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Modelling air movement in sewer networks is needed in order to address the issues related to sewer odour complaints and sewer corrosions due to hydrogen sulphide in sewers. Most of the existing air flow models can only be applied in small sewer networks or the trunk lines of sewer systems. The purpose of this paper is therefore to propose a theoretical approach to formulate a general governing equation set for modelling steady air movement in large sewer systems. This approach decomposes the sewer system of interest into its basic physical components as pipes and nodes, and builds local topology of each pipe and each node based on geographic information system data as the fundamentals of model formulation. It avoids manually identifying each branch of the sewer system, eliminates the effect of physically closed networks in sewer systems on the governing equations, and considers key sewer components and all known driving forces. The proposed approach was applied to a real sewer system with over 500 pipes. The results show that the proposed model is applicable in modelling air movement in a large sewer system and provides a general idea of sewer gases moving through the system and their emission.

It is well known that model-building of chlorine decay in real water distribution systems is difficult because chlorine decay is influenced by many factors (e.g., bulk water demand, pipe-wall demand, piping material, flow velocity, and residence time). In this paper, experiments were run to investigate the kinetic model of chlorine decay and the formation model of trihalomethanes (THMs) in pilot-scale water distribution systems. Experimental results show that the rate constants of chlorine decay, including wall decay and bulk decay, increasing with temperature. Moreover, the kinetic model of chlorine decay and the formation model of THMs describe experiment data of pilot-scale water distribution systems. The effect of different piping material on chlorine decay and THMs formation were also investigated. The rate constants of chlorine decay are ranked in order: stainless steel pipe, ductile iron pipe, and last, polyethelene pipe because wall decay is the largest in stainless steel pipe than that in other piping material. Correspondingly, the rate of THMs formation follows the order of stainless steel pipe, ductile iron pipe, and last, polyethelene pipe because of less chlorine in bulk water reacting with the trihalomethane formation potential (THMFP).

Nanosized titanium dioxides were synthesized by hydrolysis of TiCl(4) followed by calcination at different temperatures ranging from 300 to 1,000 °C. The as-prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, N(2) adsorption-desorption, and zeta potential analysis. The catalytic activities of the TiO(2) nanoparticles were tested by catalytic ozonation of trace 4-chloronitrobenzene (4-CNB) in water. Moreover, the catalytic ozonation activity of a sample calcined at 400 °C (denoted as T400) was tested in aqueous solution using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spin trapping technique with 5,5-dimethyl-1-pyrroline N-oxide (DMPO) spin trap. It was found that with increasing calcination temperatures, the average crystallite size and average pore size increased, in contrast the BET surface areas decreased. However, the isoelectric point (IEP) first increased, and then decreased. The ozone adsorption on the catalyst surface played an important role in determining their catalytic activity. Sample T400 with the IEP of 7.0, farthest away from the 4-CNB solution pH value (pH = 5.3), showed the best catalytic activity. The EPR experiments further confirmed that the hydroxyl radicals TiO(2)-catalyzed ozonation followed a radical-type mechanism.

The rapid economic growth in China has caused ever-increasing pollution and gradual deterioration of surface water quality over the whole territory of China since 1978. Along with it, there have been 130 environmental protection policies publicized and enacted. Unfortunately, even though these contradictory phenomena have coexisted for almost three decades, the cause analysis and the effective evaluation of policy measures are still rare. The Jiaxing region, a lowland located at the Taihu Lake watershed, is a typical representative of this dilemma and was proposed as a case study area for an assessment on the effectiveness of the environmental policy measures mentioned above. The pollutant loads originating from point pollution sources were discharged into rivers at fixed in-stream sites, while pollutant loads from non-point pollution sources in rural areas were assumed to be rushed into rivers by stormwater runoff. The environmental policy measures concerning water quality in the Jiaxing region were specified quantitatively as parameters for estimating the variation of pollutant loads. The base case and other three cases with the effects of policy measures were then simulated by the surface water quality models. The results show that a significant improvement of the surface water quality can be achieved by controlling the non-point pollution in rural areas and the point pollution over the whole area, if the water protection policies are sustainable and executed completely, and if the local government is active in their administrative, supervising and educational responsibilities and the farmers assume voluntary activities on rural pollution control., (Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)