Search results for "environmental engineering"
showing 10 items of 2674 documents
Soil conservation and sustainable development goals(SDGs) achievement in Europe and central Asia: Which role for the European soil partnership?
2021
Abstract Voluntary soil protection measures are not sufficient to achieve sustainable soil management at a global scale. Additionally, binding soil protection legislation at national and international levels has also proved to be insufficient for the effective protection of this non-renewable natural resource. In 2012, the FAO Members established the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) with the mission to facilitate and contribute exchange of knowledge and technologies related to soils, and develop dialogue and raise awareness for the need to establish a binding global agreement for sustainable soil management. Moreover, region-specific aspects of implementation are considered and strengthened th…
Determining hydraulic properties of a loam soil by alternative infiltrometer techniques
2015
Testing infiltrometer techniques to determine soil hydraulic properties is necessary for specific soils. For a loam soil, the water retention and hydraulic conductivity predicted by the BEST (Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer parameters) procedure of soil hydraulic characterization was compared with data collected by more standard laboratory and field techniques. Six infiltrometer techniques were also compared in terms of saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Ks. BEST yielded water retention values statistically similar to those obtained in the laboratory and Ks values practically coinciding with those determined in the field with the pressure infiltrometer (PI). The unsaturated soil hyd…
Analysis of uncontrolled phosphorus precipitation in anaerobic digesters under thermophilic and mesophilic conditions.
2019
This study compares the operation of mesophilic and thermophilic anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge and their effects in uncontrolled phosphorus precipitation. The research has been carried out using a pilot plant consisting of two digesters of 1.6 m3 working volume, treating the mixed sludge of Alzira WWTP (Valencia, Spain). The digesters were operated in parallel, at different conditions: mesophilic (38 ± 2.0°C) and thermophilic (55 ± 2.5°C) temperatures and organic loading rates (OLR) ranging from 1.1 to 1.7 kg volatile solids (VS) m−3 d−1 and different hydraulic retention times (HRT) 20, 15 and 12 days. Uncontrolled precipitation was evaluated through P, Mg and Ca mass balances in bot…
Occurrence of antibiotics and antiretroviral drugs in source-separated urine, groundwater, surface water and wastewater in the peri-urban area of Chu…
2020
Recently, there has been an increased interest in bridging the knowledge gap in the occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals in African urban water cycles. In this study, the occurrence of 7 antibiotics and 3 antiretrovirals in source-separated urine, groundwater, wastewater and surface water of the peri-urban area of Chunga in Lusaka, Zambia, was studied. In groundwater, the pharmaceuticals were only sporadically present with 4 antibiotics and 1 antiretroviral detected. The concentration of the antibiotics ranged from below limit of quantification (<LOQ) to 880 ng/L, with sulfamethoxazole having the highest detection frequency of 42.3%. In the surface water, a comparatively high concentrati…
Application of Selected Methods of Black Box for Modelling the Settleability Process in Wastewater Treatment Plant
2017
Abstract The paper described how the results of measurements of inflow wastewater temperature in the chamber, a degree of external and internal recirculation in the biological-mechanical wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Cedzyna near Kielce, Poland, were used to make predictions of settleability of activated sludge. Three methods, namely: multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), random forests (RF) and modified random forests (RF + SOM) were employed to compute activated sludge settleability. The results of analysis indicate that modified random forests demonstrate the best predictive abilities.
Consensus-Based Distributed State Estimation of Biofilm in Reverse Osmosis Membranes by WSNs
2017
The appearance of biofilm has become a serious problem in many reverse osmosis based systems such as the ones found in water treatment and desalination plants. In these systems, the use of traditional techniques such as pretreatment or dozing biocides are not effective when the biofilm reaches an irreversible attachment phase. In this work, we present a framework for the use of a WSN as an estimator of the biofilm evolution in a reverse osmosis membrane so that effective solutions can be applied before the irreversible phase is attained. This design is addressed in a complete distributed and decentralized fashion, and subject to realistic constraints where cooperation between nodes is perfo…
Predictive pumping based on sensor data and weather forecast
2019
In energy production, peat extraction has a significant role in Finland. However, protection of nature has become more and more important globally. How do we solve this conflict of interests respecting both views? In peat production, one important phase is to drain peat bog so that peat production becomes available. This means that we have control over how we can lead water away from peat bog to nature without water contamination with solid and other harmful substances. In this paper we describe a novel method how fouling of water bodies from peat bog can be controlled more efficiently by using weather forecast to predict rainfall and thus, minimize the effluents to nature. peerReviewed
Analysis of Possibility of Yeast Production Increase at Maintained Carbon Dioxide Emission Level
2016
Abstract Main parameters polluting of technological wastewater (dregs from decantation and thicken of the wort) from yeast industry are: nitrogen, potassium and COD. Such wastewater are utilized mostly on agricultural fields. Unfortunately, these fields can only accept a limited amount of wastes. The basic parameter limiting there the amount of wastewater is nitrogen. When capacity of the production is large sewages are often pretreated at an evaporator station. However, due to the fairly high running costs of the evaporator station currently such a solution is applied only to a small amount of wastes (just to meet legal requirements). Replacement of the earth gas with a biomass being suppl…
Determination of Sorption Properties of Heavy Metals in Various Biosorbents
2018
Abstract Various techniques of determination of properties of physicochemical processes of heavy metal sorption in biosorbents were analysed. The methods of preparing and storing samples, conditions of experiment performance, as well as the methods of data interpretation were discussed. Two procedures of study were analysed: (1) in the static system of biosorbent-solution contact and (2) in the system of dynamic flow of solution. Copper cation sorption was studied. The effect of consecutive stages of the study on the quality of final results was shown. A high degree of uncertainty of the sorption capacity assessment was reported, which was dependent on the manner of conducting the study. Th…
Unconventional yeast in the degradation of hydrocarbons in contaminated soil
2018
The influence of Yarrowia lipolytica inoculum on biodegradation of hydrocarbons, and changes in microbiota composition in the soil contaminated with petroleum have been investigated. The material under study was contaminated clay soil, containing petroleum-derived substances at approximately 17 000 [mg/kg d. m.]. Microbiological analysis was carried out by the cultivation method and the content of individual hydrocarbons (n-aliphatic, BTEX and PAHs) was determined by the GC/MS method. The largest decrease of oil-derived substances, versus the control sample, was recorded at the beginning of the process. During the first 30 days, the yeast inoculation caused most effectively removal of n-ali…