Wastewater treatment systems are important anthropogenic sources of CH4 emission. A full-scale experiment was carried out to monitor the CH4 emission from anoxic/anaerobic/oxic process （A2O） and sequencing batch reactor （SBR） wastewater treatment plants （WWTPs） for one year from May 2011 to April 2012. The main emission unit of the A2O process was an oxic tank, accounting for 76.2% of CH4 emissions; the main emission unit of the SBR process was the feeding and aeration phase, accounting for 99.5% of CH4 emissions. CH4 can be produced in the anaerobic condition, such as in the primary settling tank and anaerobic tank of the A2O process. While CH4 can be consumed in anoxic denitrification or the aeration condition, such as in the anoxic tank and oxic tank of the A2O process and the feeding and aeration phase of the SBR process. The CH4 emission flux and the dissolved CH4 concentration rapidly decreased in the oxic tank of the A2O process. These metrics increased during the first half of the phase and then decreased during the latter half of the phase in the feeding and aeration phase of the SBR process. The CH4 oxidation rate ranged from 32.47% to 89.52% （mean： 67.96%） in the A2O process and from 12.65% to 88.31% （mean： 47.62%） in the SBR process. The mean CH4 emission factors were 0.182 g/ton of wastewater and 24.75 g CH4/（person.year） for the A2O process, and 0.457 g/ton of wastewater and 36.55 g CH4/（person.year） for the SBR process.
A group of Zn-Al layered double hydroxides (LDHs) were synthesized at different temperatures from 25-90 °C in order to investigate the influence of synthesis temperature on characteristics of the LDHs and their phosphate adsorption behaviour. The results reveal that an increase in the synthesis temperature generally improves the specific surface area of the sample and the phosphate adsorption capacity. The significantly enhanced crystallin- ity of the Zn-Al-30, synthesized at 30 °C, leads to a remarkable decrease in the specific surface area and consequently a poor phosphate adsorption capacity. It is suggested that the surface adsorption plays an important role in the phosphate uptake by the Zn-Al LDHs. Zn-Al-70 presents a relatively higher crystallinity and a lower specific surface area, compared with Zn-Al-60 and Zn-Al-80, but the highest phosphate adsorption capacity, indicating that surface adsorption is only one of the pathways for phosphate removal. The phosphate adsorption by the Zn-Al follows a pseudo-second-order kinetic equation. The adsorption isotherms fit Langmuir models, and the maximum a dsorption capacities of the Zn-Al-25, Zn-Al-50 and Zn-Al-70 are estimated to be 17.82, 21.01 and 27.10 mg·g-1 adsorbent, respectively.
