Search results for "Efficient"
showing 10 items of 1603 documents
Trends in EU Energy Policy 1995–2007
2011
Today, climate change and a significant increase in energy consumption are considered to be the two greatest global challenges facing the energy world (e.g., Hasselmann et al. 2003: 1923; IPCC 2007; Kara 2007: 5; Karl and Trenberth 2003: 1719). In addition to the scientific community having a common understanding about these two issues relating to each other, the political decision makers also need to acknowledge it and start building a framework around it – with the same longterm targets. On the EU-level, climate change concerns were already manifested in the White Paper on Energy Policy for the European Union in 1995. The development of the EU’s common energy policy is also the result of …
Environmentally Relevant Properties of All 209 Polychlorinated Biphenyl Congeners for Modeling Their Fate in Different Natural and Climatic Conditions
2009
The temperature dependence of physical properties and degradation lifetimes in the environment of all polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners (N = 209) were determined. For physical properties, the coefficients A and B in equations log(property) = A(property) − B(property)/T(K) were determined by thermodynamic and QSPR methods and compared with the results of independent methods in the literature. The coefficients Apl and Bpl for liquid state vapor pressure PL, As and Bs for solubility in water SW, Ah and Bh for volatility kH (or kH = PL/SW), and Aow and Bow for lipophilicity (KOW), stored in the database of the fate model program, allowed automatic temperature corrections for realistic fa…
Platinum levels in urban soils from Palermo (Italy); Analytical method using voltammetry
2011
Abstract A fast accumulation of platinum in the environmental and biological matrices was observed in the last years and concern arose about potential environmental and health risks. The toxicity of platinum species has been investigated in various studies, some of their, especially the chlorinated ones, are very toxic and allergenic. Information of the acute toxicity of some Pt-chlorinated salts and evidence of DNA damage due to Pt exposure have been observed both in vitro and in vivo. Taking into account what is written above, the development of reliable analytic methods to measure very low Pt concentrations is required. In this work was developed a reliable method for the determination o…
Estimation of vapor pressures, solubilities and Henry's law constants of selected persistent organic pollutants as functions of temperature
1999
Abstract An internally consistent set of temperature dependent physical-chemical property data was derived for 73 persistent organic pollutants, including polychlorinated biphenyls, diphenylethers, dibenzo-p-dioxins, and dibenzofurans, organochlorinated pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Measured data reported in the literature were expanded by different estimation and regression methods. Temperature dependent vapor pressures were estimated from relative gas chromatographic retention times and by a modified Watson equation. Temperature dependent water solubilities were estimated by equations based on mobile order theory modified from Ruelle and Kesselring. The temperature depe…
Platinum and rhodium associated with the leaves of Nerium oleander L.; analytical method using voltammetry; assessment of air quality in the Palermo …
2009
Abstract A rapid accumulation of the catalytic active noble metals in the environmental and biological matrices was observed and concern arose about potential environmental and health risks. The development of reliable analytic methods to measure very low Pt and Rh concentrations is required. The main purpose of this work was to develop a reliable method for the determination of Pt and Rh in environmental matrices because of inherent difficulties in using conventional techniques used, in particular, the ICP-OES technique. A direct determination of Pt using ICP-MS, for instance, is problematic, due to interfering signals. In this work, differential pulse voltammetry (DPV/a) and adsorptive st…
Energy intensity modeling for wastewater treatment technologies.
2018
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are energy intensive facilities; therefore increased pressure has been placed on managers and policy makers to reduce the facilities' energy use. Several studies were conducted to compare the energy intensity (EI) of WWTPs, which showed large dispersion in EI among the facilities. In the present study, the degree EI influenced WWTPs was tested using a set of technical variables by modeling the EI of a 305 WWTP sample grouped into five secondary treatment technologies. Results indicated the following two major findings: i) WWTPs using conventional activated sludge, extended aeration, trickling biofilters, and biodisks exhibited significant economies of sca…
Evaluation of energy performance of drinking water treatment plants: Use of energy intensity and energy efficiency metrics
2018
Abstract One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is to provide access to safe and clean drinking water. However, treating raw water in facilities currently involves using a non-negligible amount of energy, and the fossil fuels used are both expensive and emit greenhouse gases when combusted. Previous studies have evaluated the energy performance of drinking water treatment plants by estimating the amount of energy consumed per volume of water. However, such studies have not accounted for differences between treatment technologies and have assumed a common standard water treatment technology. To overcome these limitations, this study employed metafrontier data envelopment ana…
The influence of preparation methodology on the concentrations of heavy metals in Pleurozium schreberi moss samples prior to use in active biomonitor…
2020
AbstractActive biomonitoring is used to assess environmental pollution of elements such as heavy metals by indicator species such as mosses. They are used, among others, in urbanized areas where no indicator species are found. In such study areas, mosses collected from sites considered to be ecologically clean shall be exposed. In this context, it is very important to prepare the mosses properly before the exposure, so that the information received about the condition of the environment is reliable. In 2018, studies were conducted in the forested areas of southern Poland—in Opolskie Province. Pleurozium schreberi mosses were used in these studies. Atomic absorption spectrometry with flame a…
Relationship between UVB and broadband solar radiation in Spain
2014
The daily values of UVB irradiation (290–315 nm), IUVB, and the broadband total irradiation (300–2800 nm), IT, measured on a horizontal plane have been correlated for the period 2000–2008 at 16 measurement sites in Spain. The results have been compared with the daily experimental values registered at the same sites during the period 2009–2011. The coefficients of determination R2 obtained by applying a linear regression are higher than 0.88 for all sites and increase to 0.94 when using a quadratic regression. When all data are considered together, the values of R2 are 0.91 and 0.97 for the linear and quadratic regressions, respectively. Three different clearness indices, which are dimension…
Proposed alternative phase ratio variation method for the calculation of liquid–vapour partition coefficients of volatiles
2012
International audience; The phase ratio variation PRV method is a classical way to determine the partition coefficients of volatile compounds between their solution and vapour phases in a variety of circumstances. However, some results obtained by this method can be disappointing. A new PRV equation in which the initial liquid-phase solute concentration is replaced by the liquid-phase solute concentration at equilibrium is proposed. This proposed PRV equation is a second-order polynomial equation. To thoroughly examine the possible modes of calculation, noisy dummy data were generated using both the classical, first-order PRV model (PRV1) and the proposed, second-order model (PRV2). Thus, p…