In the present study, an adsorbent material for removal of organic contaminants in wastewater is synthetized by a green and facile mechanochemical method. It is composed of Ti₃C₂T_x MXene layers (obtained by mechanochemical etching of MAX phase with concentrated HF) pillared with terephthalate by rapid direct reaction. Such material shows high specific surface area (135.7 m² g⁻¹) and excellent adsorption capability of methylene blue (209 mg g⁻¹) because of the larger interlayer space among MXene sheets and free carboxylate groups of terephthalate. The spent adsorbent is reutilized (with addition of sole aluminum) to synthetize the MAX phase by mechanochemical procedure, where the terephthalate and the pollutant are carbonized into the carbide. In this way, new MXene-based adsorbent can be re-synthetized for further use.

Ecological environment in mining cities has become an important part of ecological construction. This paper takes Tongling, a mining city, as the research area, and uses Landsat series remote sensing images from 2000 to 2020 as data sources. Using the principal component analysis method and the Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) integrated with four indexes of greenness, humidity, dryness, and heat, the ecological disturbance of the mining area was evaluated and studied. Meanwhile, the land cover spatiotemporal classification of Tongling city was extracted by the maximum likelihood method. Furthermore, landscape metrics were used, based on the information on open-pit mining areas, to quantitatively analyze the ecological environment quality and its change characteristics in the study area. The results show that (1) RSEI can better characterize the ecological quality of Tongling city, greenness and humidity are positively correlated with it, dryness and heat are negatively correlated with it, and dryness and RSEI have the highest correlation coefficient, indicating that urban expansion will cause ecological environment deterioration to a certain extent. (2) The ecological environment quality of the research area showed a “decline-rising” trend, and the mean value of RSEI decreased from 0.706 to 0.644. Spatially, the areas with poor RSEI are mainly distributed in the central urban area and the open-pit mining area in the south. (3) Land cover change leads to changes in landscape metrics, and most landscape-level metrics are positively or negatively correlated with RSEI. The more concentrated the land cover type distribution is, the smaller the change is, and the more regional RSEI can be improved. (4) The mean value of RESI of the ten open-pit mining areas in Tongling city decreased significantly, with a maximum decrease of 52.73%. Among them, the RESI decline rate in the area around the no.1 open pit mine is 0.034/year. The ecological degradation in Tongling city is attributed to the rapid expansion of built-up areas and the development of the mining industry. The research results can provide a scientific basis for protecting the ecological environment of mining cities.

In recent years, atmospheric composite pollution has become increasingly serious, and accelerating VOC governance has become the focus of and difficulty in atmospheric governance. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) come from a wide range of sources, and industrial sources are the main source of anthropogenic VOC emissions in China. Chemicals, oil refining, and solvents are three typical VOC-emitting industries, and their control is an important part of accelerating and optimizing VOC governance. It can be controlled by source control, process control, and pipe end treatment; among these, pipe end treatment is divided into recovery technology and destruction technology. In pipeline end treatment, with the key materials of adsorption, absorption, catalytic oxidation, and catalytic combustion, the research and development of adsorbents, absorbents and catalysts has become a hot spot in recent years. This paper summarizes the chemical materials used in typical VOC pipe end-treatment technology (including adsorbents used in the adsorption method, absorbents used in the adsorption method, and catalysts used in the catalytic oxidation and catalytic combustion methods), summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of various materials and their application range, and looks forward to the direction of future developments.

In this paper, ventilation, indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal and acoustic conditions, and lighting were studied to evaluate the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in an institutional building at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. This study examined IEQ parameters, including pressure, illuminance, acoustics, carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration, temperature, and humidity, with appropriate monitors allocated during a lecture (duration 50 min or 80 min) in four lecture classrooms repeatedly (N = 99) from October 2018 to March 2019 with the objectives of providing a comprehensive analysis of interactions between IEQ parameters. The classroom environments were maintained at 23 ± 1 °C and 33% ± 3% RH during two-season measurements. Indoor mean CO₂ concentrations were 550–1055 ppm, and a mean sound level of 58 ± 3 dBA was observed. The air change rates were configured at 1.3–6.5 per hour based on continuous CO₂ measurements and occupant loads in the lectures. A variance analysis indicated that the within-lecture classroom variations in most IEQ parameters exceeded between-lecture classrooms. A multilayer artificial neural network (ANN) model was developed on the basis of feedforward networks with a backpropagation algorithm. ANN results demonstrated the importance of the sequence of covariates on indoor conditions (temperature, RH, and CO₂ level): Air change rate (ACR) > room operations (occupant number and light system) > outdoor conditions.

In this study, straw biochar (TB) was prepared by pyrolysis at 500 °C, and biochar composite material (TBS) was prepared by a 1:4 mass ratio with sludge (TS). Scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were utilized to characterize the material before and after adsorption. The results demonstrated that TBS possesses significant pore structure characteristics and abundant active functional groups such as hydroxyl, carboxyl, and carbonyl groups, providing a structural basis for its efficient adsorption of heavy metal ions in aqueous solutions. The adsorption performance of the remediation materials for Cu(II) and Pb(II) in aqueous solution was systematically investigated. Experimental data showed that TBS achieved maximum adsorption capacities of 60.86 and 46.98 mg/g for Cu(II) and Pb(II) at equilibrium, respectively, exhibiting superior adsorption efficiency. Through fitting analysis using adsorption kinetic models and isothermal adsorption models, it was found that the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Freundlich isothermal model could more accurately describe the adsorption process of the two heavy metal ions, indicating that chemical adsorption was the dominant mechanism and characterized by multilayer adsorption. Thermodynamic parameter calculations revealed negative ΔG values and positive ΔH and ΔS values, suggesting that the adsorption process was a spontaneous, entropy-increasing, and endothermic reaction. These research results fully validate the excellent removal capabilities of TBS for Cu(II) and Pb(II). This study has shown that TBS can be considered a promising and cost-effective adsorbent, demonstrating its potential to adsorb heavy metal ions in water.