Publications by authors named "Bei Xun"

To investigate the feasibility of using black carbon (BC) in the control of hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs) in sediment, we added BCs from various sources (rice straw charcoal (RC), fly ash (FC) and soot (SC)) to sediment to create different BC-inclusive sediments and studied the release of pentachlorophenol (PCP) in the sediments under different condition. Different pH values had no obvious effect on the release of PCP in BC-inclusive sediment, but solid/liquid ratio, temperature, salinity and dissolved organic matter (DOM) content had significant influences on the release of PCP in all sediments except the RC-inclusive sediment. Adding 2% RC to sediment resulted in a 90% decrease in PCP release, which was a greater decrease than observed with FC- and SC-inclusive sediments.

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Article Synopsis
  • Black carbon (BC) shows promise in managing hydrophobic organic contaminants in sediments due to its high ability to absorb them.
  • The study examined how pentachlorophenol (PCP) is absorbed in sediments enhanced with rice straw biochar (RC) and fly ash (FC) over different aging times and temperatures.
  • Results indicated that PCP absorption increased with more BC and decreased with longer aging and higher temperatures, with RC consistently outperforming FC in sorption capacity.
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Acid treatment is a routine demineralization process to obtain black carbon (BC), but there has been little systematic research about its influence on BC's characteristics. In this study, elemental analysis, SEM, FTIR, and Boehm titration were used to investigate that effect. Our results showed that the acid treatment had little influence on the sorption of fly ash and soot to pentachlorophenol (PCP), but it greatly increased the sorption of rice chars to PCP.

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The widely existing fly ash and soot produced during the process of combustion, which are often known as waste but also an important source of black carbon (BC) in the environment, were treated by HCl and HF solution for this study, and recorded as FC and SC, respectively. A series of experiments were carried out to investigate the toxicity of pentachlorophenol (PCP) in sediment, influence of various BCs in sediment with different contents (0%, 0.5%, 1%, 2%, 5% and 10%) on the extractability and toxicity of PCP (50mg/kg), and toxicity of various BC in sediment.

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To investigate the feasibility of using biochar to control organic pollutants in sediments, we extracted biochar from rice-straw combustion residues (RBC) and studied its adsorption ability and effect on seed germination ecotoxicity of pentachlorophenol (PCP). The results showed that the Freundlich and dual-mode models could describe all the sorption isotherm data well, and the log K(OC) values increased with increasing RBC content. With 50 mg kg(-1) PCP in the sediment, a significant seed growth inhibition (P<0.

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Rice straw charcoal, soot and fly ash (collectively termed "black carbon" or BC), which were found to widely exist in the environment and exhibit strong sorption of many organic compounds, were prepared for this study, and recorded as RC, SC, and FC, respectively. The characterization, sorption isotherm, and the effect of pH (from 3.0 to 9.

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