Indoor and outdoor ultrafine, accumulation mode, and coarse fractions collected at two preschools (S1 and S2) in Hanoi capital, Vietnam were characterized in terms of mass-size distribution and elemental composition to identify major emission sources. The sampling campaigns were performed simultaneously indoors and outdoors over four consecutive weeks at each school. Indoor average concentrations of CO2 and CO at both schools were below the limit values recommended by American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (1000 ppm for CO2) and World Health Organization (7 mg/m3 for CO). Indoor concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 at S1 and S2 were strongly influenced by the presence of children and their activities indoors. The indoor average concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 49.4 µg/m3 and 59.7 µg/m3 at S1, while those values at S2 were 7.9 and 10.8 µg/m3, respectively. Mass-size distribution of indoor and outdoor particles presented similar patterns, in which ultrafine particles accounted for around 15–20% wt/wt while fine particles (PM2.5) made up almost 80% wt/wt of PM10. PM2.5–10 did not display regular shapes while smaller factions tended to aggregate to form clusters with fine structures. Oxygen (O) was the most abundant element in all fractions, followed by carbon (C) for indoor and outdoor particles. O accounted for 36.2% (PM0.5–1) to 42.4% wt/wt (PM0.1) of indoor particles, while those figures for C were in the range of 14.5% (for PM0.1) to 18.1% (for PM1–2.5). Apart from O and C, mass proportion of other major and minor elements (Al, Ca, Cr, Fe , K, Mg, Si, Ti) could make up to 50%, whereas trace elements (As, Bi, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, La, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Rb, Sb, Se, Sn, Sr, and Zn) accounted for less than 0.5% of indoor and outdoor airborne particles. There were no significant indoor emission sources of trace and minor elements. Traffic significantly contributed to major and trace elements at S1 and S2.

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Now, water pollution is one of the leading concerns in the world especially heavy metal polltion. In recent years, researches on the use of agricultural waste as biochar and modified biochar to treat heavy metals in water are receiving the attention of scientists because of the economy as well as the high processing efficiency that it brings. In this study, biochar from rice husk was synthesized and modified by iron, then the obtained materials were characterized by SEM, FTIR methods. The results show that the Fe-biochar shows a high potential to remove arsenic at pH = 4 and the adsorption capacity was 18,96 – 28,49 mg/g.

Photocatalysts have been effectively applied for water treatment. Narrow bandgap energy semiconductors show good photocatalytic performance at visible light. However, high recombination rate of the photogenerated electrons and holes leads to their low photocatalytic activity. Moreover, the conduction and valence band potentials of these materials are not suitable for the redox reactions with water and oxygen to generate HO• and •O2⁻ radicals, respectively. Therefore, the development of new photocatalyst systems to overcome these disadvantages is necessary. This study investigated the photocatalytic activity of FeWO4/rGO/g-C3N4 Z-scheme photocatalytic system via the degradation of Rhodamine B in water. The photocatalyst was synthesized by simple hydrothermal method and characterized by X-ray diffraction method (XRD), fluorescence spectroscopy (PL) and diffuse reflectance spectra (UV-vis). The results showed that after 150 minutes illumination, the Rhodamine B decomposition efficiency on FeWO4/g-C3N4 and FeWO4/rGO/g-C3N4 were 93.07 and 99.21%, respectively. These values were significantly higher than that of g-C3N4 under the same catalytic concentration of 0.1g/L. In the FeWO4/rGO/g-C3N4 heterostructure, rGO acted as electron mediator and transporter between two semiconductors, resulting in a lower recombination rate of photogenerated charges. As the results, the photocatalytic performance was enhanced.