Application of silver nitrate colorimetric method to non-steady-state diffusion test

NT build 443, or profile fitting method, is often used to measure the diffusion coefficient of chloride in concrete. However, this method is quite laborious and needs special equipment. Colorimetric method is a quick and simple method to measure the penetration depth of chloride by spraying 0.1 mol/L silver nitrate solution. The objective of this work is to study the possibility of the use of colorimetric method in the calculation of non-steady-state diffusion coefficient. Twelve concrete mixtures with different supplementary cementitious materials and water-to-cement ratios of 0.35, 0.48 and 0.6 were used for study. According to NT build 443, the concrete specimens were immersed in 165 g/L NaC1 （2.8 mol/L） solution for 42 d. Both water-soluble （convert to free chloride） chloride and acid-soluble chloride at different layers of specimens were measured. The results show that the mean value of free chloride concentration at the color change boundary Cd was 0.306 mol/L. The surface free chloride concentration cs was obtained by profile fitting method, which was 40% lower than the chloride concentration of exposure solution after an immersion period of 42 d. Chloride diffusion coefficients obtained by the colorimetric method was not well correlated with those obtained by profile fitting method.

Short-term Earthquake Prediction in the Sichuan-Yunnan Region Using the Method of Modulated Earthquakes

By scanning modulated or un-modulated earthquakes spatio-temporally in the region of Sichuan-Yunnan,short-term non-stationary seismic precursory patterns were extracted with significant difference and the characteristic of non-stationary short-term seismic anomalies were analyzed as well as prediction efficiency of modulated small earthquakes before a strong earthquake. Besides,small earthquake modulation ratios near the region of the epicenter were calculated and sorted by time. The results indicated that there were significant effects using the modulated earthquake method to predict earthquakes greater than MS6. 0 in a short time. Before the MS8. 0 Wenchuan earthquake,there were obvious short-term precursory seismicity gap patterns of modulated small earthquakes.

Evaluation of oxygen transfer parameters of fine-bubble aeration system in plug flow aeration tank of wastewater treatment plant

Knowledge of the oxygen mass transfer of aerators under operational conditions in a full-scale wastewater treatment plant （WWTP） is meaningful for the optimization of WWTP, however, scarce to best of our knowledge. Through analyzing a plug flow aeration tank in the Lucun WWTP, in Wuxi, China, the oxygenation capacity of fine-bubble aerators under process conditions have been measured in- situ using the off-gas method and the non-steady-state method. The off-gas method demonstrated that the aerators in different corridors in the aeration tank of WWTP had significantly different oxygen transfer performance; furthermore, the aerators in the same corridor shared almost equal oxygen transfer performance over the course of a day. Results measured by the two methods showed that the oxygen transfer performance of fine-bubble aerators in the aeration tank decreased dramatically compared with that in the clean water. The loss of oxygen transfer coefficient was over 50% under low-aeration conditions （aeration amount 〈 0.67 Nm 3 /hr）. However, as the aeration amount reached 0.96 Nm 3 /hr, the discrepancy of oxygen transfer between the process condition and clean water was negligible. The analysis also indicated that the non-steady-state and off-gas methods resulted in comparable estimates of oxygen transfer parameters for the aerators under process conditions.