Nichteuklidische Kinematographie

The Science of Nature -     

Degradation of PCDD, PCDF, PAH, PCB and chlorinated phenols during the destruction-treatment of landfill seepage water in laboratory model reactor (UV, Ozone, and UV/Ozone)

Seepage water of toxic waste landfills is polluted with high concentrations of toxic organic compounds. The concentrations in the seepage water we applied for chlorinated phenols are between 2 μg/1 and 1 mg/l, for PCB between 800 pg/l and 250 ng/l, for PAH between 200 ng/l and 12 μg/l and for PCDD and PCDF between 20 pg/l and 1 ng/l. Usual purification methods produce highly contaminated residues, which have to be treated by pyrolysis or are deposited again at a landfill. A better way is to destruct these contaminants by UV/ozone treatment. The treatment of seepage water by UV-irradiation, ozone and UV/ozone is compared. Results show no significant effect during all treatments for PCB and PCDD/PCDF. The chlorinated phenols and PAH were mostly destroyed by UV/ozone treatment more than 90 %. The pH value has no influence on the UV/ozone treatment of seepage water.     

Multivariate Bayesian analysis of atmosphere–ocean general circulation models

Numerical experiments based on atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) are one of the primary tools in deriving projections for future climate change. Although each AOGCM has the same underlying partial differential equations modeling large scale effects, they have different small scale parameterizations and different discretizations to solve the equations, resulting in different climate projections. This motivates climate projections synthesized from results of several AOGCMs’ output. We combine present day observations, present day and future climate projections in a single highdimensional hierarchical Bayes model. The challenging aspect is the modeling of the spatial processes on the sphere, the number of parameters and the amount of data involved. We pursue a Bayesian hierarchical model that separates the spatial response into a large scale climate change signal and an isotropic process representing small scale variability among AOGCMs. Samples from the posterior distributions are obtained with computer-intensive MCMC simulations. The novelty of our approach is that we use gridded, high resolution data covering the entire sphere within a spatial hierarchical framework. The primary data source is provided by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and consists of 9 AOGCMs on a 2.8 by 2.8 degree grid under several different emission scenarios. In this article we consider mean seasonal surface temperature and precipitation as climate variables. Extensions to our model are also discussed.     

The organic geochemistry of a sanitary landfill leachate plume

Leachate from the North Bay municipal landfill has contaminated an unconfined, sandy aquifer throughout the 700 m flow system from the site to a discharge zone at a creek. The major organic contaminants identified are aromatic hydrocarbons, especially substituted benzenes. The high groundwater velocity of about 75 m yr⁻¹ and the low organic sorption properties of the sand have permitted non-transformed contaminants to spread throughout the total flow system. There is considerable temporal and spatial variability in groundwater chemistry.Most of the aqueous organic carbon has a nominal molecular weight of <2000 and the general decrease in the mass of this fraction relative to Cl indicates it is being mineralized significantly during transport. IR spectra indicate a general trend of increased aromaticity and decreased OH content of organic matter along the flow system. The aqueous organic matter has a significant apparent complexing capacity and so it is somewhat surprising that toxic metal concentrations in leachate-impacted groundwaters are low. In the leachate plume, this complexing capacity is taken up by major cations and H⁺ and to a far lesser extent by toxic metals such as Pb, Cd or Zn.Dispersion is clearly responsible for considerable decrease in contaminant concentration along the flow system. Biotransformation under strictly anaerobic conditions has probably caused 1,1,1-trichloroethane and trichloroethylene to be restricted to the immediate vicinity of the landfill. A simple method of comparing the concentrations of pairs of organics at points along the flow system provides relative transformation rates for pairs of organics even with variable inputs from the landfill and dispersive dilution. Relative to ethylbenzene, o-xylene is rapidly lost from this system. O-xylene may be less persistent than m- or p-xylene; a result unexpected from previous studies of these dimethylbenzenes. In the initial, strictly anarobic segment of the flow system 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene are equally persistent, but in the final, less anaerobic segment, the former appears to be degraded more rapidly than the latter.Contaminant distributions in aquifers reflect the results of a number of processes integrated in a complex manner and so are difficult to interpret in terms of specific processes. However, they do provide evidence for what processes are most significant in real groundwater systems and they will also provide critical tests of how well laboratory-derived information relates to real groundwater contamination situations.