Synthesis of a three-dimensional network sodium alginate–poly(acrylic acid)/attapulgite hydrogel with good mechanic property and reusability for efficient adsorption of Cu2+ and Pb2+

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Water pollution caused by heavy metals has dramatically impacted ecosystems in recent years. For instance, 45.4% of lakes in China are in the category of moderate...     

Developing a theory of change for a community‐based response to illegal wildlife trade

The escalating illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is one of the most high‐profile conservation challenges today. The crisis has attracted over US$350 million in donor and government funding in recent years, primarily directed at increased enforcement. There is growing recognition among practitioners and policy makers of the need to engage rural communities that neighbor or live with wildlife as key partners in tackling IWT. However, a framework to guide such community engagement is lacking. We developed a theory of change (ToC) to guide policy makers, donors, and practitioners in partnering with communities to combat IWT. We identified 4 pathways for community‐level actions: strengthen disincentives for illegal behavior, increase incentives for wildlife stewardship, decrease costs of living with wildlife, and support livelihoods that are not related to wildlife. To succeed the pathways, all require strengthening of enabling conditions, including capacity building, and of governance. Our ToC serves to guide actions to tackle IWT and to inform the evaluation of policies. Moreover, it can be used to foster dialogue among IWT stakeholders, from local communities to governments and international donors, to develop a more effective, holistic, and sustainable community‐based response to the IWT crisis.     

陕北黄土高原区滑坡发育类型与时空分布特征——以吴起县为例

自1970年代以来,因吴起油田的发现,吴起县石油开采及相关工程建设频繁,各项工程建设在为吴起县带来经济发展的同时也引发了大量滑坡灾害。以"陕西省延安市吴起县地质灾害详细调查"项目为依托,对县内滑坡的类型及分布情况进行了较为详细的野外调查。根据调查结果将滑坡分为黄土层内滑坡、黄土-红粘土接触面滑坡、红粘土-基岩接触面滑坡和黄土泥流滑坡四类,并对滑坡灾害的时间、空间及时空分布特征进行了分析,最后提出相关防治对策。     

岩石冻融风化作用积累泥石流物源试验研究

风化作用导致地表岩石的破碎,是泥石流固体物质的主要来源之一。研究岩石风化作用对于研究高原泥石流物源的积累效应和泥石流的形成机理具有重要意义。在高寒地区,地表岩石以物理风化为主。温度和水分的变化是物理风化作用的主要原因。该文选择青海省玉树州泥质砂岩,分6级不同含水率,分别开展了循环10次、20次、40次、60次、80次冻融试验,并对冻融岩样进行纵波波速测量、CT扫描和抗拉强度测量,横向比较岩石的风化程度。通过试验得出不同含水率条件下,随着冻融循环次数的增加,岩样的纵波波速、CT数和抗拉强度都呈减小的趋势。综合分析认为温差作用和冰劈效应在高寒地区岩石风化中的主要地质作用。在干燥条件下,温差作用更加明显。在含水条件下,温差风化和冰劈作用同时存在,相互促进。     

Groundwater arsenic removal by coagulation using ferric(Ⅲ)sulfate and polyferric sulfate: A comparative and mechanistic study

Elevated arsenic(As) in groundwater poses a great threat to human health. Coagulation using mono- and poly-Fe salts is becoming one of the most cost-effective processes for groundwater As removal. However, a limitation comes from insufficient understanding of the As removal mechanism from groundwater matrices in the coagulation process, which is critical for groundwater treatment and residual solid disposal. Here, we overcame this hurdle by utilizing microscopic techniques to explore molecular As surface complexes on the freshly formed Fe flocs and compared ferric(III) sulfate(FS) and polyferric sulfate(PFS)performance, and finally provided a practical solution in As-geogenic areas. FS and PFS exhibited a similar As removal efficiency in coagulation and coagulation/filtration in a two-bucket system using 5 mg/L Ca(ClO)_2. By using the two-bucket system combining coagulation and sand filtration, 500 L of As-safe water( 10 μg/L) was achieved during five treatment cycles by washing the sand layer after each cycle. Fe k-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure(XANES) and As k-edge extended X-ray absorption fine structure(EXAFS) analysis of the solid residue indicated that As formed a bidentate binuclear complex on ferrihydrite, with no observation of scorodite or poorly-crystalline ferric arsenate. Such a stable surface complex is beneficial for As immobilization in the solid residue, as confirmed by the achievement of much lower leachate As(0.9 μg/L–0.487 mg/L)than the US EPA regulatory limit(5 mg/L). Finally, PFS is superior to FS because of its lower dose, much lower solid residue, and lower cost for As-safe drinking water.     

Groundwater arsenic removal by coagulation using ferric(III) sulfate and polyferric sulfate: A comparative and mechanistic study

Elevated arsenic (As) in groundwater poses a great threat to human health. Coagulation using mono-and poly-Fe salts is becoming one of the most cost-effective processes for groundwater As removal. However, a limitation comes from insufficient understanding of the As removal mechanism from groundwater matrices in the coagulation process, which is critical for groundwater treatment and residual solid disposal. Here, we overcame this hurdle by utilizing microscopic techniques to explore molecular As surface complexes on the freshly formed Fe flocs and compared ferric(III) sulfate (FS) and polyferric sulfate (PFS) performance, and finally provided a practical solution in As-geogenic areas. FS and PFS exhibited a similar As removal efficiency in coagulation and coagulation/filtration in a two-bucket system using 5 mg/L Ca(ClO)₂. By using the two-bucket system combining coagulation and sand filtration, 500 L of As-safe water (<10 μg/L) was achieved during five treatment cycles by washing the sand layer after each cycle. Fe k-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) and As k-edge extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) analysis of the solid residue indicated that As formed a bidentate binuclear complex on ferrihydrite, with no observation of scorodite or poorly-crystalline ferric arsenate. Such a stable surface complex is beneficial for As immobilization in the solid residue, as confirmed by the achievement of much lower leachate As (0.9 μg/L-0.487 mg/L) than the US EPA regulatory limit (5 mg/L). Finally, PFS is superior to FS because of its lower dose, much lower solid residue, and lower cost for As-safe drinking water.     

Spatial-temporal distribution and potential ecological risk assessment of nonylphenol and octylphenol in riverine outlets of Pearl River Delta, China

The aquatic environments of the Pearl River Delta in Southern China are subjected to contamination with various industrial chemicals from local industries. In this paper, the occurrence, seasonal variation and spatial distribution of alkylphenol octylphenol （OP） and nonylphenol （NP） in fiver surface water and sediments in the runoff outlets of the Pearl River Delta were investigated. NP and OP were detected in all water and sediment samples and their mean concentrations in surface water during the dry season ranged from 810 to 3366 ng/L and 85.5 to 581 ng/L, respectively, and those in sediments ranged from 14.2 to 95.2 ng/g dw and 0.4 to 3.0 ng/g dw, respectively. In surface water, much higher concentrations were detected in the dry season than those in the wet season. In sediments, the concentrations in the dry season were also mostly higher. High concentrations of NP and OP were found in Humen outlet, likely due to high levels of domestic and industrial wastewater discharges. An ecological risk assessment with the use of hazard quotient （HQ） was also carried out and the HQvalues ranged from 3.6 × 10^-5 to 35 and 64% of samples gave a HQ 〉 1, indicating that the current levels of NP and OP pose a significant risk to the relevant aquatic organisms in the region.     

Size distribution, characteristics and sources of heavy metals in haze episod in Beijing

Size segragated samples were collected during high polluted winter haze days in 2006 in Beijing, China. Twenty nine elements and 9 water soluble ions were determined. Heavy metals of Zn, Pb, Mn, Cu, As, Cr, Ni, V and Cd were deeply studied considering their toxic effect on human being. Among these heavy metals, the levels of Mn, As and Cd exceeded the reference values of National Ambient Air Quality Standard （GB3095-2012） and guidelines of World Health Organization. By estimation, high percentage of atmospheric heavy metals in PM2.5 indicates it is an effective way to control atmospheric heavy metals by PM2.5 controlling. Pb, Cd, and Zn show mostly in accumulation mode, V, Mn and Cu exist mostly in both coarse and accumulation modes, and Ni and Cr exist in all of the three modes. Considering the health effect, the breakthrough rates of atmospheric heavy metals into pulmonary alveoli are： Pb （62.1%） 〉 As （58.1%） 〉 Cd （57.9%） 〉 Zn （57.7%） 〉 Cu （55.8%） 〉 Ni （53.5%） 〉 Cr （52.2%） 〉 Mn （49.2%） 〉 V （43.5%）. Positive matrix factorization method was applied for source apportionment of studied heavy metals combined with some marker elements and ions such as K, As, SO42- etc., and four factors （dust, vehicle, aged and transportation, unknown） are identified and the size distribution contribution of them to atmospheric heavy metals are discussed.     

Removal of arsenate with hydrous ferric oxide coprecipitation：Effect of humic acid

Insights from the adverse effect of humic acid(HA) on arsenate removal with hydrous ferric oxide(HFO) coprecipitation can further our understanding of the fate of As(V) in water treatment process. The motivation of our study is to explore the competitive adsorption mechanisms of humic acid and As(V) on HFO on the molecular scale. Multiple complementary techniques were used including macroscopic adsorption experiments, surface enhanced Raman scattering(SERS), extended X-ray absorption fine structure(EXAFS) spectroscopy, flow-cell attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared(ATR-FTIR) measurement, and charge distribution multisite complexation(CDMUSIC) modeling. The As(V) removal efficiency was reduced from over 95% to about 10% with the increasing HA concentration to 25 times of As(V) mass concentration. The SERS analysis excluded the HA-As(V) complex formation. The EXAFS results indicate that As(V) formed bidentate binuclear surface complexes in the presence of HA as evidenced by an As-Fe distance of 3.26–3.31 ?. The in situ ATR-FTIR measurements show that As(V) replaces surface hydroxyl groups and forms innersphere complex. High concentrations of HA may physically block the surface sites and inhibit the As(V) access. The adsorption of As(V) and HA decreased the point of zero charge of HFO from 7.8 to 5.8 and 6.3, respectively. The CD-MUSIC model described the zeta potential curves and adsorption edges of As(V) and HA reasonably well.     

Heterogeneous Fenton-like degradation of 4-chlorophenol using iron/ordered mesoporous carbon catalyst

Ordered mesoporous carbon supported iron catalysts(Fe/OMC) were prepared by the incipient wetness impregnation method and investigated in Fenton-like degradation of 4-chlorophenol(4CP) in this work. XRD and TEM characterization showed that the iron oxides were well dispersed on the OMC support and grew bigger with the increasing calcination temperature. The catalyst prepared with a lower calcination temperature showed higher decomposition efficiency towards 4CP and H2O2, but more metals were leached. The effect of different operational parameters such as initial pH, H2O2 dosage, and reaction temperature on the catalytic activity was evaluated. The results showed that 96.1% of 4CP and 47.4% of TOC was removed after 270 min at 30°C, initial pH of 3 and 6.6 mmol/L H2O2. 88% of 4CP removal efficiency was retained after three successive runs, indicating Fe/OMC a stable catalyst for Fenton reaction. 4CP was degraded predominately by the attack of hydroxyl radical formed on the catalyst surface and in the bulk solution due to iron leaching. Based on the degradation intermediates detected by high performance liquid chromatography, possible oxidation pathways were proposed during the 4CP degradation.