Search results for "Pollutant"
showing 10 items of 1389 documents
Assessment of Arundo donax Fibers for Oil Spill Recovery Applications
2019
In the last years, natural fibers are increasingly investigated as an oil recovery system in order to overcome the oil spillage phenomena, thus preserving environment and aquatic life. In particular, lignocellulose-based fibers have recently been employed with promising results. In such a context, the aim of this paper is to assess the oil sorption capability of natural fibers extracted from the stem of the giant reed Arundo donax L., a perennial rhizomatous grass belonging to the Poaceae family that grows naturally all around the world thanks to its ability to tolerate different climatic conditions. Sorption tests in several pollutants and water as a reference were carried out. The fibers …
Assessing the Environmental Performances of Urban Roundabouts Using the VSP Methodology and AIMSUN
2022
In line with globally shared environmental sustainability goals, the shift towards citizen-friendly mobility is changing the way people move through cities and road user behaviour. Building a sustainable road transport requires design knowledge to develop increasingly green road infrastructures and monitoring the environmental impacts from mobile crowdsourced data. In this view, the paper presents an empirically based methodology that integrates the vehicle-specific power (VSP) model and microscopic traffic simulation (AIMSUN) to estimate second-by-second vehicle emissions at urban roundabouts. The distributions of time spent in each VSP mode from instantaneous vehicle trajectory data gathe…
Assessment of the ecotoxicity of phytotreatment substrate soil as landfill cover material for in-situ leachate management
2019
Phytotreatment capping in closed landfills is a promising, cost-effective, in situ option for sustainable leachate treatment and might be synergistically coupled with energy crops to produce renewable energy (e.g.: biodiesel or bioethanol). This study proposes to use 0.30 m of soil as growing substrate for plants cultivated on the temporary cover of closed landfills. Once the leachate phytotreatment process is no longer required, 0.70 m of the same soil would be added to attain the final top cover configuration. This solution would entail saving the costs of excavation and backfilling. However, worsening of the initial soil quality due to potential contaminant transfer from the liquid to th…
Birch (Betula spp.) wood biochar is a potential soil amendment to reduce glyphosate leaching in agricultural soils
2015
Glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl) glycine), a commonly used herbicide in agriculture can leach to deeper soil layers and settle in surface- and ground waters. To mitigate the leaching of pesticides and nutrients, biochar has been suggested as a potential soil amendment due to its ability to sorb both organic and inorganic substances. However, the efficiency of biochar in retaining agro-chemicals in the soil is likely to vary with feedstock material and pyrolysis conditions. A greenhouse pot experiment, mimicking a crop rotation cycle of three plant genera, was established to study the effects of pyrolysis temperature on the ability of birch (Betula sp.) wood originated biochar to reduce the l…
Poplar rotation coppice at a trace element-contaminated phytomanagement site: A 10-year study revealing biomass production, element export and impact…
2019
Abstract Growing lignocellulosic crops on marginal lands could compose a substantial proportion of future energy resources. The potential of poplar was explored, by devising a field trial of two hectares in 2007 in a metal-contaminated site to quantify the genotypic variation in the growth traits of 14 poplar genotypes grown in short-rotation coppice and to assess element transfer and export by individual genotypes. Our data led us to conclusions about the genotypic variations in poplar growth on a moderately contaminated site, with the Vesten genotype being the most productive. This genotype also accumulated the least amounts of trace elements, whereas the Trichobel genotype accumulated up…
Two-Stage Anaerobic Digestion of Energy Crops: Methane Production, Nitrogen Mineralisation and Heavy Metal Mobilisation
2006
Energy crops (willow, sugar beet and grass silage) were digested in pilot scale two-stage anaerobic digesters. The specific methane yields obtained were 0.16, 0.38 and 0.39 m3 kg(-1) added volatile solids (VSadded) for willow, sugar beet and grass, respectively, corresponding to yearly gross energy yields of 15, 53 and 26 megawatt-hours (MWh) per hectare. With grass and sugar beets as substrate, 84-85% of the harvestable methane was obtained within 30 days. In pilot scale two-stage digestion of willow and sugar beet, 56 and 85% of the laboratory scale methane yields were obtained, but digestion of grass in two-stage reactors yielded 5% more methane than digestion in laboratory scale complet…
Biomarker responses of the earthworm Aporrectodea tuberculata to copper and zinc exposure: differences between populations with and without earlier m…
2003
Biomarkers in the earthworm Aporrectodea tuberculata (Eisen) were measured to find out their possible induction under Cu and Zn exposure and differences in the responses between two populations with different exposure history. The biomarkers applied were concentration of metallothioneins (MT), and cytochrome P4501A (CYP1A) monooxygenase and glutathione-S-transferase (GST) activities. These were measured from earthworms sampled at three distances from a steel smelter in Finland and from the individuals from two populations, one with and another without earlier metal exposure, exposed to three combined Cu/Zn concentrations in the laboratory. In the field, MT concentration, and cytochrome CYP1…
Induction of DNA strand breaks and expression of HSP70 and GRP78 homolog by cadmium in the marine sponge Suberites domuncula
1998
The marine sponge Suberites domuncula was used as a bioindicator to study the effects of cadmium on the occurrence of DNA strand breakage and on the induction of the expression of the stress biomarkers, heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) and glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78) homolog. The cDNA encoding GRP78 homolog from S. domuncula was isolated and characterized. The GRP78 cDNA has a length of 2.1 kb and displays characteristic features of the HSP70 family ; it encodes an aa sequence of M-r 72, 000. Exposure of S. domuncula to 1 mg/L of cadmium chloride for 24 h caused a strong(16.6-fold) increase in cadmium content to 7.7 mu g/g wet weight of sponge tissue ; after an incubation period of 6 …
The effects of ibuprofen on activated sludge: Shift in bacterial community structure and resistance to ciprofloxacin
2017
Abstract Ibuprofen (IBP) is ranked at the 4th place among 57 pharmaceutical compounds according to the number of citations in prioritization documents. The response of microbial community of activated sludge to IBP was studied at the concentrations of 50–5000 mg/L. Batch incubation was performed in an OxiTop® device for 21 days. The reduction of biological oxygen demand depended on the IBP concentration and varied in the range from 321 to 107 mg O 2 /L. Massive DNA sequencing analysis of the activated sludge revealed that Proteobacteria became more dominant when grown in the presence of IBP. Microbial diversity was reduced in the presence of 500–1000 mg/L IBP, but increased again in the pre…
Taxonomic and functional diversity of atrazine‐degrading bacterial communities enriched from agrochemical factory soil
2010
Aims: To characterize atrazine-degrading potential of bacterial communities enriched from agrochemical factory soil by analysing diversity and organization of catabolic genes. Methods and Results: The bacterial communities enriched from three different sites of varying atrazine contamination mineralized 65–80% of 14C ring-labelled atrazine. The presence of trzN-atzBC-trzD, trzN-atzABC-trzD and trzN-atzABCDEF-trzD gene combinations was determined by PCR. In all enriched communities, trzN-atzBC genes were located on a 165-kb plasmid, while atzBC or atzC genes were located on separated plasmids. Quantitative PCR revealed that catabolic genes were present in up to 4% of the community. Restricti…