Off-grid: community energy and the pursuit of self-sufficiency in British Columbia's remote and First Nations communities

Remote or off-grid communities in Canada primarily rely on diesel generators for the provision of their electricity. Often surrounded by potential renewable resources, they are characterised as the low-hanging fruit of greenhouse gas mitigation strategies. While much is said about the promises of community energy projects, as well as technologies and policy mechanisms for addressing the needs of these communities, little attention has been paid to what communities, themselves, might want for their energy projects and what the implications of those desires might be for both technology development and community energy policies. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the on-going energy pursuits of a number of remote First Nations communities in British Columbia. It identifies a desire for community self-sufficiency as a primary motivation for engaging with energy projects on the part of the communities and discusses the various meanings and implications of self-sufficiency in the context of community energy projects. These meanings and implications primarily include the two dimensions of material self-sufficiency and political self-determination, the latter of which suggests a view of community energy projects as processes of decolonisation among First Nation communities in British Columbia. It then suggests that the pursuit of this goal is somewhat incongruent with the approach that government and industry have taken in addressing community energy, especially the way in which remote communities are viewed as the low-hanging fruit of various sustainability projects.     

The Role of Wind in Modeling of Oil Pollution Transport and Diffusion in the Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf ecosystem is facing a variety of stresses as a result of being located within the richest oil province in the world, which hosts more than 67 % of the world oil reserve. In this paper, the distribution of oil pollution on the surface layer of the Persian Gulf is predicted for the different months after the release, based on the Coupled Hydrodynamical Ecological model for Regional Shelf seas (COHERENS). An Eulerian model for the Persian Gulf is set up using the Cartesian coordinate in the horizontal direction, and the sigma coordinate in the vertical direction. Based on this model, our analysis and simulation results indicate that the winds lead to diffusion of the contaminant concentration in the direction of the Arabian coast from the initial position of the spill. The results of this study can be used to provide appropriate solutions for preventing oil from spreading further in the region.     

Characterization of titanium oxide optical band gap produced from leachate sludge treatment with titanium tetrachloride

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This study investigated the coagulation performance of titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) for leachate treatment and preparation of titanium oxide (TiO2)...     

Study of Fe–Co mixed metal oxide nanoparticles in the catalytic low-temperature CO oxidation

Iron–cobalt mixed metal oxide nanoparticles (Co/Fe molar ratio: 1/5) have been prepared by a simple co-precipitation method and employed as catalyst in low-temperature CO oxidation. The prepared catalysts were characterized by thermal gravimetric and differential thermal gravimetric analyses (TGA/DTG), X-ray diffraction (XRD), temperature programmed reduction (TPR), N₂ adsorption (BET) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. The results revealed that inexpensive iron–cobalt mixed metal oxide nanoparticles have a high potential as catalyst in low temperature CO oxidation. The results showed that increasing in calcination temperature increased the crystallite and particle size and decreased the specific surface area, which caused a decrease in catalytic activity of prepared catalysts. In addition, the pretreatment conditions affect the catalytic activity and catalyst pretreated under oxidative atmosphere showed the higher activity than those pretreated under reductive and inert atmospheres.     

Environmental assessment of 2-mercaptobenzimidazole based on the surface plasmon resonance band of gold nanoparticles

A colorimetric assay method is described for the environmental detection of 2-mercaptobenzimidazole (MBI) using surface plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Stable and dispersed AuNPs with intensified plasmon resonance were prepared in situ using a simple, rapid, and eco-friendly procedure by applying ascorbic acid as a reducer and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide as a stabilizer. The presence of MBI has a strong effect on the plasmon absorbance of AuNPs, which was employed for the detection of MBI. The calibration curve was linear in the range of 1.0?×?10^?6–5.5?×?10^?5 mol/L of MBI; the detection limit was 8.4?×?10^?7 mol/L. The relative standard deviations for eight replicate measurements of 3.0?×?10^?6 and 5?×?10^?5 mol/L MBI were 3.9 and 1.4 %, respectively. The method was successfully applied to the determination of MBI in tap, river, sea, and heat exchanger cooling water samples.     

Hydrogeochemistry study and groundwater quality assessment in the north of Isfahan,Iran

This study presents the groundwater quality assessment in the north of Isfahan, Iran. In the study area, assessment and measurement of groundwater hydrochemical parameters such as pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC), sodium absorption ratio (SAR), total hardness, major cations (K⁺, Na⁺, Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺) and major anions (Cl^?, \({\text{HCO}}_{ 3}^{ - } ,{\text{CO}}_{3}^{2 - }\) and \({\text{SO}}_{4}^{2 - }\)) concentrations were performed. Accordingly, the 66 water samples from different locations were collected during April and May 2015. Water samples collected in the field were analyzed in the laboratory for cations and anions using the standard methods. In this research, the analytical results of physiochemical parameters of groundwater were compared with the standard guideline values as recommended by the world health organization (WHO) for drinking and public health purposes. The pH values of groundwater samples varied from 7.05 to 8.95 with a mean of 7.78, indicating a neutral to slightly alkaline water. TDS values showed that 14% of the samples exceeds the desirable limit given by WHO. EC values varied from 213 to 4320 µS/cm, while 23% of the samples were more than the standard limit. Gibbs diagram had shown that 90% of the samples in the study area fall in the rock weathering zone, and this means that chemical weathering of rock-forming minerals is the main factor controlling the water chemistry in the study area. Irrigation suitability and risk assessment of groundwater are evaluated by measuring EC, %Na, SAR and RSC. According to the dominant cations and anions, five types of water were identified in the water samples: Ca-HCO₃, Ca-SO₄, Na-Cl, Na-HCO₃ and Na-SO₄. The results show that the majority of samples (30 samples, 45%) belongs to the mixed Na-SO₄ water type. Correlation analysis and principal component analysis was used to identify the relationship between ions and physicochemical parameters. Results indicated that 18 stations of the study area had the best quality and can be used for irrigation and drinking purposes in the future.     

Development of a fuzzy model to predict flyrock in surface mining

Flyrock is one of the most hazardous side effects of blasting operation in surface mining. This phenomenon can be considered as the main cause of casualties and damages. Inaccuracy of the available flyrock prediction empirical methods has caused utilizing of new methods such as fuzzy systems. In this paper a Mamdani fuzzy model was developed to predict flyrock in the Gol-E-Gohar iron mine of Iran. In this regard, a database including 490 datasets of the mine blasting operation was prepared from which about 20% was kept for testing the models. Performance of the fuzzy model was compared with that of the conventional statistical method. It was observed that efficiency of the developed fuzzy model is much better than the statistical model. Also, sensitivity analysis showed that powder factor and rock density are the most and least effective parameters on the flyrock, respectively.     

Estimation of Water Demand in Iran Based on SARIMA Models

The generation of synthetic, residential water demands that can reproduce essential statistical features of historical residential water consumption is essential for planning, design, and operation of water resource systems. Most residential water consumption series are seasonal and nonstationary. We employ the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model. We fit this model to monthly residential water consumption in Iran from May 2001 to March 2010. We find that a three-parameter log-logistic distribution fits the model residuals adequately. We forecast values for 1 year ahead using the fitted SARIMA model.