Air gap membrane distillation for nutrient and water recovery from marine culture wastewater for improved water reclamation.

Valuable nutrients such as ammonium and phosphate exist in teensy concentrations in marine-culture wastewater (MCW), causing their recovery challenging with inefficient conventional methods. Air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) is systematically explored for the first time to recover nutrients and pure water from low-nutrient MCW. This study assessed the AGMD performance in resource recovery by conducting a thorough investigation and optimization of various parameter conditions.

Characterizing sector-oriented roadside exposure to ultrafine particles (PM) via machine learning models: Implications of covariates influences on sectors variability.

Ultrafine particles (UFPs; PM) possess intensified health risk due to their smaller size and unique spatial variability. One of major emission sources for UFPs is vehicle exhaust, which varies based on the traffic composition in each type of roadside sector. The current challenge of epidemiological UFPs study is limited characterization ability due to expensive instruments.

Anaerobic membrane bioreactors for municipal wastewater: Progress in resource and energy recovery improvement approaches.

Anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) offer promise in municipal wastewater treatment, with potential benefits including high-quality effluent, energy recovery, sludge reduction, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. However, AnMBR face hurdles like membrane fouling, low energy recovery, etc. In light of net-zero carbon target and circular economy strategy, this work sought to evaluate novel AnMBR configurations, focusing on performance, fouling mitigation, net-energy generation, and nutrients-enhancing integrated configurations, such as forward osmosis (FO), membrane distillation (MD), bioelectrochemical systems (BES), membrane photobioreactor (MPBR), and partial nitrification-anammox (PN/A).

Identifying spatiotemporal trends of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater: from the perspective of upstream and downstream wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE).

Recently, many efforts have been made to address the rapid spread of newly identified COVID-19 virus variants. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is considered a potential early warning tool for identifying the rapid spread of this virus. This study investigated the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 in eight wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their sewerage systems which serve most of the population in Taoyuan City, Taiwan.

A review on medical waste treatment in COVID-19 pandemics: Technologies, managements and future strategies.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 few years ago, the increasing of the number of medical waste has become a huge issue because of their harmful impact to environment. A major concern associated to the limitation of technologies for dealing with medical waste, especially conventional technologies, are overcapacities since pandemic occurs. Moreover, the outbreak of new viruses from post COVID-19 should become a serious attention to be prevented not only environmental issues but also the spreading of viruses to new pandemic near the future.

Rapid fabrication of MgO@g-CN heterojunctions for photocatalytic nitric oxide removal.

Nitric oxide (NO) is an air pollutant impacting the environment, human health, and other biotas. Among the technologies to treat NO pollution, photocatalytic oxidation under visible light is considered an effective means. This study describes photocatalytic oxidation to degrade NO under visible light with the support of a photocatalyst.

Antifouling CuO@TiO coating on plasma-grafted PAA/PES membrane based on photocatalysis and hydrogen peroxide activation.

Because of the small size effect leading to the high bandgap of TiO P25, the photocatalytic membrane using this photocatalyst has low antifouling efficiency. This study prepared CuO@TiO composite photocatalyst with a lower bandgap than TiO P25 and used it as antifouling coatings on the PES membrane with PAA intermediate adhesive layer. PAA was grafted onto the surface of the PES membranes through free radicals generated by the cold plasma treatment of the PES membrane.

A review on vitrification technologies of hazardous waste.

Vitrification technology provides a solution for the issue of safe disposal of hazardous waste containing harmful chemical composition and organic pollutants. This review discusses application of vitrification technologies to treat hazardous waste including, asbestos, fly ash, electronic sludge, nuclear waste, medical waste and radioactive waste. Vitrification processes via Joule heating, microwave heating, plasma technology, electric arc furnaces and incinerators are compared herein.

Influence of C/N ratios on treatment performance and biomass production during co-culture of microalgae and activated sludge.

Novel phycosphere associated bacteria processes are being regarded as a potential and cost-effective strategy for controlling anthropogenic contaminants in wastewater treatment. However, the underlying concern with the process is its vulnerability to improper organic or nutrient intake. This study established a synergistic interaction between microalgae and activated sludge in a three-photobioreactor system (without external aeration) to understand how pollutants could be mitigated whilst simultaneously yielding biomass under different C/N ratios of 1:1, 5:1 and 10:1.

Comparison of degradation kinetics of tannery wastewater treatment using a nonlinear model by salt-tolerant Nitrosomonas sp. and Nitrobacter sp.

Conventional biological treatment has been reported to be ineffective for pollutant removal in tannery wastewater due to high salinity. To overcome it, this work used salt-tolerant bacteria (STB) isolated from a membrane bioreactor to evaluate the organic and nutrient removal through a series of batch experiments. Compared with the control, the STB reactor enhanced the reduction of persistent organics by 11% based on the double exponential decay model.

Antifouling catalytic mixed-matrix membranes based on polyethersulfone and composition-optimized Zn-Cu-Fe-O CWAO catalyst under dark ambient conditions.

Besides photocatalysts, novel catalytic wet-air oxidation (CWAO) catalysts capable of operating under mild conditions are a potential candidate to fabricate antifouling filtration membranes. This study optimized the CWAO catalyst consisting of three metal oxide components (ZnO, CuO, and FeO) and used it to fabricate composite membranes with PES (polyethersulfone). The catalyst was characterized by methods such as FTIR, BET, XRD, UV-Vis DRS, XPS, ESR.

Impact of climatic and non-climatic stressors on ocean life and human health: A review.

Ocean life forms are fundamentally well adapted to natural environmental variations, and they can even tolerate extreme conditions for a short time. However, several anthropogenic stressors are causing such drastic changes in the ocean ecosystem. First, the review attempts to outline the impact of climatic and non-climatic stressors on ocean life, and it also outlines the synergistic impact of both stressors.

Degradation of contaminants in plasma technology: An overview.

The information of plasma technologies applications for environmental clean-up on treating and degrading metals, metalloids, dyes, biomass, antibiotics, pesticides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), bacteria, virus and fungi is compiled and organized in the review article. Different reactor configurations of plasma technology have been applied for reactive species generation, responsible for the pollutants removal, hydrogen and methane production and microorganism inactivation. Therefore, in this review article, the reactive species from discharge plasma are presented here to provide the insight into the environmental applications.

Literature review and report of three cases of Dubin-Johnson syndrome related to ABCC2 gene mutations in children.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to analyze the clinical features of Dubin-Johnson syndrome (DJS) related to ABCC2 gene mutations in children and to review the relevant literature to improve understanding of this type of genetic disease and reduce misdiagnosis.

Methods: Three children with clinically suspected DJS who were treated at Beijing Children's Hospital of Capital Medical University between 2017 and 2020 were enrolled in the study. The target genes were captured and sequenced using GenCap target gene capture technology and a new generation of high-throughput sequencing technology (Beijing Mykino Company).

Mechanism of hepatic stellate cell proliferation and apoptosis in rats by promoting circulation, removing stasis, and dredging collaterals based on the theory of liver collateral disease.

Background: This study aims to investigate the impacts on the proliferation, inhibition, apoptosis, and cell cycle of hepatic stellate cells (HSC-T6) in rats by using traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in serum.

Methods: Twenty-seven rats were randomly divided into nine groups on average: a blank control (BC) group (fed by distilled water), a positive control group (colchicine solution, 0.05 mg/mL), and seven TCM groups [with the aim of clearing the liver of choleresis with 0.

[Clinical efficacy and safety of acupuncture combined with western medicine in treatment of children with abdominal Henoch-Schonlein purpura with spleen-stomach damp-heat syndrome].

Objective: To investigate the clinical effect of acupuncture combined with western medicine in the treatment of children with abdominal Henoch-Schonlein purpura with spleen-stomach damp-heat syndrome.

Methods: A total of 60 children with abdominal Henoch-Schonlein purpura with spleen-stomach damp-heat syndrome were randomly divided into treatment group and control group, with 30 patients in each group. The patients in the control group were given Hydroprednisone 2 mg•kg•d, and in addition to the treatment in the control group, those in the treatment group were given acupuncture at Tianshu (ST25), Neiguan (PC6), Zusanli (ST36), Zhongwan (CV12), Qihai (CV6), and Sanyinjiao (SP6) once a day, with a needle retaining time of 15 minutes.

Straightforward Synthesis of SnO/BiS/BiOCl-BiOCl Composites for Drastically Enhancing Rhodamine B Photocatalytic Degradation under Visible Light.

The pursuit of robust photocatalysts that can completely degrade organic contaminants with high performance as well as high energy efficiency, simplicity in preparation, and low cost is an appealing topic that potentially promotes photocatalysts for being used widely. Herein, we introduce a new and efficient SnO/BiS/BiOCl-BiOCl (SnO/BiS-Bi25) composite photocatalyst by taking advantage of the robust, simple, and potentially scalable one-pot synthesis, including the hydrothermal process followed by thermal decomposition. Interestingly, we observed the formation of BiOCl-BiOCl (abbreviated as Bi25) heterojunctions derived from reactions between BiS and SnCl·5HO precursor solutions under the hydrothermal condition and thermal decomposition of BiOCl.

Economic and environmental evaluation of flux agents in the vitrification of resin waste: A SWOT analysis.

Flux agents play an important role in the pyrolysis treatment of vitrifying hazardous wastes. Among these is plasma jets, a cost-less flux agent derived from shell powder which can be used to create vitrification. It is a promising option to be applied in the vitrification of elements and to remove the VOCs of hazardous waste, namely, resin from PCB scrap in an atmospheric-pressure microwave plasma reactor.

Effect of shell powder on removal of metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from resin in an atmospheric-pressure microwave plasma reactor.

Resin has been widely used for thermosetting printed circuit boards (PCBs) and is a key part of e-waste from scrap PCBs. It requires appropriate treatment because of its harmful elements (metals and metalloids) and organic compounds that are toxic to human health and the environment. The purpose of this study is to eliminate volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and elements (metals and metalloids) in resin via the use of powdered snail shell (Babylonia formosae) in an atmospheric-pressure microwave plasma reactor.

Investigation on Photocatalytic Removal of NO under Visible Light over Cr-Doped ZnO Nanoparticles.

Removal of nitrogen oxide pollution has attracted much attention, and photocatalysis is considered as an effective method to treat polluted gas. Currently, modified semiconductors with approximate band gap are used as visible-light-driven photocatalysts. Herein, this is the first investigation of photocatalytic removal of NO under visible light over Cr-doped ZnO nanoparticles (Cr-ZnO NPs).

SnO/TiO nanotube heterojunction: The first investigation of NO degradation by visible light-driven photocatalysis.

Titania (TiO) as a commercial photocatalyst has been continually struggling due to the limitation of ultraviolet light response and the high recombination rate of photoinduced carriers. The development of heterojunction nanostructures provides great promise to achieve the activation by visible light and suppress the photoinduced electron-hole pairs recombination. Herein, we synthesized a SnO and TiO nanotube heterojunction (SnO/TNT) via a one-step hydrothermal strategy and systematically investigated NO photocatalytic degradation over the SnO/TNTs heterojunction under visible light at the parts per billion level.

Highly efficient removal of hazardous aromatic pollutants by micro-nano spherical carbons synthesized from different chemical activation methods: a comparison study.

Glucose-derived micro-nano spherical activated carbon (GAC) was synthesized through two-stage and three-stage chemical activation processes in different impregnation ratios (KCO: precursor). GAC was characterized by nitrogen adsorption/desorption isotherm, point of zero charge, scanning electron microscope, and Fourier transform infrared. The prepared spherical GAC and commercial non-spherical AC were applied to remove a cationic dye (methylene green 5; MG5), an anionic dye (acid red 1; AR1), and phenol.

Mistakes and inconsistencies regarding adsorption of contaminants from aqueous solutions: A critical review.

In recent years, adsorption science and technology for water and wastewater treatment has attracted substantial attention from the scientific community. However, the number of publications containing inconsistent concepts is increasing. Many publications either reiterate previously discussed mistakes or create new mistakes.

Fast and efficient adsorption of methylene green 5 on activated carbon prepared from new chemical activation method.

Activated carbon (AC) was synthesized from golden shower (GS) through a new chemical activation process. The three-stage process comprised (1) hydrothermal carbonization of GS to produce hydrochar, (2) pyrolysis of hydrochar to produce biochar, and (3) subsequent chemical activation of biochar with KCO to obtain GSHBAC. The traditional synthesis processes (i.