Infrastructure development through PPPs in India: criteria for sustainability assessment

Public private partnerships (PPPs) allow the Indian Government to leverage private capital for meeting the widening demand-supply gap in the provision of infrastructure services. The private sector, however, prefers to limit the participation to financially attractive projects only, thereby resulting in patterns of infrastructure creation impeding the progress towards sustainable development. In order to promote sustainable development, the PPP procurement process should focus on incentivising the private sector for sustainable infrastructure development rather than concentrating on ensuring financial sustainability only. This paper discusses the principles-based PPP-specific framework that has been developed to facilitate assessment of PPP projects' progress towards sustainable development. The framework development was based on a holistic approach to sustainability assessment and subsequently validated through questionnaire survey with key stakeholders in the Indian PPP programme. This framework will provide the decision makers with appropriate decision aid for integration of sustainable development principles in the PPP procurement process.     

Application of environmental risk assessment for strategic decision-making in coastal areas: case studies in China

Environmental risk assessment (ERA) is a powerful technical tool for analyzing potential and extreme adverse environmental impacts, and has found wide application in supporting decision-making processes over the last two decades. However, to date there has been no interrelated application of ERA to support the processes of strategic decision-making (SDM), especially in coastal areas.

In this paper, we attempt to verify the feasibility of the proposed integrated ERA–SDM approach and its methodology by applying it to two case studies (in Xiamen Bay and Luoyuan Bay) of the principal coastal functional zoning (PCFZ, a kind of SDM and similar to the coastal and marine spatial planning in western). The results show that the integrated ERA–SDM approach could integrate ERA into the entire SDM process, directly support the PCFZ, and avoid or mitigate dire environmental risk that can be introduced by SDM processes.     

Clam shell catalyst for continuous production of biodiesel

Continuous flow transesterification of waste frying oil (WFO) with methanol for the biodiesel production was tested in a laboratory scale jacketed reactive distillation (RD) unit packed with clam shell based CaO as solid catalyst. The physiochemical properties of the clam shell catalysts were characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Energy Dispersive Atomic X-ray Spectrometry (EDAX). The effects of the reactant flow rate, methanol-to-oil ratio, and catalyst bed height were studied to obtain the maximum methyl ester conversion. Reboiler temperature of 65°C was maintained throughout the process for product purification and the system reached the steady state at 7 hr. The experimental results revealed that the jacketed RD system packed with clam shell based CaO showed high catalytic activity for continuous production of biodiesel and a maximum methyl ester conversion of 94.41% was obtained at a reactant flow rate of 0.2 mL/min, methanol/oil ratio of 6:1, and catalyst bed height of 180 mm.     

Optimizing mixture properties of biodiesel production using genetic algorithm-based evolutionary support vector machine

Nowadays, biodiesel is used as one of the alternative renewable energy due to the increasing energy demand. However, optimum production of biodiesel still requires a huge number of expensive and time-consuming laboratory tests. To address the problem, this research develops a novel Genetic Algorithm-based Evolutionary Support Vector Machine (GA-ESIM). The GA-ESIM is an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based tool that combines K-means Chaotic Genetic Algorithm (KCGA) and Evolutionary Support Vector Machine Inference Model (ESIM). The ESIM is utilized as a supervised learning technique to establish a highly accurate prediction model between the input--output of biodiesel mixture properties; and the KCGA is used to perform the simulation to obtain the optimum mixture properties based on the prediction model. A real biodiesel experimental data is provided to validate the GA-ESIM performance. Our simulation results demonstrate that the GA-ESIM establishes a prediction model with better accuracy than other AI-based tool and thus obtains the mixture properties with the biodiesel yield of 99.9%, higher than the best experimental data record, 97.4%.     

固体废物全过程管理中固体废物鉴别研究

对固体废物应进行全过程管理,固体废物鉴别是固体废物全过程管理的基础和关键,包括依据产生来源鉴别和过程鉴别两种方法,依据产生来源鉴别包括丧失原有利用价值的物质、在生产过程中产生的副产物、环境治理和污染控制过程中产生的物质、其他物质四类,在每一类中详细地列举了属于该产生来源的具体固体废物种类名称,便于理解和增强可操作性。过程鉴别包括在固体废物再生利用过程和处置过程中的固体废物鉴别两类,其中在再生利用过程的固体废物鉴别中明确指出了固体废物再生利用产物只有同时满足产品质量标准要求、国家污染控制标准要求以及有实际市场需求、固定用户等条件时,才不作为固体废物管理,在处置过程的固体废物鉴别中具体地列出了处置固体废物全过程中仍然作为固体废物管理的国际惯用处置方式。同时,给出了清晰的"原料—产品—固体废物—处置或产品"全过程中固体废物的产生节点和相应的固体废物类别图,为固体废物鉴别工作提供参考,使固体废物全过程管理有的放矢,有效防止固体废物对环境和人体健康造成的危害。     

Landfill site selection using spatial information technologies and AHP: A case study in Beijing,China

Site selection is an important and necessary issue for waste management in fast-growing regions. Because of the complexity of waste management systems, the selection of the appropriate solid waste landfill site requires consideration of multiple alternative solutions and evaluation criteria. Based on actual conditions of the study area, we considered economic factors, calculated criteria weights using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), and built a hierarchy model for solving the solid waste landfill site-selection problem in Beijing, China. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to manipulate and present spatial data. All maps are graded from 1 (lowest suitability) to 5 (highest suitability) using spatial information technologies. The candidate sites were determined by aggregation based on the criteria weights. The candidate sites are divided by ‘best’, ‘good’ and ‘unsuitable’ landfill areas. Best landfill areas represent optimal sites; good landfill areas can be used as back-up candidate sites. Our work offers a siting methodology and provides essential support for decision-makers in the assessment of waste management problems in Beijing and other rapidly developing cities in developing countries.     

土壤中钙、镁的形态分析及提取序列的研究

本文采用改进的BCR三步连续提取法对河北某食道癌高发地土壤中钙、镁进行了形态分析及提取序列的研究。实验表明：该地区土壤中镁主要以残渣态形式存在（占总量的83.66％-88.36％）,钙则受提取序列的影响很大,在第一提取序列中,以酸溶态为主（74.11％-83.38％）;第二提取序列中,以有机物结合态为主（78.12％-97.17％）;第三、四提取序列中,以氧化物结合态为主（87.49％-103％）。提取剂的加入顺序明显影响到钙的各个形态的真实含量。     

废弃印刷线路板碘化法浸金研究

针对碘化法从废弃印刷线路板中提取金的工艺设计,分别考察了碘的质量分数、n(I₂)/n(I^-)比值、固液比、双氧水的质量分数、pH值、浸出时间和浸出温度对金浸出率的影响。结合正交设计优化实验方法,提出了从废弃印刷线路板中碘化法浸取金的最佳工艺条件：碘的质量分数为1.1％,n(I₂)∶n(I^-)=1∶10,双氧水的质量分数为1.5％,浸出时间4 h,固液比为1∶10,浸出温度为常温（25℃）,溶液pH值为中性,此时金浸出率可达97.5％。     

基于生态安全的DAT-IAT城市污水处理工艺改进研究

通过正交试验,得到了DAT-IAT工艺和A/DAT-IAT工艺处理城市污水的常规指标去除和生态毒理指标削减的最优运行条件。结果表明,在正交试验的同一工艺中,COD去除最优运行条件的出水COD值优于生态毒性削减最优运行条件的出水COD值,但前者出水的生态毒性较大。由于厌氧池的水解酸化作用,A/DAT-IAT工艺对COD和生态毒性的处理效果均优于DAT-IAT工艺,并且回流总能耗低于DAT-IAT工艺,但是出水COD仍不达标。为了降低进入工艺的COD的总量,以絮凝沉淀做为预处理工艺,并采用Al残留量最小的絮凝剂投药量以降低出水中残留Al带来的生态风险。结果表明,在COD去除最优运行条件下,具有絮凝预处理的工艺对COD的去除效果优于没有絮凝预处理的工艺。絮凝-A/DAT-IAT工艺在COD去除最优运行条件下出水COD为104.46 mg/L,满足排放标准。在毒性削减最优运行条件下,具有絮凝预处理的工艺的出水生态毒性有所上升,但是污染物的总量得到了大幅削减。絮凝-A/DAT-IAT工艺与DAT-IAT工艺相比,在污染物去除效率得到大幅增加的同时,生态毒性得到有效控制,生态安全得到了有效的保障。     

微曝气Fenton氧化法处理模拟双酚A废水的效果及其生物验证

研究了微曝气Fenton氧化法关键工艺参数对模拟双酚A（BPA）废水处理效果的影响,并从活性污泥性质和污染物去除率两方面,采用膜生物反应器(membrane bioreactor, MBR)对微曝气Fenton氧化法的处理效果进行了实验验证,为实现BPA废水的生物处理奠定基础。结果表明,初始pH值、反应时间、H₂O₂/COD(质量浓度比)、H₂O₂/Fe²⁺ (摩尔浓度比)、反应温度及曝气量均对预处理效果有较大影响,在最佳条件下,COD去除率可达70%,BOD/COD值则由原废水的0.02提高到0.50以上。MBR处理上述出水的结果表明,经微曝气Fenton氧化处理BPA的废水,可较好地适应后续的生化处理。