Classification of in-flight catering wastes in Egypt air flights and its potential as energy source (chemical approach)

Waste to energy conversion is based on the classification of waste. In-flight catering wastes resulting from Egypt Airlines economy class passengers were classified. The solid waste stream generated contains plastic, paper, left-over waste food and aluminum. The type of meal served varies according to the period of flight and so the quantity and content of the waste stream. It was found that the waste generation rate varied from 61.3 to 265 g according to the meal type. Breakfast snack meal generates the highest weight of waste which recorded an average of 265 g. Plastic waste generated varied from 39.6% to 64.6% by weight for the various types of meals served. A total amount of 725 tons were generated annually from organic waste (paper, plastic and food waste) among which a non combustible 39.4 tons of aluminum. The calorific value for each generated item is calculated and the total energy potential reached up to 14.3 TJ annually.     

A global perspective on the biology,impact and management of Chenopodium album and Chenopodium murale: two troublesome agricultural and environmental weeds

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Chenopodium album and C. murale are cosmopolitan, annual weed species of notable economic importance. Their unique biological features, including high...     

Application of life cycle assessment for hospital solid waste management: A case study

This study was meant to determine environmental aspects of hospital waste management scenarios using a life cycle analysis approach. The survey for this study was conducted at the largest hospital in a major city of Pakistan. The hospital was thoroughly analyzed from November 2014 to January 2015 to quantify its wastes by category. The functional unit of the study was selected as 1 tonne of disposable solid hospital waste. System boundaries included transportation of hospital solid waste and its treatment and disposal by landfilling, incineration, composting, and material recycling methods. These methods were evaluated based on their greenhouse gas emissions. Landfilling and incineration turned out to be the worst final disposal alternatives, whereas composting and material recovery displayed savings in emissions. An integrated system (composting, incineration, and material recycling) was found as the best solution among the evaluated scenarios. This study can be used by policymakers for the formulation of an integrated hospital waste management plan.

Implications: This study deals with environmental aspects of hospital waste management scenarios. It is an increasing area of concern in many developing and resource-constrained countries of the world. The life cycle analysis (LCA) approach is a useful tool for estimation of greenhouse gas emissions from different waste management activities. There is a shortage of information in existing literature regarding LCA of hospital wastes. To the best knowledge of the authors this work is the first attempt at quantifying the environmental footprint of hospital waste in Pakistan.     

Colonized beads as inoculum for marine biodegradability assessment: Application to Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate

An innovative biodegradation test system was developed in order to fill the current gap for cost effective and environmentally relevant tools to assess marine biodegradability. Glass beads were colonized by a biofilm in an open flow-through system of seawater with continuous pre-exposure to Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate (LAS) (20 μg/L). Thereafter, such colonized beads were added as inoculum in different test systems. [¹⁴C]-LAS (5–100 μg/L) was added and primary and ultimate biodegradation were assessed. The bacterial density collected on the beads (10⁹ bact./mL beads) was ca. 3 orders of magnitude higher than the typical seawater content. The LAS mineralization lag phase duration decreased from 55 to < 1 days and the mineralization extent increased from 53 to 90% as the colonized beads volume increased from 10 to 275 mL. This is the first demonstration of marine bacteria's ability to mineralize LAS. On the opposite, less than 13% LAS was mineralized in seawater only. The colonized beads possibly enhanced the probability to encounter the full degraders' consortium in a low volume of seawater (100 mL).     

Field Evaluation of DRAINMOD 5.1 Under a Cold Climate: Simulation of Daily Midspan Water Table Depths and Drain Outflows1

Abstract: The hydrologic performance of DRAINMOD 5.1 was assessed for the southern Quebec region considering freezing/thawing conditions. A tile drained agricultural field in the Pike River watershed was instrumented to measure tile drainage volumes. The model was calibrated using water table depth and subsurface flow data over a two‐year period, while another two‐year dataset served to validate the model. DRAINMOD 5.1 accurately simulated the timing and magnitude of subsurface drainage events. The model also simulated the pattern of water table fluctuations with a good degree of accuracy. The R² between the observed and simulated daily WTD for calibration was >0.78, and that for validation was 0.93. The corresponding coefficients of efficiency (E) were >0.74 and 0.31. The R² and E values for calibration/validation of subsurface flow were 0.73/0.48 and 0.72/0.40, respectively. DRAINMOD simulated monthly subsurface flow quite accurately (E > 0.82 and R² > 0.84). The model precisely simulated daily/monthly drain flow over the entire year, including the winter months. Thus DRAINMOD 5.1 performed well in simulating the hydrology of a cold region.     

Incorporating organizational factors into probabilistic risk assessment of complex socio-technical systems: Principles and theoretical foundations

The current generation of Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA), particularly those for technical systems, does not include an explicit representation of the possible impacts of organization and management on the safety performance of equipment and personnel. There are a number of technical challenges in developing a predictive model of organizational safety performance. There is a need for a widely accepted and theoretically sound set of principles on which models of organizational influences could be developed and validated. As a result of a multidisciplinary effort, this paper explores the feasibility of developing such principles and proposes a set of principles for organizational safety risk analysis. Then, as a realization of the proposed modeling principles, a safety risk framework, named Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA), is developed. SoTeRiA formally integrates the technical system risk models with the social (safety culture and safety climate) and structural (safety practices) aspects of safety prediction models, and provides a theoretical basis for the integration. A systematic view of safety culture and safety climate leaves an important gap in modeling complex system safety risk, and SoTeRiA, describing the relationship between these two concepts, bridges this gap. The framework explicitly recognizes the relationship among constructs at multiple levels of analysis, and extends the PRA framework to include the effects of organizational factors in a more comprehensive and defensible way.     

Heavy metal contamination from mining sites in South Morocco: Monitoring metal content and toxicity of soil runoff and groundwater

The aim of the present work is the assessment of metal toxicity in runoff, in their contaminated soils and in the groundwater sampled from two mining areas in the region of Marrakech using a microbial bioassay MetPLATE™. This bioassay is based on the specific inhibition of the β-galactosidase enzyme of a mutant strain of Escherichia coli, by the metallic pollutants. The stream waters from all sampling stations in the two mines were all very toxic and displayed percent enzyme inhibition exceeding 87% except SWA₄ and SWB₁ stations in mine C. Their high concentrations of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) confirm the acute toxicity shown by MetPLATE. The pH of stream waters from mine B and C varied between 2.1 and 6.2 and was probably responsible for metal mobilization, suggesting a problem of acid mine drainage in these mining areas. The bioassay MetPLATE™ was also applied to mine tailings and to soils contaminated by the acidic waters. The results show that the high toxicity of these soils and tailings was mainly due to the relatively concentration of soluble Zn and Cu. The use of MetPLATE™ in groundwater toxicity testing shows that, most of the samples exhibited low metal toxicity (2.7–45.5% inhibition) except GW3 of the mine B (95.3% inhibition during the wet season and 82.9% inhibition during the dry season). This high toxicity is attributed to the higher than usual concentrations of Cu (189 μg Cu l⁻¹) and Zn (1505 μg Zn l⁻¹). These results show the potential risk of the contamination of different ecosystems situated to the vicinity of these two metalliferous sites. The general trend observed was an increase in metal toxicity measured by the MetPLATE with increasing total and mobile metal concentrations in the studied matrices. Therefore, the MetPLATE bioassay is a reliable and fast bioassay to estimate the metals toxicity in the aquatic and solids samples.     

Comparative study of the sensitivity to cadmium of two populations of Gambusia affinis from two different sites

This study aims to demonstrate the influence of animals' origin on their sensitivity toward heavy metals. For this purpose, we compared LC(50) of cadmium in two populations of Gambusia affinis captured in two geographically isolated environments in the east of Tunisia; Oued El Gsil in the city of Monastir (S2) and Oued Chenini in the region of Gabes (S1). Although physicochemical parameters of the water (pH, dissolved oxygen and salinity) are similar in the two studied sites, cadmium concentrations in water, sediments and fish tissues from S1 are significantly higher (P < 0.01) than those from S2, 48-h and 96-h LC(50) of the (S1) population are significantly higher than those from S2. In the same way, the offspring of the polluted site (S1) population exhibit 48-h and 96-h LC(50) values much higher than those of the reference site (S2) population. These results show that the population of the Gabes region is more resistant to cadmium than that of the Monastir region and that this resistance could have a genetic basis. These results indicate the influence of the origin of animals that has to be taken into account not only in laboratory toxicity tests, but also in field ecotoxicological studies.     

Spatiotemporal changes of landscape pattern in response to deforestation in Northeastern Turkey: a case study in Rize

Recognition and understanding of landscape dynamics as a historical legacy of disturbances are necessary for sustainable management of forest ecosystems. This study analyzes spatial and temporal changes in land use and forest cover patterns in a typical mountain forest area in Rize Forest Enterprise of the Northeastern part of Turkey. The area is investigated by evaluated the temporal changes of spatial structure of forest conditions through spatial analysis of forest cover type maps from 1984 and 2007 using GIS and FRAGSTATS. The quantative evidences presented here showed that there were drastic changes in the temporal and spatial dynamics of land use/forest cover. As an overall change between 1984 and 2007, there was a net decrease of 2.30% in total forested areas. On one hand, productive forest areas decreased 12,506 ha, on the other hand, degraded forest areas increased 14,805 ha. In examining the changes of crown closure and development stages of forest ecosystem during the study period, the forest stand area with medium crown closures increased. Regenerated area increased while the other development stages were left to grow to mature development stages in the period. These results regarding to crown closure and development stage showed that forest quality has increased but total forest areas decreased. This is partially due to out-migration of rural population in Rize and Cayeli towns. In terms of spatial configuration, analysis of the metrics revealed that landscape structure in Study area had changed substantially over the 23-year study period, resulting in fragmentation of the landscape as indicated by the large patch numbers and the smaller mean patch sizes due to heavy timber subtraction, illegal cutting, and uncontrolled stand treatments.