Effect of TiO2 nanoparticles addition on the photocatalytic degradation of aqueous poly (vinyl pyrrolidone)

In this work, photocatalytic degradation of poly (vinyl pyrrolidone) in the presence of TiO nanoparticles was studied. An ultraviolet source with the power of 60W has been used to degrade the aqueous samples and the output power was adjusted in to different power named 30 and 60W, separately. This investigations show that with an increase in the amount of nanoparticles, the rate of degradation has been increased. A method of viscometry was used to study the degradation behaviour and kinetic model was developed to estimate the degradation rate constants. Also, increasing the rate of degradation decreased the viscosity average molecular weights of samples. A similar effect can be seen for the increase of irradiation power of UV source.