Understanding the Causes of Spills From the Supply and Handling of Chemicals at Resource Construction Sites: A Case Study

An intermediate bulk container (IBC) was punctured during its handling, releasing a refined oil product onto land at a large construction site in an environmentally sensitive region of Australia. Understanding and controlling the risks from fuel, oil, and chemical spills on the current project was of critical importance as part of the project's overall approval, and ongoing compliance depended on the project committing to minimizing all chemical and petroleum hydrocarbon spills on the site. The telehandler (forklift) did not pierce the plastic of the IBC directly (as was expected to be the case) but rather one of the tynes caught on the underside of the metal base plate (pallet belly plate), despite numerous controls being in place at the time of spill (to limit the risks of damaging the IBC), revealing a previously unreported mechanism for a fluid spill from handling of petroleum hydrocarbons and related chemicals. The investigation team used a root cause analysis (RCA) technique, based on the fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram, which was undertaken with 12 expert contributors (from the project) to identify the underlying cause: The inspection process was inadequate. This study is a companion to the article published in Winter 2014 in Remediation (Guerin, 2014) covering multiple causes of spills from plant and equipment commonly used on construction and remediation projects. ©2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Biogeochemical consequences of a changing Arctic shelf seafloor ecosystem

Unprecedented and dramatic transformations are occurring in the Arctic in response to climate change, but academic, public, and political discourse has disproportionately focussed on the most visible and direct aspects of change, including sea ice melt, permafrost thaw, the fate of charismatic megafauna, and the expansion of fisheries. Such narratives disregard the importance of less visible and indirect processes and, in particular, miss the substantive contribution of the shelf seafloor in regulating nutrients and sequestering carbon. Here, we summarise the biogeochemical functioning of the Arctic shelf seafloor before considering how climate change and regional adjustments to human activities may alter its biogeochemical and ecological dynamics, including ecosystem function, carbon burial, or nutrient recycling. We highlight the importance of the Arctic benthic system in mitigating climatic and anthropogenic change and, with a focus on the Barents Sea, offer some observations and our perspectives on future management and policy.     

Pilot project of mechanical-biological treatment of waste in Brazil

By mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) of residual municipal solid waste the behaviour of landfills can be significantly improved. After MBT the organic content (COD and BOD5), total organic carbon, and total nitrogen in the leachate, as well as the gas production rate, are reduced to values lower than 90% of the fresh untreated waste. The volume of the stabilized material to be disposed on landfills decreases enormously, by up to 70%. The monitoring effort for a landfill constructed under these conditions is reduced to a minimum and the stabilized material can be used in other ways, as material for reforestation, for cover material or for thermal utilization to produce energy. Environmental conditions are important in MBT, as well as waste characteristics. This paper describes the results of a pilot project of MBT performed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The results have shown that this technology can be used successfully in developing countries, with economy for the society and important results for the environment.     

Influence of dairy manure addition on the biological and thermal kinetics of composting of greenhouse tomato plant residues

A laboratory-scale bioreactor was used to investigate the influence of dairy manure addition (as an inoculum and a carbon source) on the biological and thermal kinetics of the composting process of tomato plant residues-wood shavings mixture. Urea was added (as a nitrogen source) to correct the initial C:N ratio to 30:1 and the initial moisture content was also adjusted to 60%. The result of this study indicated that manure addition to the tomato residues-wood shavings mixture is a good source of macro and micronutrients required for supporting the composting microorganisms. Manure addition increased the rate of temperature increase and the duration of maximum temperature and reduced the lag and the peak time, all of which resulted in a significant reduction in the retention time. However, thermophilic temperature (> or = 40 degrees Celsius) was only achieved with 30%, 40% and 50% manure addition for 3, 7 and 9h. Total carbon reductions were in the range of 9.4-10.8% and TKN reductions were in the range of 3.4-6.0%. Neither the nitrogen nor the moisture content were limiting factors as the C:N ratio remained in the range of 26:1 to 28:1 and the moisture content remained within the optimum range of 58-61%. The maximum temperature of each mixture correlated with the reduction of total carbon, but carbon availability was a limiting factor in these experiments. In order to attain and sustain a thermophilic phase during the composting process, the addition of a readily available carbon source to the tomato should be investigated and carbon type (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) should be taken into account.     

Persistence of fermentative process to phenolic toxicity in groundwater

The fermentation process is an important component in the biodegradation of organic compounds in natural and contaminated systems. Comparing with terminal electron-accepting processes (TEAPs), however, research on fermentation processes has to some extent been ignored in the past decades, particularly on the persistence of fermentation process in the presence of toxic organic pollutants. Both field and laboratory studies, presented here, showed that microbial processes in a groundwater-based system exhibited a differential inhibitory response to toxicity of phenolic compounds from coal tar distillation, thus resulting in the accumulation of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and hydrogen. This indicated that fermentation processes could be more resistant to phenol toxicity than the subsequent TEAPs such as methanogenesis and sulfate reduction, thus providing us with more options for enhancing bioremediation processes.     

Recycling of an industrial sludge and marine clay as light-weight aggregates

The geographical limitations of Singapore, its restricted natural resources and voluminous municipal and industrial waste streams, make environmental management a major challenge for the island state. In an attempt to find ways to reduce importation of raw materials and the waste sent to landfill, light weight aggregates were produced from marine clay and a CaF(2)-rich semiconductor industry sludge. Aggregates were produced in a bench-scale rotary kiln with three clay/sludge loadings (90/10, 70/30 and 50/50%). All three mixtures showed good bloating behavior during firing and the ceramic pellets (1-1.5cm diameter) had densities well below that required for light-weight aggregates. In the initial tests, the pore sizes of the aggregates were in general too large resulting in high water absorption. Comparisons between the composition of the two waste products and the aggregates showed a significant loss of fluorine (40-60%) during processing; a problem which may require flue gas treatment. Leach testing showed that the formed aggregates would not pose a human or environmental hazard in terms of fluorine mobilization.     

Backwater Confluences of the Ohio River: Organic and Inorganic Fingerprints Explain Sediment Dynamics in Wetlands and Marinas

In the Ohio River (OR), backwater confluence sedimentation dynamics are understudied, however, these river features are expected to be influential on the system’s ecological and economic function when integrated along the river’s length. In the following paper, we test the efficacy of organic and inorganic tracers for sediment fingerprinting in backwater confluences; we use fingerprinting results to evidence sediment dynamics controlling deposition patterns in confluences used for wetland and marina functions; and we quantify the spatial extent of tributary drainages with wetland and marina features in OR confluences. Both organic and inorganic tracers statistically differentiate sediment from stream and river end‐members. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes produce greater uncertainty in fingerprinting results than inorganic elemental tracers. Uncertainty analysis of the nonconservative tracer term in the organic matter fingerprinting application estimates an apparent enrichment of the carbon stable isotopes during instream residence, and the nonconservativeness is quantified with a statistical approach unique to the fingerprinting literature. Wetland and marina features in OR confluences impact 42% and 11% of tributary drainage areas, respectively. Sediment dynamics show wetland and marina confluences experience deposition from river backwaters with longitudinally linear and nonlinear patterns, respectively, from sediment sources.