The purpose of this paper was to present an environmental assessment specific to a case study with reference to the storage of sand waste from a cast iron foundry, a factory with a long period of operation located in Transylvania, Romania. The environmental assessment started from the need to achieve compliant conditions for long-term storage of waste specific to cast iron casting parts activities. The activities performed in the project were carried out in stages and in parallel with the activities of sand waste valorification from the non-compliant deposit. The collaboration of the factory owner with the local environmental authorities was able to effectively materialize the objectives of the soil evaluation and facilitated the obtaining conditions for new compliant deposit construction. The evaluation of the soil quality was performed in areas where the deposited material, respectively the sand waste from the casting of the cast iron was already valorificated and, in that case, the access to the soil layer was facilitated. Thirty soil samples and a control sample were analyzed and interpretation of the results was performed in corelation to specific legislation. The conclusions of the study were provided to the beneficiary and, also to the environmental authorities in order to authorize future activities (capitalization of the remaining waste, arrangement of a new landfill).

The paper clears up the results on processing and structural, morphostructural, and magnetic investigations performed on the undoped and Fe-doped TiO2 sol-gel nanomaterials. The effect of Fe dopant on its structural changes was underlined. The results were correlated with photocatalytic activity at the degradation of nitrobenzene from an aqueous solution. For a comparative study, the samples with the same iron concentration have been prepared in both forms: powders and coatings. A recent literature survey concerning Fe dopant of TiO2 nanopowders and films and their application in the advanced degradation of different pollutants was also included.