In this research, various titanium dioxide (TiO2) supports are studied in both passive and semi-passive modes in the laboratory and in the field. Passive solar photocatalysis experiments using TiO2 coated hollow glass micro-spheres (photospheres) were conducted to degrade Killex®, sulfolane and cyclopentane carboxylic acid (CPA), a typical naphthenic acid. The results showed more than 99.8% degradation of Killex® ingredients and 97.4% degradation of sulfolane by 3.18 MJ/m2 UV energy from sunlight. 100% of CPA was degraded by capturing 1.01 MJ/m2 solar UV energy. Various configurations of photocatalysts including photospheres, anodized titanium plate and mesh, and electro-photocatalysis were also investigated under ultraviolet light emitting diode (UVA-LED) sources. Energy consumption to achieve 60% degradation of 2, 4- D was used to rank the photocatalysts. The results showed both photospheres and mesh consumed approximately 80 J/cm3 energy followed by electro-photocatalysis (112.15 J/cm3), and the anodized plate (114.47 J/cm3). The semi-passive setup was successfully utilized to degrade total organic carbon in oil sands process wastewater (over 95%) by capturing 28.94 MJ/m2 energy from UVA-LED. This study established a base comparison between various photocatalyst supports, field and laboratory applications, as well as providing promising results for using anodized TiO2 mesh for passive and semi-passive applications.