The evaluation of activities of two types of photocatalysts at inactivation/disintegration of microorganism aerosols

Photocatalytic processes are more and more widely used to remove different pollutants including microorganisms from liquid and gaseous media. However, methods for evaluating the efficiency of photocatalysts at inactivation/disintegration of microorganisms in the liquid film have limitations at predicting their efficiency for microorganism-containing aerosols. The comparison of two types of photocatalysts was performed on Mycobacterium smegmatis bacterium and vaccinia virus using these new methods for evaluating the efficiency of photocatalysts at inactivation/disintegration of microorganisms in aerosols deposited on photocatalytic coatings. It has been shown that the photocatalyst based on platinized TiO2 displays a higher activity at inactivation/disintegration of aerosols of both microorganisms than the photocatalyst based on “pure” titanium dioxide.