In this project, the ability of titanium dioxide (TiO2) in speeding the degradation of an unknown organic pollutant in water in the presence of light was verified and assessed via UV-Vis spectroscopy.
Based on the given UV-Vis absorbance data for the organic pollutant mixture, a Python program utilizing Pandas, MatPlotLib, and SciPy was developed to calculate absorbances from count data, obtain a clean UV-Vis absorbance spectrum, its averaged noise, and its peak wavelength at different times using a data cleaning algorithm and an 8th degree polynomial model, determine the UV-Vis linear calibration data for the pollutant, and relate pollutant concentration to the time since addition of TiO2 and irradiation.
Despite possible inaccuracies in the analysis and the large observed noise in absorbance measurements, this program enabled possible trends and information regarding the photodegradation of organic pollutants and the UV-Vis spectra of pollutants to be elucidated and visualized in relation to reaction time / duration.