The tourism industry has the largest scale of economic activities worldwide with the most powerful development momentum but has generated a negative effect on the ecological environment. The development of the tourism industry is a precondition and guarantee of eco-environmental optimization, and a harmonious ecological environment is an important dynamic support for the growth of tourism economy, making them mutually associated with evident coupling characteristic. In this study, related literature regarding the tourism industry and eco-environmental protection of developed countries in Europe and America were first reviewed, and tourism industry-ecological environment coupling model was constructed using Henan Province, China, as a case study. The coupling degrees in Henan Province during 2013-2018 were measured, and a comparative analysis of the spatial changes in tourism industry-ecological environment coupling degrees of 18 prefecture-level cities in Henan in 2013 and 2018 was conducted. Results showed that the order degree of the tourism industry in Henan Province maintained a rising trend during 2013-2018, whereas that of the ecological environment exhibited a fluctuating trend. The overall tourism industry–ecological environment coupling of 18 prefecture-level cities in Henan Province enhanced in 2013 and 2018, where the coupling degrees in Zhengzhou, Nan yang, and Luoyang presented an outward radiation trend from high to low. The study results serve as significant reference values for revealing the spatial-temporal evolution characteristics of the ecological environment and the tourism industry and completing the research regarding the coordinated development of the tourism industry and ecological environment.

The Yangtze River Economic Belt is an important production area of grains, oil, livestock, and aquatic products across three regions in China; thus, its agricultural environment is of particular importance. However, the agricultural environment of the Yangtze River Economic Belt has been polluted for a long time by three industrial wastes, agricultural fertilizers, pesticides, and livestock wastes. Although effort to prevent and control pollution has been increased in recent years, the situation remains severe. The assessment of agricultural environmental pollution was explored by using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation and the data from the 11 provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in the period of 2008- 2016. The results show that agricultural environmental pollution in the Yangtze River Economic Belt is at a serious level on the basis of research on the current situation of such pollution, the use of relevant environmental pollution index data of the provinces and cities in the region from 2007 to 2016, and the performance of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation. Countermeasures to improve agricultural environmental pollution in the Yangtze River Economic Belt are proposed. They include strengthening the control of pollution caused by the three industrial wastes, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and livestock) and the environmental education of farmers through various forms.

Proteases have a broad range of applications in pharmaceuticals, detergents and food processing industries. Protease producing strains are used profusely in industrial applications and the bioremediation process of wastewaters. In the present research work, efficient protease producing strain was isolated from dairy industry effluent. Screening of protease activity by isolates was checked by growing them on milk agar (skimmed) by spot inoculation method and further estimation was performed using quantitative protease assay. The efficient protease producing strain was identified based on morphological as well as biochemical characteristics as per standard keys of Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, later confirmed by 16s rRNA sequencing and BLAST analysis as Bacillus isronensis strain KD3. The maximum protease was produced at 42°C; pH 7-8; 200 rpm; and 7% inoculum concentration after 48h of the incubation period.

Thermal Power plants cater the energy needs in many of the countries across the globe, but they indeed pose health hazard to the atmosphere by the release of pollutants such as fly ash, particulate matter, dust, smoke-laden with gaseous pollutants etc., As it is mandatory to meet the energy demand of the increasing population, it is also important to manage the waste produced as the result of these industries. Though there exist various methodologies to manage the waste, vermicomposting is one of the cost-effective and simple techniques available to manage many of the solid waste emanated from different industries. Hence, this study was made to manage the fly ash waste by vermicomposting technique after the addition of carbon substrate namely, the cow dung in different rations such as 1:1, 1:4, 4:1, 2:3 and 3:2. The organism selected for the research was Eisenia fetida. The number of days for the process was about 60 days. The physico-chemical changes were monitored throughout the study period at regular intervals. The bacterial strains were isolated from the end product, namely the vermicast or vermicompost. Their enzyme activity was also checked and the end product was characterized using FTIR and XRD. Of the different proportions, 1:4 was found to be a suitable proportion in terms of the parameters checked.

Recycled aggregate from the demolition of buildings provides a sustainable solution in reducing the space required for dumping demolished waste as landfill and also reduces the consumption of natural aggregate. A percentage of recycled coarse aggregate can be used in structural members which can be economical and environmentally useful. This experimental study consists of three phases. In Phase I, an attempt was made to use Recycled Coarse Aggregate (RCA) in place of Natural Coarse Aggregate(NCA) in concrete. Experimental results of concrete for various combinations of RCA with NCA wereanalysed numerically for the optimum value using Taguchi’s method. In Phase II, the confirmation study was conducted to study the strength and durability characteristics of concrete made with the optimized value of recycled aggregate. In Phase III, the application of optimized recycled coarse aggregate concrete was done by conducting a study on the load-carrying capacity of recycled coarse aggregate concrete-filled steel tube members. The results revealed that there is a marginal increase in load-carrying capacity of recycled coarse aggregate concrete-filled steel tube members than natural coarse aggregate concrete-filled steel tube members. This application proves to be ecofriendly and environmentally sustainable by using the demolished concrete in the structural member.

Sewage sludge composting is a process entailing a continuous succession of microorganisms. To understand the microbial mechanisms involved in sewage sludge composting, we performed an aerobic static composting of sewage sludge and sawdust (ratio = 3:1 m/m) in medium-scale bioreactor systems. The associated changes in physico-chemical parameters (i.e., temperature, organic matter, pH, ammonium nitrogen) were studied parallelly to those in the microbial (i.e., bacteria, fungi, archaea) succession. Additionally, we discussed correlations between these physico-chemical parameters and the microbial communities. The results showed that the pile temperature went through mesophilic phase, thermophilic phase, and cooling phase. The pile temperature reached a maximum of 78.68°C by day 3 and remained above 55°C for more than 6 days, complying with the harmless composting requirements. The organic matter content decreased gradually, the pH increased after a first decrease and the NH4 +-N content showed a consistent trend. The dominant bacteria during composting were Ureibacillus, Bacillus, Sphaerobacter, and Thermobifida, while the dominant fungi were unclassified_f_ Trichocomaceae, unclassified_d_Eukaryota, Hypocrea and Thysanophora; finally, the dominant archaea were Methanobrevibacter, Methanosaeta, Methanobacterium, and unclassified_k_norank. The composting stages were characterized by different microbial compositions. The mesophilic phase presented a relatively uniform proportion of bacterial genera, while the thermophilic and cooling phases were dominated by Ureibacillus and Bacillus, respectively. The fungus unclassified_f_Trichocomaceae played a major role during the mesophilic, thermophilic, and cooling phases, while unclassified_d_Eukaryota played a major role during the mesophilic and thermophilic phases. For what concerns the archaea, Methanobrevibacter played a major role in the mesophilic, thermophilic, and cooling phases, Methanosaeta during the mesophilic and thermophilic phases, and Methanobacterium during the thermophilic and cooling phases. Additionally, the bacterium Ureibacillus and the archaea Methanospirillum were positively correlated with temperature, while the bacteria norank_Pem15, norank_JG30-KF-CM45 and the archaea Methanosphaera were negatively correlated with temperature. The fungi Thysanophora, unclassified_d_ Eukaryota, and unclassified_p_Ascomycota were negatively correlated with pH. Moreover, the bacterium norank_c_1-20, the fungi Trichosporon, norank_o_Saccharomycetales, unclassified_o_Pleosporales, and the archaea Methanosaeta, Methanomethylovorans were positively correlated with organic matter. On the other hand, the bacteria Bacillus, Thermobifida, the fungus unclassified_f_Trichocomaceae, and the archaea Methanobrevibacter were negatively correlated with organic matter. Finally, the bacteria Bacillus, Thermobifida, the fungus unclassified_f_Trichocomaceae, and the archaea Methanobrevibacter were positively correlated with ammonium nitrogen, while the bacterium norank_c_1-20, the fungi Trichosporon, norank_o_Saccharomycetales, unclassified_o_Pleosporales, and the archaea Methanosaeta, Methanomethylovorans were negatively correlated with ammonium nitrogen. This paper provides new solid bases to understand changes in microbial composition and their correlation with physico-chemical parameters during sewage sludge composting.

University-industry knowledge collaboration is one of the keys to overcoming the current development bottleneck in water pollution abatement technology in China. To explore university-industry knowledge collaboration in Chinese water pollution abatement technology innovation system, characteristics and dynamic evolution law of knowledge collaboration were analyzed by using patent data from China for the period 2000-2018. Results show that university-industry knowledge collaboration continues to increase and experiences three development phases in Chinese water pollution abatement technology innovation system. University-industry knowledge collaboration in each province (city) keeps growing and the difference between provinces (cities) is decreasing, but the difference remains significant. The scale, scope, and depth of inter-regional university-industry knowledge collaboration continue to increase, but they are still not large enough. Although the scale and linking efficiency of university-industry knowledge collaboration improve significantly, the subgroups are too many and the agglomeration degree of networks is low.

Lakes are extremely appreciated for the ecological, aesthetic and recreational values supporting rich biodiversity. As such, their preservation is of supreme importance. A global common problem of sedimentation that eventually seems to be responsible for eutrophication should be immediately attended to, before the degradation begins, since the restoration measures are expensive and may go beyond control. Erosion causes detachment, transportation, and deposition of sediments and is the prime source of contamination where it accumulates in lakes and interrupts the ecological processes and functioning in the lake ecosystem, hence it is important to determine the risk to design management strategies for control. For the present investigation, thematic layers slope identification, NDVI, LULC, lineament density and RUSLE were employed to compute spatially distributed erosion and contaminant sources for the lake Ekrukh of Solapur district of Maharashtra State, India. The research identifies five hazardous erosion zones as; low, moderate, high, very high and severe, through the applied model and dictates formulation and implementation of innovative control strategies preventing soil and water (surface) pollution. The Soil Erosion in Maharashtra, Technical Bulletin, 2001 (Challa et al. 2001) was also referred to for the studies.

The kinetic model is adopted to describe heterogeneous nucleation of supersaturated water vapour on coal-fired PM10. To verify the accuracy of the kinetic model, it is compared with the Fletcher model and experimental data. Additionally, the comparison for condensation and evaporation coefficients and the relative importance of two diffusion condensation mechanisms are systematically analysed during embryo growth process. Furthermore, the influence of vapour temperature on nucleation rate and critical supersaturation for coal-fired PM10 are researched. The results show that the predicted critical supersaturation for Kinetic model is far closer to the experimental data compared with the Fletcher model. What is more, once the embryo radius rn reaches the critical embryo radius r*, it can grow spontaneously, and the indirect surface diffusion mechanism is more important than the direct addition mechanism to embryo growth, the value of RTO is always above 100. It is also found that increase in the vapour temperature is conductive to nucleation process, which can increase the nucleation rate and decrease the barrier of nucleation free energy.

Ethylenediaminetetraacetic dianhydride modified coconut frond (ECFP) was prepared, characterized and applied as a potential adsorbent to remove Pb(II) ions from aqueous solutions. Factors influencing adsorption such as pH of the solution, adsorbent dosage, Pb(II) concentration, contact time, and temperature were investigated. The optimum conditions for adsorption of Pb(II) ions were at pH 4 and dosage of 0.02 g. Adsorption reached its equilibrium state in 30 min for all Pb(II) concentrations. Chemisorption was suggested as the rate-limiting step as the adsorption process correlated well with the pseudo-second-order kinetics model. Based on adsorption isotherm results, Langmuir model fitted the experimental data well, and the maximum adsorption capacity was 84.03 mg.g-1 at 300 K. Based on the thermodynamic study, Pb(II) adsorption occurred spontaneously with the enthalpy and entropy changes recorded were 0.0615 kJ mol-1 and 241.28 J K-1 mol-1, respectively. It was found that the nature of adsorption was endothermic as the ?Ho value obtained was positive.