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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.

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.