Salari - Associate Professor of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz
Niaie - Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz
Daneshvar - Professor of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz
Aghazadeh - PhD student of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tabriz

During the last two decades, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) has been widely used as an additive to gasoline (up to 15%) both to increase the octane number and as a fuel oxygenate to improve air quality by reducing the level of carbon monoxide in vehicle exhausts. The present work mainly deals with photooxidative degradation of MTBE in the presence of H2O2 under UV light illumination (30 W). We studied the influence of the basic operational parameters such as initial concentration of H2O2 and irradiation time on the photodegradation of MTBE. Our results showed that MTBE could be treated easily and effectively with the UV/H2O2 process with EEo value 80 kWh/m3/order. Comparision between TRAINLM and TRAINSCG Algorithms idicated the TRAINLM algorithm could describe the behavior of the complex reaction system (UV/H2O2 process) with the range of experimental conditions adopted.

Advanced oxidation processes; Artificial neural networks; MTBE; Fuel oxygenate