Articles in Press

Untreated wastewater can have important effects on the environment and human. The aim of the work was to evaluate the effectiveness of modified barley straw to remove malachite green from industrial wastewater. Studied variables were pH, contact time, initial malachite green concentration, and adsorbent dosage. Box–Behnken design method was used for modeling the process of adsorption. The results of analysis of variance showed that there are the significance relative among process parameters. The high value of R2 (0.9753) indicated that there was a high correlation between the predicted and experimental values. Removal efficiency of malachite green increased by increasing of modified barley straw dosage, pH and contact time, and decreasing of color concentration. Remove the color was better in alkaline conditions and the best pH was equal to 9.5. The optimum contact time to remove was 120 min. The findings of this study showed that Box-Behnken model can efficiently optimize the malachite green adsorption onto modified barley straw from aqueous solutions.

The aim of this study was to optimize the removal of Naproxen (NPX) by the UV/ZnO photocatalytic process using response surface methodology based on Central Composite Design (CCD). The effect of parameters such as ZnO concentration, contact time, pH, temperature, and initial NPX concentration were studied. The ANOVA results indicated high coefficient values of adjusted R2 (0.9843) and predicted R2 (0.9695). The quadratic model with the highest R-squared designation was chosen to predict the NPX removal efficiency of the UV/ZnO process. Under optimal conditions that include an optimum initial NPX concentration of 21.59 mg/L, ZnO concentration of 371.15 mg/L, contact time of 73.92 min, pH of 6.87, and temperature of 24.35°C, a NPX removal efficiency value of 71.19% was obtained. The results show that the removal of NPX is most affected by the variables- initial NPX concentration, time, pH, and ZnO concentration, respectively, but temperature as a variable does not have a significant effect on the efficiency of the process. Moreover, the NPX photodegradation kinetics can be explained through the pseudo-first-order model. The UV/ZnO photocatalytic method has high potential for the removal of NPX, and that CCD is an appropriate method to optimize the operating conditions for NPX photodegradation.

The evaluation of wetland ecosystem service lays the foundation to the wetland protection and exploitation. Evaluating the ecological service of all types of wetlands scientifically and reasonably is critical to improving the quality of ecological environment and securing the regional ecological security. In the middle reaches of the Yellow River, a typical sediment-laden river wetland- Sanmenxia Reservoir area Wetland, is chosen as the research target. Based on the systematic analysis its unique formation process and ecological services, the biological resources are formed, including the value of supply service, regulation service, support service, and cultural service. The value of wetland ecological services was calculated by market value, opportunity cost, shadow engineering and substitution cost methods. The results show that the total value of wetland ecosystem service is worth about 80.86 billion yuan, and the dominant ecological services are regulation service and support service with the economic value of 46.49% and 50.85% respectively. The evaluation results make people more directly understand the importance of wetland leading ecological service and provide scientific basis for the protection and management of wetland in Sanmenxia Reservoir area.

The resource environment loss has been evaluated using energy value and monetary value adopting complex ecological system analysis framework, Odum’s eco-econo mic system energy theory, and energy value analysis. The total amount of green ecological economy of Shenyang city from 2007 to 2016 was calculated in the paper. The results were shown as following: (1) Economic growth in Shenyang city was relied on resources consumption (including natural resources and the input resources) heavily and it was about 40%, which had brought about serious environment pollution from 2007 to 2013; (2) The mode of economic growth had been changed in Shenyang city between 2014- 2016 and the ecological environment had been improved, , ,however, it was not obvious. The present economic development model in Shenyang city is unsustainable. The development mode depending on resources and environment cost should be brought to develop ecological industry and circular economy, to avoid the economy into a vicious cycle.