 1000ppm, respectively. The results demonstrate unusually high activity of TiO₂ aerosol for the adsorption-photocatalytic air purification from DES.