An novel identification method of the environmental risk sources for surfacewater pollution accidents in chemical industrial parks

The chemical industry is a major source of various pollution accidents. Improving the management level of risk sources for pollution accidents has become an urgentdemand for most industrialized countries. In pollution accidents, the released chemicals harm the receptors to some extentdepending on their sensitivity or susceptibility. Therefore, identifying the potential risk sources from such a large number of chemical enterprises has become pressingly urgent. Based on the simulation of thewhole accident process, a novel and expandable identification method for risk sources causingwater pollution accidents is presented. The newlydeveloped approach, by analyzing and stimulating thewhole process of a pollution accident between sources and receptors, can be applied to identify risk sources, especially on the nationwide scale. Three major types of losses, such as social, economic and ecological losses,were normalized, analyzed and used for overall consequence modeling. A specific case study area, located in a chemical industry park （CIP） along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province, China,was selected to test the potential of the identification method. The results showed that therewere four risk sources for pollution accidents in this CIP. Aniline leakage in the HS Chemical Plantwould lead to the most serious impact on the surroundingwater environment. This potential accidentwould severelydamage the ecosystem up to3.8 kmdownstream of Yangtze River, and lead to pollution over adistance stretching to 73.7 kmdownstream. The proposed method is easily extended to the nationwide identification of potential risk sources.

Enhanced photoelectrocatalytic degradation of ammonia by in situ photoelectrogenerated active chlorine on TiO_2 nanotube electrodes

TiO2 nanotube （TINT） electrodes anodized in fluorinated organic solutions were successfully prepared on Ti sheets. Field-emission scanning electron microscopy （FE-SEM） and X-ray diffraction （XRD） were performed to characterize the TiNT electrodes. The linear voltammetry results under irradiation showed that the TiNT electrode annealed at 450℃ presented the highest photoelectrochemical activity. By combining photocatalytic with electrochemical process, a significantly synergetic effect on ammonia degradation was observed with Na2SO4 as supporting electrolyte at pH 10.7. Furthermore, the photoelectrocatalytic efficiency on the ammonia degradation was greatly enhanced in presence of chloride ions without the limitation ofpH. The degradation rate was improved by 14.8 times reaching 4.98 × 10^-2 min^-1 at pH 10.7 and a faster degradation rate of 6.34 × 10^-2 min^-1 was obtained at pH 3.01. The in situ photoelectrocatalytic generated active chlorine was proposed to be responsible for the improved efficiency. On the other hand, an enhanced degradation of ammonia using TiNT electrode fabricated in fluorinated organic solution was also confirmed compared to TiNT electrode anodized in fluorinated water solution and TiO2 film electrode fabricated by sol-gel method. Finally, the effect of chloride concentration was also discussed.