• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.85-91
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• 2004

The objective of this study is to determine the optimum conditions of operational parameters using factorial design for phenol degradation in photocatalytic oxidation reactors. Factorial design is widely used to select the dominant factors and their ranges in experiments involving several factors where it is necessary to study the effect of factors on a response. The effects of initial concentration of phenol, intensity of UV light and surface area of catalyst on phenol degradation were investigated. Two levels were considered in this study so that the experiment was a $2^3$ factorial design with three replicates. The experimental results show that an increase in initial concentration of phenol from 5 to 50 mg/L intensity of UV light from 5,000 to $20,000\;{\mu}W/cm^2$, and surface area of catalyst from 740 to $2,105\;cm^2$ enhanced the phenol degradation rate by an average of 1.86, 1.79, and 2.10 mg/L hr, respectively. Interaction effects do not appear to be as large on the phenol degradation rate as the main effects of single factors. The optimum working condition for photocatalytic oxidation reactors, despite the higher three factors the better removal rate, is the highest surface area or catalyst.