Many chemical methods for treating industrial effluent suffer notable defects. The development of new methods for waste-water treatment is an urgent common problem for Russia and western Europe. One particularly promising area involves the use of photochemical techniques, with the use of ultraviolet radiation for water sterilization already well established. Further, there is currently considerable interest in using photocatalytic oxidation, particularly using titanium dioxide, for effluent treatment, and some systems are available commercially. However, whilst the value of these methods is not in question, they suffer the disadvantage that they require ultraviolet light sources. It would be advantageous, both from economic and safety viewpoints, to develop methods which use visible light, with the ultimate aim of using sunlight in countries with suitable weather patterns.

The groups involved in this project have a large amount of experience in the redox chemistry of metal complexes in both ground and excited states, and develop viable systems for photooxidation of organic pollutants, and their conversion to inactive species, using transition metal complexes and visible light.

The objective of the project is to develop superior photocatalytic systems for the mineralisation of organic pollutants, particularly organochlorine compounds and surfactants, using the ultraviolet, and especially the visible, components of light from high-wattage lamps.

The project will be carried out as follows: development of TiO2 powders and test for catalytic efficiency; development of new photomineralisation catalysis; development of UV irradiation procedures; and development of new catalytic, photocatalytic and radiation-catalytic systems based on metal ions such as Fc(III) for the exidative removal of sulfur compounds.