Search results for "GHG"

A plant-wide wastewater treatment plant model for carbon and energy footprint: Model application and scenario analysis

2019

Abstract A new model for accounting carbon and energy footprint of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is proposed. The model quantifies direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to biological and physical processes of a WWTP. The model takes into account several innovative aspects with respect to already available literature models: i. kinetic/mass-balances; ii. nitrification as a two-step process; iii. nitrous oxide (N2O) formation during nitrification and denitrification both in dissolved and off-gas forms. A full-scale application has been performed by adopting the case study of a real WWTP. A scenario analysis was performed to quantify the influence of: composition of …

The crucial interactions between climate and soil

2022

Since the birth of soil science, climate has been recognized as a soil-forming factor, along with parent rock, time, topography, and organisms (from which humans were later kept distinct), often prevalent on the other factors on the very long term. But the climate is in turns affected by soils and their management. This paper describes the interrelationships between climate – and its current change – and soil, focusing on each single factor of its formation. Parent material governs, primarily through the particle size distribution, the capacity of soil to retain water and organic matter, which are two main soil-related drivers of the climate. Time is the only unmanageable soil-forming facto…

Carbon Footprint Analysis: Towards a Projects Evaluation Model for Promoting Sustainable Development

2013

Abstract Climate change and global warming are internationally recognized as current issues, driving negative effects on humanity, and being mainly caused by GHG emissions generated both from industrial activities, and from other anthropogenic activities. Restoring the ecological balance requires urgent action to reduce GHG emissions. In this respect, the European Union has set the target to reduce the GHG emissions by 20% until 2020, compared to 1990 level. This paper presents a methodology to develop a model for carbon footprint calculation, for assessing and reducing GHG emissions generated by European funds financed projects.

Review of wind tunnel modelling of flow and pollutant dispersion within and from naturally ventilated livestock buildings

2021

[EN] Ammonia emissions from naturally ventilated livestock buildings (NVLBs) pose a serious environmental problem. However, the mechanisms that control these emissions are still not fully understood. One promising method for understanding these mechanisms is physical modelling in wind tunnels. This paper reviews studies that have used this method to investigate flow or pollutant dispersion within or from NVLBs. The review indicates the importance of wind tunnels for understanding the flow and pollutant dispersion processes within and from NVLBs. However, most studies have investigated the flow, while only few studies have focused on pollutant dispersion. Furthermore, only few studies have s…

Greenhouse gas emissions from membrane bioreactors

2018

Nowadays, it is widely accepted that wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are significant sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, significantly contributing to anthropogenic sources of GHG emission. Among the GHG emitted from WWTPs, nitrous oxide (N2O) has been identified as the potentially major component, since its high global warming potential (GWP) is 298 times higher than that of Carbon dioxide (CO2) and also to its capability to react with stratospheric ozone, causing the ozone layer depletion. Up to now, most of the experimental investigations aimed at assessing the key mechanisms of N2O formation, as well as the operational conditions that can enhance its emission, have been carrie…

Sustainable Development and Technological Impact on CO 2 Reducing Conditions in Romania

2015

Climate change is a reality all over the world, and its complexity is increasing. Therefore, sustainability has become a national and international concern, ingrained in many organizational processes. The ability of organizations to respond to sustainability concerns is sometimes hindered by the complexity of integrating sustainability into business models and by the need to rethink their strategic directions. In Romania, sustainable development has become a priority for businesses, but even though companies are showing some concern, there are yet to demonstrate any full commitment (they are mainly concerned with areas such as society and the environment). This paper assesses Romania’s invo…

Carbon emissions by Ssouth american companies: driving factors for reporting decisions and emissions reduction

2018

In the last decade, companies have started to disclose information on carbon emissions. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to look into this phenomenon in South America, which is a very important geographical area regarding climate change because of the local nature and developing economies. This paper explores the relationships between some corporate variables and two important decisions: (i) whether to report carbon emissions, and (ii) the impact on the evolution of carbon emissions. Logit and linear panel data models are used to determine the driving factors for decisions (i) and (ii). Our results show that regarding the carbon reporting decision, a company&rsquo

Towards a reduction of greenhouse gas emission from wastewater treatment plants: a new plant wide experimental and modelling approach

2016

The increasing interest in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) has led to the development of new tools for their design and management. Studies about gas emissions show that the sewer collection and the wastewater treatment plant are anthropogenic GHG potential sources, so they contribute to the climate change and air pollution. A wastewater treatment plant receives wastewater from sewers and, while produces treated water for discharge into surface water, emits the three major greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4, and N2O, during the treatment processes, and additional amounts of CO2 and CH4 from the energy demands (Bani Shahabadi et al., 2009). Indeed, energy cons…

LONG-TERM EFFECT OF TILLAGE AND CROP SEQUENCE ON SOIL MICROBIAL COMMUNITY AND NITROGEN EMISSIONS IN MEDITERRANEAN ENVIRONMENT

Interlinkages between operational conditions and direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions in a moving bed membrane biofilm reactor

2016

Nitrous oxide (N2O) can be emitted during wastewater treatment contributing to the global warming due to its high global warming potential,. During the last ten years, several efforts have been provided to improve knowledge on: key mechanisms, operating factors and influent features affecting the N2O production/emission. However, the knowledge on the investigated issues is not completely mature. Indeed, in terms of mathematical modelling, literature shows that a reliable model has not yet been established due to the huge data set required and the complexity of the mechanistic models indicated as the most accurate. In this work, the first attempt to perform a multiregression analysis is pres…