Photocatalytic Disinfection of Water: Mechanism and Application

Dear Colleagues,

The development of water disinfection technology is still a scientific and technical challenge, since conventional methods have shown several disadvantages mainly related to the formation of potentially hazardous disinfection by-products (DBPs). In recent years, there has been a growing interest of research in photocatalysis, a process included in a special class of oxidation techniques defined as advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), characterized by the production of ^·OH radicals. Photocatalytic processes show significant advantages over other AOPs, such as operation under ambient temperature, pH, and pressure, as well as the possibility of using solar light as a radiation source, thus reducing the energy costs.

Photocatalytic disinfection has been reported to efficiently inactivate different kinds of pathogenic microorganisms (viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa) as well as to remove multi-drug-resistant bacteria, acting against the highly undesirable transfer of antibiotic resistance genes amongst them.

Several studies have been carried out placing special emphasis to the mechanisms acting during the process of photocatalytic disinfection and on experimental systems designed to optimize this disinfection technology. Many efforts have also been devoted to the development of composite materials to be utilized in immobilized photocatalytic systems, such as wall and fixed-bed reactors, looking for an alternative to allow continuous wastewater treatment without the need of a post-treatment catalyst separation step, as it happens in slurry batch processes.

In particular, the topics of interest of this Special Issue include (but are not limited to):

• Recent advances in antimicrobial photocatalysts
• Antimicrobial photocatalytic materials
• New generation of antimicrobial catalysts
• Water treatment in coated reactors
• Mechanistic understanding of photocatalytic disinfection

Dr. Giusy Lofrano
Prof. Dionysios (Dion) D. Dionysiou
Prof. Giovanni Libralato
Dr. Patrick Dunlop
Dr. Pilar Fernandez
Dr. Sami Rtimi
Prof. J. Anthony Byrne
Guest Editors

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• Photocatalysis
• Water/Wastewater
• Microbial abatement
• Materials’ Characterization