The virtual water strategy which advocates importing water intensive products and exporting products with low water intensity is gradually accepted as one of the options for solving water crisis in severely water scarce regions. However, if we count the virtual water embodied in imported products as the water saved for a region, we might overestimate the saving by including the virtual water that is later re-exported in association with the proceeded products made from the originally imported products. This problem can be avoided by accounting for the saved water through calculating water footprint (WF) in domestic final consumptive products. In this paper, an input-output analysis (IOA) based on the water footprint accounting framework is built to account for WF and virtual water trade of final consumptive products in the water stressed Haihe River basin in China for the year 1997, 2000, and 2002. The input-output transaction tables of the three years are constructed. The results show WF of 46.57, 44.52, and 42.71 billion m(3) for the three years, respectively. These volumes are higher than the water used directly in the corresponding years in the basin. A WF intensity (WFI) indicator is then used to assess if the economic activities in the basin are consistent with the virtual water strategy. The temporal change of the WFI is also decomposed by the index number analysis method. The results showed that the basin was silently importing virtual water through the trade of raw and processed food commodities under the background of the whole economic circulation.

In this work, a novel type of ammonium-functionalized hollow polymer particles (HPP-NH3(+)) with a high density of ammonium groups in the shell has been specially designed and synthesized. Benefiting from both the high surface area and from the high density of positively charged ammonium groups, the as-prepared HPP-NH3(+) can serve as a selective adsorbent for the removal of negatively charged acid dye (e.g., methyl blue a-MB). The equilibrium adsorption data of a-MB on the HPP-NH3(+) were evaluated using Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models, and Langmuir isotherm exhibited a better fit with a maximum adsorption capacity of 406 mg/g. Most importantly, because of the presence of dual functional groups (ammonium and carboxyl groups), the HPP-NH3(+) showed a significant pH-dependent equilibrium adsorption capacity, which increased dramatically from 59 mg/g to 449 mg/g as the solution pH decreased from 9 to 2. This uniqueness makes the dye-adsorbed HPP-NH3(+) can be facilely regenerated under mild condition (in weak alkaline solution, pH 10) to recover both a-MB and the HPP-NH3(+), whereas the recovery of conventional adsorbents is commonly performed under particularly severe conditions. The regenerated HPP-NH3(+) can be reused for dye removal and the dye removal efficiency remained above 98% even after five adsorption-desorption cycles. Because of its high adsorption capacity, pH-sensitivity, easy regeneration, and good reusability, the HPP-NH3(+) has great potential for the application in the field of water treatment, controlled drug release, and pH-responsive delivery.

Recently, bulk nanobubbles have attracted intensive attention due to the unique physicochemical properties and important potential applications in various fields. In this study, periodic pressure change was introduced to generate bulk nanobubbles. N2 nanobubbles with bimodal distribution and excellent stabilization were fabricated in nitrogen-saturated water solution. O2 and CO2 nanobubbles have also been created using this method and both have good stability. The influence of the action time of periodic pressure change on the generated N2 nanobubbles size was studied. It was interestingly found that, the size of the formed nanobubbles decreases with the increase of action time under constant frequency, which could be explained by the difference in the shrinkage and growth rate under different pressure conditions, thereby size-adjustable nanobubbles can be formed by regulating operating time. This study might provide valuable methodology for further investigations about properties and performances of bulk nanobubbles.

We used molecular dynamics simulation to demonstrate the microscopic wetting behavior of two solid model surfaces for the first time. Hydrophilic and hydrophobic features were modeled in a dense CO 2 fluid environment under various densities. The water droplet loses contact with the surface under the influence of higher density CO 2 fluids on the hydrophobic surface. For the hydrophilic surface, no separation between the water droplet and the surface was observed. However, the contact angle of the water droplet on the hydrophilic surface was found to increase with the fluid density. The effect of dense CO 2 fluid on the surface wettability can be interpreted in terms of enhanced interactions from the surrounding CO 2 molecules. wettability, solid surface, molecular simulation, hydrophilic, hydrophobic, supercritical CO 2 Citation:Liu S Y, Yang X N, Qin Y. Molecular dynamics simulation of wetting behavior at CO 2 /water/solid interfaces.