Quantitative study of degradation coefficient of pollutant against the flow velocity

The pollutant degradation coefficient is one of the key parameters to describe the water quality change, for establishing a reasonable water quality model and to determine the water carrying capacity and the environmental capacity. In this research, the environmental channel experiment is conducted to simulate the degradation evolution of the COD and NH3-N under different flow velocity conditions in typical pollution water. It is shown that the processes of the COD and the NH3-N＇s concentration over time are quite consistent with the first-order kinetic equation and the degradation coefficients increase with the increase of the flow velocity. When the flow velocity varies from 0 m＇s-1 to 0.87 m.s l, the degradation coefficients of the COD and NH3-N increase from 0.011 d-1 to 0.071 d-1 and 0.038 d-1 to 0.258 d-1, respectively. Moreover, the COD and NH3-N＇s degradation coefficients both have excellent correlation with the reaction time. There is a good linear relationship between the COD degradation coefficient and the flow velocity as well as a good power exponential function between the NH3-N degradation coefficient and the flow velocity. The compa- rative analysis of the Youth canal prototype monitoring and the calculation results shows that the quantitative formula obtained from the indoor water channel experiments gives results very close to the prototype observation results, which could reflect the degra- dation of pollutants in river water with varying flow velocity.

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.

Parameter determination to calculate water environmental capacity in Zhangweinan Canal Sub-basin in China

Zhangweinan canal sub-basin （ZWN） has the most serious water resource shortage and water pollution problems in north of China. To calculate the water environmental capacity in ZWN, determination methods for design flow rates and degradation coefficients were discussed in this study. Results showed that 90% and 50% hydrological guarantee flow rates were suitable to be the design flow rates for rainy and dry seasons, respectively. Degradation coefficients of CODMn and NH3-N were 0.25 day^-1 and 0.15 day^-1 for branch streams and 0.5 day^-1 and 0.25 day^-1 for mainstreams, respectively in ZWN. With one-dimensional water quality simulation model, water environmental capacities were calculated to be 82,139 tons/yr for CODMn and 2394 tons/yr for NH3-N in ZWN.