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Study of bioaerosol disinfection kinetics and application of nonlinear regression modeling for optimization of TiO2-based photocatalytic disinfection process

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A Correction to this article was published on 08 December 2023

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Abstract

Bacteria and viruses are some of the major sources of indoor air pollution. Many strategies are utilized to control indoor biopollutants. Among the new emerging technologies, this work focuses on the photocatalytic oxidation process and application of disinfection models to optimize the photocatalytic process in bioaerosol control. The kinetics of bioaerosol disinfection was investigated in the photocatalytic process with nonlinear regression analysis for Serratia marcescens and E. coli bacteria. The Chick–Watson model was found suitable and was applied for determination of the inactivation kinetics. The inactivation rate constant k’ was found to be 0.0038 min−1 for S. marcescens and 0.09 min−1 for E. coli. The outcomes showed that in the process of disinfection kinetics of bioaerosols, pseudo-first-order kinetics fits well. With nonlinear regression analysis, a model was developed based on functional parameters such as UV intensity (20 to 100 W/m2), relative humidity (30 to 85%) and air velocity (37 to 112 ft/min) for S. marcescens and TiO2 loading (960 and 1516 mg/m2), UV intensity (0.5 to 3.4 mW/cm2) and relative humidity (51 to 85%) for E. coli. For E. coli overall inactivation was found to increase with an increase in TiO2 loading, RH or UV intensities. The inactivation rate of S. marcescens increased with an increase in UV intensity; however, it was found to decrease at very high or low values of relative humidity and air velocity. Hence, the optimum values for relative velocity were found to be 50% and air velocity of 74 ft/min for S. marcescens. The rate expressions derived for both data can be utilized for predicting and optimizing the disinfection rate at different conditions.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Author notes

  1. Vartika Nishad and Chinmoy Mandal contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aerosol and Nanoparticle Technology Laboratory, Environmental Science and Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, 507, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Vartika Nishad, Chinmoy Mandal & Manoranjan Sahu

  2. Interdisciplinary Program in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Manoranjan Sahu

  3. Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Manoranjan Sahu

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  1. Vartika Nishad
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Nishad, V., Mandal, C. & Sahu, M. Study of bioaerosol disinfection kinetics and application of nonlinear regression modeling for optimization of TiO2-based photocatalytic disinfection process. Nanotechnol. Environ. Eng. 8, 911–922 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41204-023-00338-5

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