Improving the feasibility of aquaculture feed by using microalgae

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The aquaculture industry is an efficient edible protein producer and grows faster than any other food sector. Therefore, it requires enormous amounts...     

Waste to energy: power generation potential of putrescible wastes by anaerobic digestion process at Hyderabad,Pakistan

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Power generation from municipal solid waste plays significant role to mitigate the environmental pollution. The power generation potential of...     

Combined alkaline and ultrasonic pretreatment of sludge before aerobic digestion

Alkaline and ultrasonic sludge disintegration can both be used as pretreatments of waste activated sludge (WAS) for improving the subsequent anaerobic or aerobic digestion. The pretreatment has been carried out using different combination of these two methods in this study. The effect was evaluated based on the quantity of soluble chemical oxygen demand (SCOD) in the pretreated sludge as well as the degradation of organic matter in the following aerobic digestion. For WAS samples with combined pretreatment, the released COD was in high level than those with ultrasonic or alkaline treatment. When combined with the same ultrasonic treatment, NaOH treatment resulted in more solubilization of WAS than Ca(OH)2. For combined NaOH and ultrasonic treatments with different sequences, the released COD were in the order: simultaneous treatment > ultrasonic treatment following NaOH treatment > NaOH treatment following ultrasonic treatment. For simultaneous treatment, low NaOH dosage (100 g/kg dry solid), short duration (30 min) of NaOH treatment, and low ultrasonic specific energy (7 500 kJ/kg dry solid) were beneficial for sludge disintegration. Using combined NaOH and ultrasonic pretreatment with the optimium parameters, the degradation efficiency of organic matter was increased from 38.0% to 50.7%, which is much higher than with ultrasonic (42.5%) or with NaOH pretreatment (43.5%) in the subsequent aerobic digestion at the same retention time.     

Modeling and simulation of landfill gas production from pretreated MSW landfill simulator

The cumulative landfill gas (LFG) production and its rate were simulated for pretreated municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill using four models namely first order exponential model, modified Gompertz model, single component combined growth and decay model and Gaussian function. Considering the behavior of the pretreated MSW landfill, a new multi component model was based on biochemical processes that occurring in landfilled pretreated MSW. The model was developed on the basis of single component combined growth and decay model using an anaerobic landfill simulator reactor which treats the pretreated MSW. It includes three components of the degradation i.e. quickly degradable, moderately degradable and slowly degradable. Moreover, the developed model was statistically analyzed for its goodness of fit. The results show that the multi components LFG production model is more suitable in comparison to the simulated models and can efficiently be used as a modeling tool for pretreated MSW landfills. The proposed model is likely to give assistance in sizing of LFG collection system, generates speedy results at lower cost, improves cost-benefit analysis and decreases LFG project risk. It also indicates the stabilization of the landfill and helps the managers in the reuse of the landfill space. The proposed model is limited to aerobically pretreated MSW landfill and also requires the values of delay times in LFG productions from moderately and slowly degradable fractions of pretreated MSW.     

Laboratory-scale experiments applied to the design of a two-stage submerged combustion evaporation system

To simulate a submerged combustion evaporation (SCE) process under laboratory conditions, this study conducted three kinds of indirect-heating evaporation experiments, including normal evaporation, vacuum evaporation, and gas-carrying evaporation experiments on mature municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill leachate. The results showed that the organic concentrations in terms of COD in condensates were always very high at the beginning, then decreased rapidly, and stabilized at a low level, which suggests that only the forepart of vapors need to be safely treated to control the discharge of organic pollutants. This study applied the process in developing a two-stage SCE system, which has been implemented for the treatment of biologically pretreated and concentrated leachate from Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) combined process in the Beishenshu MSW Landfill, Beijing, China. The result shows that the two-stage SCE system can successfully further concentrate refractory organic matter in concentrated leachate and remove volatile organics from the vapor.     

Separate collection and bio-waste valorization in the Italian poultry sector by material flow analysis

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Poultry meat production and consumption face several challenges under economic, social and environmental perspectives, and increasing concerns are...