Comparison of Benzene & Toluene removal from synthetic polluted air with use of Nano photocatalyticTiO2/ ZNO process

Background: mono aromatic hydrocarbons (btex) are a group of hazardous pollutants which originate fromsources such as refineries, gas, and oil extraction fields, petrochemicals and paint and glue industries.conventional methods, including incineration, condensation, adsorption and absorption have been used forremoval of vocs. none of these methods is economical for removal of pollutants of polluted air with low tomoderate concentrations. the heterogeneous photocatalytic processes involve the chemical reactions to convertpollutant to carbon dioxide and water. the aim of this paper is a comparison of benzene & toluene removal fromsynthetic polluted air using a nano photocatalytic tio2/ zno process.results: the x-ray diffraction (xrd) patterns showed that nano crystals of tio2 and zno were in anatase and rutilephases. toluene & benzene were decomposed by tio2/ zno nano photocatalyst and uv radiation. kruskal-wallistest demonstrated that there are significant differences (pvalue < 0.05) between pollutant concentrations in differentoperational conditions.conclusions: degradation of toluene & benzene increases with increasing uv intensity and decreasing initialconcentrations. effect of tio2/zno nano photocatalyst on benzene is less than that on toluene. in this research,toluene & benzene removal by tio2/zno and uv followed first-order reactions.