Carbon mitigation potential of Indian steel industry

Steel dominates the global metal production accounting for 5 % of increase in Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). Today, India is the 4th largest producer of crude steel in the world. The sector contributes around 3 % to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) but adds 6.2 % to the national greenhouse gas (GHG) load. It accounts for 28.4% of the entire industry sector emissions, which are 23.9% of the country’s total emissions. Being a developing country, India is not obliged to cut its emissions under the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), but gave voluntary commitment to reduce the emission intensity of its GDP by 20–25 % from the 2005 level by 2020. This paper attempts to find out if the Indian steel sector can help the country in fulfilling this commitment. The sector reduced its CO₂ emissions per ton of steel produced by 58% from 1994 to 2007. The study generates six scenarios for future projections which show that the sector can reduce its emission intensity by 12.5 % to 63 %. But going by the conservative estimates, the sector can reduce emission intensity by 30 % to 53 %. However, actual emissions will go up significantly in every case.     

Changing patterns of organochlorine pesticide residues in raw bovine milk from Haryana, India

Bovine milk samples were collected and analyzed during 1992 and 1998 from rural areas of 14 different districts of Haryana state for the presence of HCH and DDT residues. The study revealed that the mean residues of ΣHCH in raw bovine milk have declined by 67.5% while mean levels of ΣDDT have decreased by 92.8% during six years gap. The obtained results reveal that during 1992 p,p'-DDT was the main component followed by p,p'-DDD, α-HCH and β-HCH while in 1998, p,p'-DDE and β-HCH followed by p,p'-DDT were relatively more as compared to other isomers and metabolites of these pesticides.     

A comprehensive multidisciplinary investigation on CO2 capture from diesel engine

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Climate change and global warming are the visible consequences of the increased amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Among the various...     

5-fluorouracil and curcumin with pectin coating as a treatment regimen for titanium dioxide with dimethylhydrazine-induced colon cancer model

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Colorectal cancer was inducted in Wister rats using titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2NPs) and dimethylhydrazine (DMH) and treatment using...     

Chemical and biological extraction of metals present in E waste: A hybrid technology

Management of metal pollution associated with E-waste is widespread across the globe. Currently used techniques for the extraction of metals from E-waste by using either chemical or biological leaching have their own limitations. Chemical leaching is much rapid and efficient but has its own environmental consequences, even the future prospects of associated nanoremediation are also uncertain. Biological leaching on the other hand is comparatively a cost effective technique but at the same moment it is time consuming and the complete recovery of the metal, alone by biological leaching is not possible in most of the cases. The current review addresses the individual issues related to chemical and biological extraction techniques and proposes a hybrid-methodology which incorporates both, along with safer chemicals and compatible microbes for better and efficient extraction of metals from the E-waste.     

Zero-inflated models with application to spatial count data

Count data arises in many contexts. Here our concern is with spatial count data which exhibit an excessive number of zeros. Using the class of zero-inflated count models provides a flexible way to address this problem. Available covariate information suggests formulation of such modeling within a regression framework. We employ zero-inflated Poisson regression models. Spatial association is introduced through suitable random effects yielding a hierarchical model. We propose fitting this model within a Bayesian framework considering issues of posterior propriety, informative prior specification and well-behaved simulation based model fitting. Finally, we illustrate the model fitting with a data set involving counts of isopod nest burrows for 1649 pixels over a portion of the Negev desert in Israel.     

Cytogenetic studies of chromium (III) oxide nanoparticles on Allium cepa root tip cells

The current study evaluates the cytogenetic effects of chromium (III) oxide nanoparticles on the root cells of Allium cepa. The root tip cells of A. cepa were treated with the aqueous dispersions of Cr₂O₃ nanoparticles (NPs) at five different concentrations (0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, and 100 μg/mL) for 4 hr. The colloidal stability of the nanoparticle suspensions during the exposure period were ascertained by particle size analyses. After 4 hr exposure to Cr₂O₃ NPs, a significant decrease in mitotic index (MI) from 35.56% (Control) to 35.26% (0.01 μg/mL), 34.64% (0.1 μg/mL), 32.73% (1 μg/mL), 29.6% (10 μg/mL) and 20.92% (100 μg/mL) was noted. The optical, fluorescence and confocal laser scanning microscopic analyses demonstrated specific chromosomal aberrations such as—chromosome stickiness, chromosome breaks, laggard chromosome, clumped chromosome, multipolar phases, nuclear notch, and nuclear bud at different exposure concentrations. The concentration-dependent internalization/bio-uptake of Cr₂O₃ NPs may have contributed to the enhanced production of anti oxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase to counteract the oxidative stress, which in turn resulted in observed chromosomal aberrations and cytogenetic effects. These results suggest that A. cepa root tip assay can be successfully applied for evaluating environmental risk of Cr₂O₃ NPs over a wide range of concentrations.     

Anthropogenic mercury emission inventory with emission factors and total emission in Korea

Mercury emissions concentrations, emission factors, and the total national emission from major anthropogenic sources in Korea for the year 2007 were estimated. Uncontrolled and controlled mercury emission factors and the total emission from each source types are presented. The annual national mercury emission from major anthropogenic sources for the year 2007, on average was 12.8 ton which ranged from 6.5 to 20.2 ton. Averaged emissions of elemental, oxidized, and particulate mercury were estimated at 8.25 ton, 3.69 ton, and 0.87 ton, respectively. Due to the removal of a major portion of particulate and oxidized mercury species, elemental mercury was dominant in stack emission. About 54.8% of mercury emission was contributed by industrial sources, 45.0% by stationary combustion sources and 0.02% by mobile sources. Thermal power plants, oil refineries, cement kilns and incinerators (municipal, industrial, medical, sewage sludge) were the major mercury emitters, contributing about 26%, 25%, 21% and 20%, respectively to the total mercury emission. Other sources (crematory, pulp and paper manufacturing, nonferrous metals manufacturing, glass manufacturing) contributed about 8% of the total emission. Priority should be given in controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, cement kilns and waste incinerators. More measurements including natural and re-emission sources are to be carried out in the future in order to have a clear scenario of mercury emission from the country and to apply effective control measures.     

A LOW COST DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEM FOR SMALL FARMERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES1

ABSTRACT: In areas where water is scarce, drip irrigation provides the most efficient way to conserve irrigation water, but its cost of £1000 an acre is prohibitive for most small farmers in developing countries. The cost was reduced by 90 percent by (1) making dripper lines moveable, so that each line reaches ten rows instead of one; (2) replacing 25-cent emitters with simple 0.70 mm holes punched by a heated needle; and (3) using £3.00 off-the-shelf 20 liter containers with cloth filters in place of expensive filter systems. This reduced the cost of a half-acre system to £50. The low cost system was field tested in the hill areas of Nepal, and in mulberry cultivation in Andhra Pradesh, India. Uniformity of flow from emitters was 73–84 percent. Small farmers reported that the low cost trickle irrigation system cut labor requirements in half, and doubled the area irrigated by the same amount of water. The low cost drip system is likely to be widely adopted by small farmers in semi-arid and hilly regions.