In this study, a new, low cost and easy method, hydroxyl radical trapping method, was employed to investigate the photo-activity of UV/TiO2 photocatalytic reaction. The Taguchi method was utilized to optimize the preparation of titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin-film reactor through the modified chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The optimal yield of hydroxyl radicals was then evaluated by calculating the conversion ratio of salicylic acid under the optimal conditions. in the experiments, salicylic acid was used as the free-radical scavenger and the formation of three different intermediates were examined to shed light on the trend and kinetics of reaction of hydroxyl radical with organic substance under different operation conditions. The results indicated that the yield of hydroxyl radicals increased with increasing irradiation intensity and dissolved oxygen level. The optimal experimental conditions obtained in this study were irradiation with intensity of 2.9 mW cm(-2) on salicylic acid at concentration of 250 mg L-1 by both agitation and aeration processes (dissolved oxygen level = 8.2 mg O-2 L-1) at pH 5. Such conditions could achieve the optimal hydroxyl radical yield of 5.1 x 10(-17) M. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved