A New Rapid Determination Method of Soil Organic Carbon Adsorption Coefficients of Pesticides with Soil Column Liquid Chromatography

Soil column liquid chromatography (SCLC) was developed to determine soil organic carbon adsorption coefficients (E-oc) for chemicals. The uptake by soil of pesticides from water can be conveniently calculated from the related breakthrough curves (BTC). The nine pesticides chosen for determination in this study are soluble ones, with their water solubility ranging from 62 mg/L to Z mg/L. In comparing with existing methods of K-oc, SCLC possesses rapid, online and accurate characteristics.

A solid-phase extraction approach for the identification of pharmaceutical–sludge adsorption mechanisms

It is important to understand the adsorption mechanism of chemicals and active pharmaceu-tical ingredients （API） on sewage sludge since wastewater treatment plants are the last barrier before the release of these compounds to the environment. Adsorption models were developed considering mostly hydrophobic API-sludge interaction. They have poor predictive ability, especially with ionisable compounds. This work proposes a solid-phase extraction （SPE） approach to estimate rapidly the API-sludge interaction. Sludge-filled SPE cartridges could not be percolated with API spiked mobile phases so different powders were tested as SPE sludge supports. Polytetrafluoroethylene （PTFE） was selected and tested at different PTFE/sludge ratios under eight different adsorption conditions with three API ionisable compounds. The PTFE/sludge mixtures with 50% or less sludge could be used in SPE mode for API sorption studies with methanol/water liquid phases. The results gave insights into API-sludge interactions. It was found that π-π, hydrogen-bonding and charge-charge interactions were as important as hydrophobicity in the adsorption mechanism of charged APIs on sludge.

Degradation of indomethacin in river water under stress and non-stress laboratory conditions:degradation products,long-term evolution and adsorption to sediment

The pharmaceutical compound indomethacin is not totally removed in wastewater treatment plants,whose effluents flow into aquatic environments;concentrations in the 0.1-100 ng/L range are commonly found in surface waters,and its fate is unknown.Here,biological,photochemical and thermal degradation assays were conducted under stress and non-stress conditions to estimate its degradation rate in river water and establish its degradation products over time.The results revealed that direct sunlight irradiation promoted the complete degradation of indomethacin（2 μg/L） in less than 6 hr,but indomethacin was detected over a period of 4 months when water was kept under the natural day-night cycle and the exposure to sunlight was partially limited,as occurs inside a body of water.The biological degradation in water was negligible,while the hydrolysis at pH 7.8 was slow.Residues were monitored by ultra-pressure liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight/mass spectrometry after solid-phase extraction,and six degradation products were found;their structures were proposed based on the molecular formulae and fragmentation observed in high-resolution tandem mass spectra.4-Chlorobenzoic and 2-acetamido-5-methoxybenzoic acids were the long-term transformation products,persisting for at least 30 weeks in water kept under non-stress conditions.Furthermore,the degradation in the presence of sediment was also monitored over time,with some differences being noted.The adsorption coefficients of indomethacin and degradation products on river sediment were calculated;long-term degradation products did not have significant adsorption to sediment.

Sorbent Concentration Effect on Adsorption of Methyl Orange on Chitosan Beads in Aqueous Solutions

The adsorption of methyl orange（MO） on chitosan（CS） beads in aqueous solutions was investigated by a batch equilibration technique. Special emphasis was focused on the effect of sorbent concentration（cs） on the adsorp- tion equilibration of MO on CS beads. An obvious Cs-effect was observed in the adsorption equilibration, i.e., the ad- sorption amount（F） was declined with Cs increase. The classical Langmuir model adequately described the adsorption isotherm for each given cs. However, it could not be used to predict the cs-effect observed. The applicability of the Langmuir-SCA isotherm, a surface component activity（SCA） model equation, to fit the cs-effect data was examined. In the SCA model, the activity coefficient of sorbent surface sites, fsH2O, was assumed to be a function of cs due to the deviation of a real adsorption system from an ideal one, arisen from sorbent particle-particle interactions in real systems. The results show that the Langmuir-SCA isotherm could accurately describe the c：effect observed under the studied conditions. Furthermore, the effects of temperature（t）, pH, and electrolyte（NaNO3） concentration（ CNaNO3 ） on fsH2O were examined. The results show that fsH2O clearly decreased with increasing t（20-35℃） and pH（5-8）, but no obvious change in fsH2O was observed as CNaNO3 varied in a range 0.001-0.010 mol/L. These results give a better understanding of the cs-effect.

A Kinetic Study on the Control of Nitrogen in Molten Slag and Metal

Nitrogen can easily contaminate molten steel during the steelmaking process and due to the low nitrogen capacity in slag, it is difficult to remove entrapped nitrogen from liquid steel. Degassing is often done to the steel at secondary steelmaking to lower the nitrogen content, but the control can often be kinetically limited by the steel grade and also the slag composition. Thus, a fundamental understanding of nitrogen dissolution into molten slag and metal including the rate of nitrogen dissolution can help in controlling nitrogen content in the final product.The kinetics of nitrogen dissolution in the molten calcium aluminate based slags and in molten steel with various element additions was investigated by measuring the 14N-15N isotope exchange reaction using a mass spectrometer at 1873 K.Results show that effect of elements on the rate constant of nitrogen dissolution such as Ni in Fe is relatively minimal similar to molybdenum. The surface rate constant of nitrogen dissolution in liquid Fe-10%Ni alloy was found to be 3.77×10-5 (mol/cm2·s·atm).The rate constant of nitrogen dissolution in the CaO-Al2O3-CaF2 slag was found to be wedge shaped, which decreased with increasing CaF2 to about 20 mol% followed by an increase through the rest of the CaF2 composition range. This was related to the effect of CaF2 on the structure of Al-O bonds for this slag.