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In sustainable development context, solar energy may be adapted to improve the development of green technologies in wastewater treatment. In this paper, the photocatalytic elimination of Methylene Blue (MB) as a reference dye is performed in a fixed bed photoreactor. A commercial TiO2 catalyst is immobilized on a cement support irradiated by solar light. The effects of some parameters such as the light source, pH of the solution as well as the pollutant initial concentration were investigated. The results show that the quantity of catalyst affects positively the MB degradation rate unlike the pollutant initial concentration which decreases the degradation efficiency. The degradation efficiency was found higher at around basic pH values (93%-97%). In addition, the degradation rate of pollutant was higher with solar light irradiation (97%) rather than with artificial irradiation (16%). This solar photocatalytic device is a potential application for organic dyes elimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The non-biodegradability of textile wastewater is mainly due to the presence of synthetic dyes. Resistance to bacterial degradation led to the development of new techniques where solar photocatalysis appears to be the best method for this type of application. methylene blue (MB) degradation was studied in TiO2and ZnO aqueous suspension using solar energy in a tubular reactor. This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the prototype and explore the feasibility of this concept for solar photocatalytic oxidation. The main objective of this work was to compare the efficiency of two types of catalysts, which are titanium dioxide (TiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO). The use of TiO2as a catalyst enables a good degradation of MB which can achieve a disposal rate of 98% after 270 min with a TiO2concentration of 0.75 g/L. The same removal rate can be achieved by ZnO but for a much smaller concentration which was 0.025 g/L after 140 min. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]