Developments and New Frontiers In Gas-Solid Photocatalytic Partial Oxidation of Hydrocarbons

This review summarizes the main results reported in papers concerning gas-solid photocatalytic partial oxidation of organic compounds with the aim to up-date the state of the art in the study of heterogeneous photocatalysis as an alternative green method to obtain high valuable chemical products in mild conditions. The literature works have focused mainly on the studying both new formulations of photocatalysts, as well as the functionalization of the catalyst surface and paying attention to the optimization of the operating conditions of photocatalytic process. However, the selectivity of the photoreactions depends not only by the catalysts formulation but evidenced strongly variations in dependence from the different design of the photoreactor. This review shows also the application of chemical engineering aspects devoted to the improvement of the performances of gas-solid photoreactors for oxidation reactions. In particular some process aspects have been developed, exploring the potential of gas-solid photocatalytic selective oxidations applications for industrial processes.