Disinfection Kinetics and Contribution of Reactive Oxygen Species When Eliminating Bacteria with TiO₂ Induced Photocatalysis

Yanling Cai, Maria Strømme, Ken Welch

Division for Nanotechnology and Functional Materials, Department of Engineering Sciences, The ?ngstr?m Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.

DOI: 10.4236/jbnb.2014.53024                

Abstract

Titania (TiO₂) induced photocatalysis has been widely investigated and applied as a disinfection strategy in many industrial and clinical applications. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), including hydroxyl radicals (&8226OH), superoxide radicals () and hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), generated in the photocatalytic reaction process are considered to be the active components prompting the bactericidal effect. In the present work, the kinetics of photocatalytic inactivation of Staphylococcus epidermidis and specific contributions of •OH, and H₂O₂ to the bactericidal process were studied using two disinfection settings sutilizing photocatalytic resin-TiO₂ nanocomposite surfaces and suspended TiO₂ nanoparticles, respectively. In antibacterial tests against S. epidermidis with a layer of bacterial suspension on the resin-TiO₂ surfaces, H₂O₂ was found to be the most efficient ROS component contributing to the antibacterial effect. Disinfection kinetics showed a two-step behavior with an initial region having a lower disinfection rate followed by a higher rate region after 10 min of UV irradiation. By contrast, in antibacterial tests with suspended bacteria and photocatalytic TiO₂ nanoparticles, •OH and H₂O₂ showed equal significance in the bacterial inactivation having a typical Chick-Watson disinfection kinetics behavior with a steady disinfection rate. The results contribute to the understanding of the bactericidal mechanism and kinetics of photocatalytic disinfection that are essential for designing specific antibacterial applications of photocatalytic materials.

Keywords

Photocatalytic Disinfection, TiO₂, Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), Disinfection Kinetics

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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