Although Beijing has carried out municipal solid waste (MSW) source separation since 1996, it has largely been ineffective. In 2012, a “Green House” program was established as a new attempt for central sorting. In this study, the authors used material flow analysis (MFA) and cost benefit analysis (CBA) methods to investigate Green House’s environment and economic feasibility. Results showed that the program did have significant environmental benefits on waste reduction, which reduced the amount of waste by 34%. If the Green House program is implemented in a residential community with wet waste ratio of 66%, the proportion of waste reduction can reach 37%. However, the Green House is now running with a monthly loss of 1982 CNY. This is mainly because most of its benefits come from waste reduction (i.e., 5878 CNY per month), which does not turn a monetary benefit, but is instead distributed to the whole of society as positive environmental externalities. Lack of government involvement, small program scale, and technical/managerial deficiency are three main barriers of the Green House. We, thus, make three recommendations: involve government authority and financial support, expand the program scale to separate 91.4 tons of waste every month, and use more professional equipment/technologies. If the Green House program can successfully adopt these suggestions, 33.8 tons of waste can be reduced monthly, and it would be able to flip the loss into a profit worth 35034 CNY.
This paper discusses the use of substance flow analysis (SFA) as a tool to support quantified research on urban drainage systems. Based on the principle of mass balance, a static substance flow model is established to describe and examine the routes and intensities of water, chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) for a representative hypothetical city (RH city) in China, which is a devised and scaled city using statistical characteristics of urban circumstances at the national level. It is estimated that the annual flux of water, COD, TN and TP through the urban drainage system in 2010 was 55.1 million m3, 16037.3 t, 1649.5 t and 209.7 t, respectively. The effluent of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was identified as the most important pathway for pollutant emissions, which contributed approximately 60% of COD, 65% of TN and 50% of TP to receiving water. During the wastewater treatment process, 1.0 million m3, 7042.5 t, 584.2 t and 161.4 t of the four studied substances had been transmitted into sludge, meanwhile 3813.0 t of COD and 394.0 t of TN were converted and emitted to the atmosphere. Compared with the representative hypothetical city of 2000, urban population and the area of urban built districts had expanded by approximately 90% and 80% respectively during the decade, resulting in a more than threefold increase in the input of substances into the urban drainage system. Thanks to the development of urban drainage systems, the total loads of the city were maintained at a similar level. 相似文献
A simple solvothermal method was used to prepare monodisperse magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles attached onto graphene oxide (GO) sheets as adsorbents to remove tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) from an aqueous solution. These Fe3O4/GO (MGO) nanocomposites were characterized by transmission electron microscopy. The adsorption capacity at different initial pH, contact duration, and temperature were evaluated. The kinetics of adsorption was found to fit the pseudo-second-order model perfectly. The adsorption isotherm well fitted the Langmuir model, and the theoretical maximum of adsorption capacity calculated by the Langmuir model was 27.26 mg?g-1. The adsorption thermodynamics of TBBPA on the MGO nanocomposites was determined at 303 K, 313 K, and 323 K, respectively. The results indicated that the adsorption was spontaneous and endothermic. The MGO nanocomposites were conveniently separated from the media by an external magnetic field within several seconds, and then regenerated in 0.2 M NaOH solution. Thus, the MGO nanocomposites are a promising candidate for TBBPA removal from wastewater. 相似文献