Environmental and Medical Applications of TiO₂ Photocatalysts and Boron-doped Diamond Electrodes

Abstract

This paper summarized the author’s recent studies about effective design of the systems for environmental and dental application of TiO₂ photocatalysts and boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrodes. The titanium mesh impregnated photocatalyst, TMiP™ has been fabricated as a novel photocatalytic filter. The high mechanical flexibility of TMiP allows us to design any geometry of modules by combination of UV-sources and the other technologies. In this paper, a practical air-cleaner using the TMiP-plasma synergistic reactor was fabricated and installed in a real-scale smoking room in the office. The amounts of the compounds in tobacco smoke were almost totally removed by the air-cleaner. On the other hands, the author also reported the possibilities of wastewater treatments by electrolysis with BDD electrodes. Based on these studies, a novel pinpoint ozone-water production unit for dental treatment using of BDD microelectrodes was developed. The unit showed almost the same sterilization ability as conventional 20 ppm of aqueous sodium hypochlorite treatment in in vitro assessment in the root-canal of bovine teeth. These results present several key solutions for practical applications of TiO₂ photocatalysis and BDD electrolysis.