Removal of xylene vapor pollutant from the air using new hybrid substrates of TiO2-WO3 nanoparticles immobilized on the ZSM-5 zeolite under UV radiation at ambient temperature: Experimental towards modeling

•Synthesizing new photocatalyst by the stabilization of nanoparticles on ZSM-5 zeolite for xylene removal.•By decreasing Qxylene, the higher adsorption capacity and longer breakthrough time were obtained.•Using Taguchi L18 orthogonal array to investigate the significance of parameters.•Highest effect of xylene concentration was observed on RE.•ZSM -5/TiO2-WO3 showed the best performance of 47.80% RE. Xylene is one of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced at industrial scale with destructive effects on human beings and the ecosystem; then, its removal is essential. To do so, new ZSM-5/TiO2-WO3 photocatalysts into the different amount of WO3 were prepared by immobilizing the TiO2-WO3 nanoparticles on the ZSM-5 zeolite. The results disclosed that the ZSM-5/TiO2-WO3 photocatalysts show a better photocatalytic decomposition of xylene compared with ZSM-5/TiO2 (without WO3). The breakthrough results revealed that ZSM-5/TiO2-WO3 3 wt% has a higher adsorption capacity and longer time rather than those of 1 wt% and 5 wt%. In order to evaluate the effect of important parameters, for example, xylene concentration (Cxylene/ppm), xylene flow rate (Qxylene/L. min−1) and catalyst concentration (Ccat/wt%) simultaneously on the photocatalytic removal efficiency (RE/%) and find their significance and optimum conditions, the experiments were designed based on Taguchi L18 orthogonal array method known as a robust design method. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) results revealed that Cxylene is the most significant parameter affecting RE. At the optimum conditions, the ZSM-5/TiO2-WO3 (3 wt%) exhibited the best performance to remove about 47.80% xylene. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on the preparation of the new ZSM-5/TiO2-WO3 photocatalyst for xylene removal and investigating the effect of the aforementioned parameters simultaneously on the RE using Taguchi method.