Effect of Lanthanum on Nitrification, Phosphorus Transformation and Phenol Decomposition in Red Soil

The effect of La on nitrification, P transformation and phenol decomposition in red soil was studied by incubation and pot culture experiments. La at low concentration has stimulative effect on soil nitrification and P transformation while its high concentration has inhibitory effects, and the inhibition is strengthened with increasing concentration of La. La has strongly inhibitory effect on soil phenol decomposition and the inhibition is strengthened with increasing concentration of La. When the incubation time is prolonged, the inhibitory effect of La on soil nitrification and phenol decomposition tends to decrease.

Regulating Electron-Hole Separation to Promote the Photocatalytic Property of BiOBr_1−xI_x/BiOBr Local Distorted Hierarchical Microspheres

In this work, hierarchical BiOBr1−xIx/BiOBr heterojunction photocatalyst with a microsphere morphology was synthesized by a facile solvothermal process. It demonstrated that the local structure of the photocatalysts was highly distorted due to the substitution of bromide ions by iodine ions. The photocatalytic properties were evaluated by the photodecomposition of aqueous phenol solution under visible-light irradiation. The results indicated that all the composite photocatalysts exhibited high photocatalytic activity. In particularly, the BiOBr1−xIx/BiOBr (x = 0.25) sample exhibited over 92% degradation efficiency of phenol within 150 min, which is 24.6 and 3.08 fold enhancement in the photocatalytic activity over the pure phased BiOBr and BiOI, respectively. Moreover, this excellent photocatalytic property can be expanded to other colorless organic contaminants, verifying the common applicability of BiOBr1−xIx/BiOBr (x = 0.25) as an excellent visible-light photocatalyst for organics decomposition. The significant improvement in the photocatalytic activity can be explained by the high efficiency of charge separation due to the enhancement in the internal electric fields and band match that comes from the local structure distortion. This work provides valuable information for the design of highly active photocatalysts toward the environmental remediation.