Powering photoreactions with inductively coupled wireless light emitters located inside the reaction medium

光催化是通过光（光子）的存在激活或加速化学反应。在过去的几十年里，光催化在基础科学和应用科学中的重要性迅速扩大，特别是因为它们经常被报道为资源高效和可持续。光子基本上是无迹可循的，在阳光的情况下，是碳中性的试剂。然而，这些反应的工业实施在技术上具有挑战性。工程上的限制，如照明效率和对特殊反应器设计的需要，是这些工艺仍然局限于少数选定案例的主要原因。特别是在高催化剂负载的情况下，光进入反应器的穿透深度通常不超过几毫米，这是一个限制因素。用于这些过程的反应器需要比其体积更大的表面。非常薄的反应器显示出更好的照明效率，但在放大时非常密集。因此，对特定的昂贵光反应器的要求往往是实现工业规模的实质性障碍。内部照明是一种解决方案。这是一种很有前途的技术，它既能获得良好的照明效率，又能使反应堆类型的选择更加灵活。与经典的内部照明方法相比，我们提出了谐振电感耦合（RIC）来为内部光源供电，进一步称为无线光源（WLEs）。由于光源本身可以很容易地添加到反应器中或从反应器中分离出来，因此在选择合适的反应器时具有更大的灵活性。甚至可以使用标准的多用途反应器。在本项目中，我们提出利用WLEs为光催化反应提供动力，这将极大地有助于广泛应用。谐振电感耦合（RIC）在LED器件的无线供电中显示出巨大的潜力，因为可能的能量传递效率已经达到了75%，而且水的导电性对能量传递效率没有负面影响。由于RIC已经有许多众所周知的应用，例如智能手机和牙刷的充电，因此可以预期未来发展的协同效应。由RIC供电的led已经被成功地引入光生物反应器。所使用的磁场在大约178千赫的频率上约为1mT（磁通量密度），与感应灶台相当。虽然磁场效应（MFE）已被提出影响半导体颗粒中的扩散和电荷分离，但这仅在磁场数量级更高且结果有争议的情况下观察到。此外，对反应性的正面影响的报告远远超过负面影响，因此这在预期的应用程序中不太可能出现问题。

Photocatalysis is the activation or acceleration of a chemical reaction by the presence of light (photons). The importance of photocatalysis in fundamental and applied sciences expanded rapidly over the last decades, especially as they are often reported as resource-efficient and sustainable. Photons are essentially traceless and, in the case of sunlight, carbon neutral reagents.However, industrial implementation of these reactions is technically challenging. Engineering limitations such as illumination efficiency and the need for special reactor designs are the main reasons for those processes still being limited to a few selected cases. Especially in the case of high catalyst loadings the penetration depth of light into the reactor, which typically does not exceed a few millimeters, is a limiting factor. Reactors for those processes need a large surface compared to their volume. Very thin reactors show better illumination efficiencies but are very area intensive in scale-up. Therefore, the requirement of specific expensive photoreactors is often a substantial obstacle for implementation in industrial scales. Internal illumination can be a solution. It is a promising technique that achieves good illumination efficiency and enables a more flexible choice of reactor types.Compared to classical methods for internal illumination, we propose resonant inductive coupling (RIC) for the powering of internal light sources, further called Wireless Light Emitters (WLEs). Since the light sources themselves can easily be added to or separated from the reactor, it allows for more flexibility in selecting a suitable reactor. Even standard multi-purpose reactors could be used. In this project, we propose utilizing WLEs to power photocatalytic reactions, which could tremendously help to wide-spread applications. Resonant inductive coupling (RIC) shows great potential for wireless powering of LED devices as the possible energy transfer efficiency is already >75% and the conductivity of water shows no negative impact on the energy transfer efficiency. Since there are already many well-known applications for RIC such as charging of smart phones and tooth brushes, synergetic effects in future developments can be expected. LEDs powered by RIC were already successfully introduced as a means to illuminate photobioreactors. The employed magnetic field is in the order of 1mT (magnetic flux density) at a frequency of about 178 kHz and is comparable to induction cooktops. While a magnetic field effect (MFE) has been proposed to affect diffusion and charge separation in the semiconductor particles, this was only observed for magnetic fields orders of magnitude higher and with controversial results. Also, the reports of positive effects on the reactivity far outweigh the negative ones so this is very unlikely to present a problem in the envisioned application.