Search results for "Resource"
showing 10 items of 4058 documents
Municipal waste management in Sicily: practices and challenges.
2006
There are numerous problems yet to be solved in waste management and although efforts towards waste recovery and recycling have been made, landfills are still the most common method used in the EU and many other industrialised countries. Thermal disposal, particularly incineration, is a tested and viable alternative. In 2004, only 11% of the annual waste production of Italy was incinerated. Sicily, with over five million inhabitants, is the second largest region in Italy where waste management is now a critical problem. The use of landfills can no longer be considered a satisfactory environmental solution; therefore, new methods have to be chosen and waste-toenergy plants could provide an a…
Environmental Comparison between a Hot Extrusion Process and Conventional Machining Processes through a Life Cycle Assessment Approach
2014
Nowadays manufacturing technologies have to be evaluated not only for the technical features they can provide to products, but also considering the environmental perspective as well. As long as the technological feasibility of a given process is guaranteed, processes minimizing resources and energy consumption have to be selected for manufacturing. With respect to this topic, the research studies in the domain of metal processing technologies predominantly focus on conventional material removal processes as milling and turning. Despite some exceptions, many other non-machining technologies, such as metal forming processes, are still not well documented in terms of their energy and resource …
Hydrogen Production from Sea Wave for Alternative Energy Vehicles for Public Transport in Trapani (Italy)
2016
The coupling of renewable energy and hydrogen technologies represents in the mid-term a very interesting way to match the tasks of increasing the reliable exploitation of wind and sea wave energy and introducing clean technologies in the transportation sector. This paper presents two different feasibility studies: the first proposes two plants based on wind and sea wave resource for the production, storage and distribution of hydrogen for public transportation facilities in the West Sicily; the second applies the same approach to Pantelleria (a smaller island), including also some indications about solar resource. In both cases, all buses will be equipped with fuel-cells. A first economic a…
The Desalination Process Driven by Wave Energy: A Challenge for the Future
2016
The correlation between water and energy is currently the focus of several investigations. In particular, desalination is a technological process characterized by high energy consumption; nevertheless, desalination represents the only practicable solution in several areas, where the availability of fresh water is limited but brackish water or seawater are present. These natural resources (energy and water) are essential for each other; energy system conversion needs water, and electrical energy is necessary for water treatment or transport. Several interesting aspects include the study of saline desalination as an answer to freshwater needs and the application of renewable energy (RE) devic…
Sustainability of the Renewable Energy Extraction Close to the Mediterranean Islands
2017
The aim of this work is to explore the possibility of transitioning a fuel powered island to a renewable powered one. This transition is analyzed for the real MV/LV distribution system of the island of Pantelleria, in the Mediterranean Sea. Particularly, this work is focused on a renewable source nowadays totally unused: wave energy. Thanks to the innovative generator prototype designed by Department of Energy of University of Palermo (Italy), wave energy is able to represent a primary source for the production of electric energy in the Mediterranean islands. The procedures applied in the present article, as well as the main equations used, are the result of previous applications made in di…
Evaluation of the Water Scarcity Energy Cost for Users
2013
Abstract: In systems experiencing water scarcity and consequent intermittent supply, users often adopt private tanks that collect water during service periods and supply users when the service is not available. The tank may be fed by gravity or by private pumping stations depending on the network pressure level. Once water resources are collected, the tank can supply users by gravity if it is located on the rooftop or by additional pumping if underground. Private tanks thus increase the energy cost of the water supply service for users by introducing several small pumping structures inside the network. The present paper aims to evaluate this users’ energy cost for different private tank con…
A Graphical User Interface as a DSS Tool for GHG Emission Estimation from Water Resource Recovery Facilities
2017
A Grafical User Interface (GUI) for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from WWTPs based on four models aimed at quantifying the gas emissions from the aerated tanks (i.e. CAS and MBR reactor), aerobic digesters, secondary clarifiers and anaerobic digesters have been englobed in a GUI in order to provide a valid decision support system (DSS) to the practitioners. The GUI allows to estimate such emissions for the different WWTP phases considered. The GUI has been developed on MATLAB platform and provides as output the GHG emissions in terms of CO2 and N2O fluxes.
Environmental management of granite slab production from an industrial ecology standpoint
2014
Abstract The granite production chain is high energy and water intensive with low resource efficiency. This paper focus on characterizing the potential for environmental improvement of the granite production chain by promoting the optimization of sawing technology, the implementation of rainwater harvesting (RWH) and the material recovery of wasted granite (sludge). The environmental performance of multi-blade gangsaw (MBGS) and diamond multi-wire saw (DMWS) technologies is compared by mean of life cycle assessment. Results demonstrate that DMWS technology contribute 30% of water savings, 40% of energy savings and 80% of material savings per square meter of polished granite tiles (60 x 40 x…
Addressing the main challenges of energy security in the twenty-first century – Contributions of the conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy…
2016
Abstract Climate change and fossil fuel reserve depletion both pose challenges for energy security and for wellbeing in general. The top ten among them include: Decarbonising the world economy; Enhancing the energy efficiency and energy savings in buildings; Advancing the energy technologies; Moving towards energy systems based on variable renewables; Electrifying the transport and some industrial processes; Liberalizing and extending the energy markets; Integrating energy sectors to Smart Energy Systems; Making the cities and communities smart; Diversifying the energy sources; and Building more biorefineries. Presenting the contributions of selected conference papers published in the speci…
Urban Waste as Resource for Sustainable Environment
2013
The emerging model of waste disposal, develops an integrated approach based on waste reduction, selection, recycling, energy recovery and residual use of landfill. Here we discuss the fundamentals of a proper planning of waste disposal system, specially the thermal recovery, the integration and the methodological approach, either from the environmental and economic point of view. The growing demand for energy, the resulting environmental problems due to satisfy the demand for energy and the complex-economic system, necessitate the study of new technologies such as energy from municipal solid waste (MSW) obtaining as a result of decrease huge mass of solid waste to sanitary landifill and emi…