Removal of chromium(VI) from electroplating industry wastewater using bagasse fly ash—a sugar industry waste material

A waste product generated in the sugar industry in India has been converted into a cheap potential adsorbent. This has been characterised and utilized for the removal of chromium (VI) from synthetic and actual wastewater. The sorption efficiency decreases with increase in pH. Adsorption of Cr (VI) on bagasse fly ash follows the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms and these have been used to obtain the thermodynamic parameters of the process. The sorption capacity of this adsorbent for chromium removal is found to be comparable to other low cost adsorbents.     

Is research keeping up with changes in landscape policy? A review of the literature

Several innovative directions for landscape policy development and implementation have emerged over recent years. These include: (i) an expansion of scope to include all landscape aspects and landscape types, (ii) an increased emphasis on public participation, (iii) a focus on designing measures appropriate for different contexts and scales, and (iv) encouraging support for capacity-building. In this paper, we evaluate the extent to which these policy directions are reflected in the practice of academic landscape research. We evaluate all research papers published in three leading landscape journals over six years, as well as published research papers relating directly to the European Landscape Convention. The latter, which was adopted in 2000, establishes a framework for landscape protection, planning and management in Europe and is to date the only international legal instrument of its kind. Results indicate that whilst policy innovations do not appear to be a major stimulus for academic research, studies nevertheless address a range of landscape aspects, types and scales (albeit with a slight bias towards bio-physical landscape aspects). However, geographical representativeness of research is weak and dominated by the United States and northern/western Europe, and research capacity likewise appears to be unevenly distributed. Landscape research is also limited in the extent to which it involves stakeholders or develops innovative methods for doing so, notwithstanding that this remains a key challenge for policy-makers. Results point to the potential for landscape research to address areas (topical and geographical) which have received little attention to date, as well as suggesting mutual benefits of stronger links between policy and academia.     

Environment friendly alternatives to halogenated refrigerants—A review

In developing country like India, most of the vapor compression based refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump systems continue to run on halogenated refrigerants due to its excellent thermodynamic and thermo-physical properties apart from the low cost. However, the halogenated refrigerants have adverse environmental impacts such as ozone depletion potential (ODP) and global warming potential (GWP). Hence, it is necessary to look for alternative refrigerants to full fill the objectives of the international protocols (Montreal and Kyoto) and to satisfy the growing worldwide demand. This paper reviews the various experimental and theoretical studies carried out around the globe with environment friendly alternatives such as hydrocarbons (HC), hydroflurocarbons (HFC) and their mixtures, which are going to be the promising long-term alternatives. In addition, the technical difficulties of mixed refrigerants and future challenges of the alternatives are discussed. The problems pertaining to the usage of environment friendly refrigerants are also analyzed.     

What are the barriers to successful community-based climate change adaptation? A review of grey literature

ABSTRACT

Across the Global South, community-based adaptation (CBA) projects are increasingly being implemented in an effort to respond effectively and sustainably to the impacts of climate change, with a particular focus on people’s livelihoods. Despite an increase in the number of CBA projects being implemented, detailed analysis and evaluation of their efficacy and the barriers faced in achieving successful outcomes is lacking. This study draws on an analysis of grey literature (i.e. project and donor reports) to explore the barriers faced in achieving effective CBA. An extensive global search of online project evaluations yielded 25 documents comprising 69 projects from which this analysis is based. This paper first presents an overview of the 69 projects and highlights any trends. Second, this paper describes the barriers to CBA according to three broad themes: socio-political, resource, and physical systems and processes. Following this is a discussion of the most prevalent barriers: cognitive and behavioural, financial, and human resources. Third, this paper discusses the key findings elucidated from this review. This includes the need for greater sharing of project reports and findings so lessons can be learned across spatial and temporal scales, and the disparity between critical academic literature on CBA and what is implemented in practice.     

Oxy-fuel coal combustion—A review of the current state-of-the-art

Carbon dioxide emissions will continue being a major environmental concern due to the fact that coal will remain a major fossil-fuel energy resource for the next few decades. To meet future targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, capture and storage of CO₂ is required. Carbon capture and storage technologies that are currently the focus of research centres and industry include: pre-combustion capture, post-combustion capture, and oxy-fuel combustion. This review deals with the oxy-fuel coal combustion process, primarily focusing on pulverised coal (PC) combustion, and its related research and development topics. In addition, research results related to oxy-fuel combustion in a circulating fluidised bed (CFB) will be briefly dealt with.During oxy-fuel combustion, a combination of oxygen, with a purity of more than 95 vol.%, and recycled flue gas (RFG) referred to as oxidant is used for combusting the fuel producing a gas consisting of mainly CO₂ and water vapour, which after purification and compression, is ready for storage. The high oxygen demand is supplied by a cryogenic air separation process, which is the only commercially available mature technology. The separation of oxygen from air as well as the purification and liquefaction of the CO₂-enriched flue gas consumes significant auxiliary power. Therefore, the overall net efficiency is expected to be decreased by 8–12% points, corresponding to a 21–35% increase in fuel consumption. Alternatively, ion transport membranes (ITMs) are proposed for oxygen separation, which might be more energy efficient. However, since ITMs are far away from becoming a mature technology, it is widely expected that cryogenic air separation will be the selected technology in the near future. Oxygen combustion is associated with higher temperatures compared with conventional air combustion. Both fuel properties as well as limitations of steam and metal temperatures of the various heat exchanger sections of the boiler require a moderation of the temperatures in the combustion zone and in the heat-transfer sections. This moderation in temperature is accomplished by means of recycled flue gas. The interdependencies between the fuel properties, the amount and temperature of the recycled flue gas, and the resulting oxygen concentration in the combustion atmosphere are reviewed.The different gas atmosphere resulting from oxy-fuel combustion gives rise to various questions related to firing, in particular, with respect to the combustion mechanism, pollutant reduction, the risk of corrosion, and the properties of the fly ash or its resulting deposits. In this review, detailed nitrogen and sulphur chemistry was investigated in a laboratory-scale facility under oxy-fuel combustion conditions. Oxidant staging succeeded in reducing NO formation with effectiveness comparable to that typically observed in conventional air combustion. With regard to sulphur, a considerable increase in the SO₂ concentration was measured, as expected. However, the H₂S concentration in the combustion atmosphere in the near-flame zone increased as well. Further results were obtained in a pilot-scale test facility, whereby acid dew points were measured and deposition probes were exposed to the combustion environment. Slagging, fouling and corrosion issues have so far been addressed via short-term exposure and require further investigation.Modelling of PC combustion processes by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has become state-of-the-art for conventional air combustion. Nevertheless, the application of these models for oxy-fuel combustion conditions needs adaptation since the combustion chemistry and radiative heat transfer is altered due to the different combustion gas atmosphere.CFB technology can be considered mature for conventional air combustion. In addition to its inherent advantages like good environmental performance and fuel flexibility, it offers the possibility of additional heat exchanger arrangements in the solid recirculation system, i.e. the ability to control combustion temperatures despite relatively low flue gas recycle ratios even when combusting in the presence of high oxygen concentrations.     

Environmental Security: A Geographic Information System Analysis Approach—The Case of Kenya

Studies into the relationships between environmental factors and violence or conflicts constitute a very debated research field called environmental security. Several authors think that environmental scarcity, which is scarcity of renewable resources, can contribute to generate violence or social unrest, particularly within states scarcely endowed with technical know-how and social structures, such as developing countries. In this work, we referred to the theoretical model developed by the Environmental Change and Acute Conflict Project. Our goal was to use easily available spatial databases to map the various sources of environmental scarcity through geographic information systems, in order to locate the areas apparently most at risk of suffering negative social effects and their consequences in terms of internal security. The analysis was carried out at a subnational level and applied to the case of Kenya. A first phase of the work included a careful selection of databases relative to renewable resources. Spatial operations among these data allowed us to obtain new information on the availability of renewable resources (cropland, forests, water), on the present and foreseen demographic pressure, as well as on the social and technical ingenuity. The results made it possible to identify areas suffering from scarcity of one or more renewable resources, indicating different levels of gravity. Accounts from Kenya seem to confirm our results, reporting clashes between tribal groups over the access to scarce resources in areas that our work showed to be at high risk.     

A national strategy for environmental education: an approach to a sustainable future?

Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 called on each nation to bring together a widely cross-sectoral group of people to prepare a national strategy for environmental education and training. In Scotland this process had already begun and the Secretary of State's Working Group on Environmental Education presented him with its recommendations for a strategy in April 1993, which he accepted in a statement of intent in June, 1995. The process itself, the comments received on the report since publication and continuing developments in the field, have demonstrated the importance of adopting broad definitions for both environment and education, spreading involvement in production of the strategy to all sectors and as wide a range of individuals as possible, dividing up the work so as to focus on all the main contexts in which learning takes place, working with the main potential implementers and not depending entirely on the availability of new resources. The process was in itself rewarding and its importance should not be underestimated. The approach adopted and the issues which it raised appear to have wide applicability to similar programmes elsewhere. This paper describes the process adopted in preparing the strategy, reviews some of the subsequent developments in Scotland, and assesses the factors which may have contributed to its success so far.Professor John C. Smyth, OBE is Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Paisley. He is President of The Scottish Environmental Education Council and he presented this paper at the Global Forum '94 Academic Conference Towards a Sustainable Future: Promoting Sustainable Development, Manchester, UK.     

Geological storage of CO2 in saline aquifers—A review of the experience from existing storage operations

The experience from CO₂ injection at pilot projects (Frio, Ketzin, Nagaoka, US Regional Partnerships) and existing commercial operations (Sleipner, Snøhvit, In Salah, acid-gas injection) demonstrates that CO₂ geological storage in saline aquifers is technologically feasible. Monitoring and verification technologies have been tested and demonstrated to detect and track the CO₂ plume in different subsurface geological environments. By the end of 2008, approximately 20 Mt of CO₂ had been successfully injected into saline aquifers by existing operations. Currently, the highest injection rate and total storage volume for a single storage operation are approximately 1 Mt CO₂/year and 25 Mt, respectively. If carbon capture and storage (CCS) is to be an effective option for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, commercial-scale storage operations will require orders of magnitude larger storage capacity than accessed by the existing sites. As a result, new demonstration projects will need to develop and test injection strategies that consider multiple injection wells and the optimisation of the usage of storage space. To accelerate large-scale CCS deployment, demonstration projects should be selected that can be readily employed for commercial use; i.e. projects that fully integrate the capture, transport and storage processes at an industrial emissions source.     

A review on the production of fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass through conventional and enzymatic route—a comparison

The scarcity of fossil fuels has urged the economically developed countries to find the resources for an alternative energy sources. In apprehension to this, biofuels, like bioethanol and biobutanol, produced from lignocellulosic biomass were considered as potential alternative. There are several methods for the pretreatment of biomass before it is being used as a feedstock for the production of fermentable sugars. However, one of the crucial concerns here is to enumerate an economic pretreatment scheme that can be implemented in large scale for the production of mostly exposed cellulosic part from biomass. This will ensure an effective hydrolysis of cellulose for the production of fermentable sugars and the production of biobutanol from these derived sugars. Moreover, the keynote understanding of an effective fermentation is the production of less inhibitory compounds like furfural, hydroxymethyl furfural during the hydrolysis of cellulose. Enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose was reported as the most efficient method is this aspect. Trichoderma sp. was found the mostly used resources for the enzyme called cellulase and Aspergillus sp. for hemicellulase enzymes. The most crucial part here is the isolation of proper enzyme that will increase the rate of hydrolysis. Moreover, selection of proper pretreatment process will be a key benefit to the production of fermentable sugars through enzymatic hydrolysis. Based on the biomass nature, the evaluated hot water pretreatment followed by enzymatic hydrolysis with a provision of enzyme reusability (like encapsulated or enzyme separation with membrane) seems to be promising for enhanced biofuel-production.     

The connectedness to nature scale: A measure of emotional connection to nature?

Mayer and Frantz (2004) proposed that their connectedness to nature scale (CNS) provides a measure of people's emotional connection to nature. After reanalyzing data from their article, collecting and analyzing our own data, and conducting a content analysis of CNS scale items, we conclude that the CNS does not measure an emotional connection to nature. Although results from our Study 1 and Study 2 support Mayer and Frantz's conclusion that the CNS measures one predominant factor, we suggest that factor measures cognitive beliefs and not emotional connections. Results from our Studies 3 and 4 suggest that the self-referential, less negatively toned wording of CNS items may account for differences in correlations, between the CNS and environmentalism (a measure of environmental identity) and between the New Ecological Paradigm Scale (a measure of environmental beliefs) and environmentalism, reported by Mayer and Frantz. In Study 5, we suggest that correlation differences reported by Mayer and Frantz may also be attributable to method variance, as opposed to content differences between the CNS and the New Ecological Paradigm scale. We provide recommendations for revising the CNS to focus on beliefs about their connection to nature.     

Green energy generation by pressure retarded osmosis: State of the art and technical advancement—review

Pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) is a method for converting salinity gradients to power by allowing water to flow through a semi-permeable membrane against an applied hydraulic pressure. PRO already has a long history, starting from the middle of the last century, and has rapidly improved in recent years. In this paper, we present a historical development of PRO since its inception: the development of this renewable energy process has gone through several stages, depending on technological developments, worldwide energy demands, and environmental concerns. The technological progress of the process is also studied, as well as its cost viability and environmental impact. Finally, some ideas to further develop the PRO process and mitigate its detrimental effects are discussed.     

The “Revolving Door” between Regulatory Agencies and Industry: A Problem That Requires Reconceptualizing Objectivity

There is a “revolving door” between federal agencies and the industries regulated by them. Often, at the end of their industry tenure, key industry personnel seek employment in government regulatory entities and vice versa. The flow of workers between the two sectors could bring about good. Industry veterans might have specialized knowledge that could be useful to regulatory bodies and former government employees could help businesses become and remain compliant with regulations. But the “revolving door” also poses at least three ethical and policy challenges that have to do with public trust and fair representation. First, the presence of former key industry personnel on review boards could adversely impact the public’s confidence in regulatory decisions about new technology products, including agrifood biotechnologies. Second, the ‘‘revolving door’’ may result in policy decisions about technologies that are biased in favor of industry interests. And third, the ‘‘revolving door’’ virtually guarantees industry a voice in the policy-making process, even though other stakeholders have no assurance that their concerns will be addressed by regulatory agencies. We believe these three problems indicate a failure of regulatory review for new technologies. The review process lacks credibility because, at the very least, it is procedurally biased in favor of industry interests. We argue that prohibiting the flow of personnel between regulatory agencies and industry would not be a satisfactory solution to the three problems of public trust and just representation. To address them, regulatory entities must reject the traditional notion of objectivity. Instead they should adopt the conception of objectivity developed by Sandra Harding and re-configure their regulatory review on the basis of it. That will ensure that a heterogeneous group of stakeholders is at the decision-making table. The fair representation of interests of different constituencies in the review process could do much to inspire warranted public confidence in regulatory protocols and decisions.     

The toxic release inventory: Fact or fiction? A case study of the primary aluminum industry

Since 1989 manufacturing facilities across the USA must report toxic chemical emissions to the EPA's toxic release inventory (TRI). Public release of this information and increased public scrutiny are believed to significantly contribute to the over 45% reduction in toxic chemical releases since inception of the program and to growing support for this type of informational regulation instead of traditional command-and-control. However, prior research indicates a tendency to under-report emissions. We find specific evidence of under-reporting of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) to the TRI by primary aluminum facilities after promulgation of the industry's maximum available control technology (MACT) standard in 1997. We also find evidence of dislocation of emission overseas due to these regulatory requirements. Additionally, changes in energy prices affected aluminum production and further distort reported PAH emissions levels. This suggests the possibility of more widespread under-reporting that is modulated by various factors, including market conditions and new regulations, and which may partially explain the downward trend in TRI emissions. It also suggests that the quality of TRI data may improve once facilities are subject to monitoring of emissions of a TRI listed pollutant due to command-and-control regulation.     

The use of ionic liquids based on choline chloride for metal deposition: A green alternative?

Ionic liquids are studied intensively for different applications. They tend to be denoted as “green solvents”, largely because of their low vapour pressure. In recent years toxicity and biotoxicity of ionic liquids have also been investigated, which proved that not all of these are “green”. In this paper the use of ionic liquids based on choline chloride and ethylene glycol in electrochemistry is discussed in the context of their use as green solvents. Due to their low toxicity and ready biodegradability, these deep eutectic solvents are promising for the electrodeposition of metals. The influence of the use of these liquids as metal deposition baths on the waste water is investigated. Drag-out was found to be the most influencing parameter on the environmental impact of the process, as it is three times higher compared to classical solutions due to the higher viscosity of the ionic liquid. There are no major changes needed in the rinsing configuration of classic electroplating plants, and ion exchange to remove the metal out of the waste water was not hindered by the presence of the ionic liquid. The formation of by-products during the deposition of metals has to be further investigated and evaluated in consideration of the environmental impact.     

The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990: A Policy Whose Time Has Come or Symbolic Legislation?

/ In 1990, the United States officially entered the era of pollution prevention with passage of the Pollution Prevention Act. This paper analyzes EPA's implementation of the Pollution Prevention Act from its passage in 1990 to the present. It examines the barriers EPA must overcome if it is to effectively integrate pollution prevention into its existing regulatory structure, including impediments created by statutory and organizational structure, the existing relationship between EPA and the groups it regulates, the fragmented implementation scheme of national environmental regulation, the balancing of conflicting demands advanced by powerful interests, industry's economic and technical concerns, and institutional inertia. It also examines issues such as industry commitment, the limits of prevention, and measurement concerns. The findings suggest that EPA's efforts at shifting to a pollution prevention regulatory ethic that holds primacy over pollution control are mixed. Its organizational structure, statutory authority, and incentives system still reflect a single-medium pollution control focus, appropriations for pollution prevention programs and activities are paltry compared to traditional pollution control programs, and participation in the program is voluntary. Yet, the findings also point to some promising programs that are working to institutionalize a pollution prevention regulatory ethic, and many states appear very committed to the concept.KEY WORDS: Pollution prevention; Source reduction; Pollution control; Alternative regulatory design; Barriers to implementation     

The Impact of Nature-Based Tourism on Bird Communities: A Case Study in Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park

Nature-based tourism and recreation within and close to protected areas may have negative environmental impacts on biodiversity due to urban development, landscape fragmentation, and increased disturbance. We conducted a 3-year study of disturbances of birds induced by nature-based tourism over a recreational gradient in the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park and its surroundings in northern Finland. Bird assemblages were studied in highly disturbed areas close to the park (a ski resort, villages, and accommodation areas) and in campfire sites, along hiking routes (recreational areas) and in a forest (control area) within the park. Compared with the forest, the disturbed urbanized areas had higher abundances of human-associated species, corvid species, cavity and building nesters, and edge species. The abundances of managed forest species were higher in campfire sites than in the forest. Hiking trails and campfire sites did not have a negative impact on open-nesting bird species. The most likely reason for this outcome is that most campfire sites were situated at forest edges; this species group prefers managed forests and forest edge as a breeding habitat. The abundances of virgin forest species did not differ among the areas studied. The results of the study suggest that the current recreation pressure has not caused substantial changes in the forest bird communities within the National Park. We suggest that the abundances of urban exploiter species could be used as indicators to monitor the level and changes of urbanization and recreational pressure at tourist destinations.