WASTE MANAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

Waste management is emerging as a key sector for sustainable development in South Africa with opportunities for enhancing investments in carbon credits that target reduction of methane from landfills and moveable assets in relation to environmentally sound equipment required for effective waste management. In the past, the waste management sector was dominated by private sector with selective operations in what makes business sense through recycling of saleable products. Materials mostly recycled included paper and hard board, plastics, glass, tinplate and aluminum. The rest of the waste materials estimated at 10.2 million tons of both general and hazardous end up in landfills. This trend is now getting reversed as development agencies such as Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit Gmbh (GTZ), Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), Danish Co-operation for Environment and Development (DANCED) and Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) are identifying opportunities in the sector for sustainable development purposes. Two key areas for investments include capturing methane emissions from landfills for trading in carbon markets and financing both physical and moveable assets to enhance sustainable development. However, the challenges for cost-effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability in the sector prevail in relation to lack of sound knowledge to design and implement integrated programmes that incorporate environment, development and sustainability. Also, inadequate capacity at municipal levels to administer waste management programmes and inability to collect rates and taxes for effective management of landfills constraint effectiveness and efficiency of the sector. Overall, financial resources are imperative to waste management and sustainable development as the sector requires capital investments for necessary infrastructure.     

发展资源再生产业是中国资源战略的一场革命

中国已经成为资源消耗大国，实施再生型资源战略，发展循环经济是我国的必然选择。资源再生产业与“循环经济”取代“线性经济”、经济全球化形成“国际大分工”和“国际大循环”的发展趋势同步，是解决资源和环境问题的根本出路。资源再生产业是一座“富矿”，没有“资源再生”就没有中国的“环境保护”。中国资源再生产业的发展为什么步履艰难？它和进口渠道不畅。国民对资源短缺认识不足、传统的“线性思维方式”的影响，来自国内外“利益集团”的阻力，以及政策不刭位等因素密切相关。因此，提出中国发展资源再生产业的对策和建议：①在经济相对滞后、交通便利的地区建立“资源再生加工区”；②建立畅通的全球物质回收“绿色通道”；③建立“国际再生资源交易市场”；④成立“国际资源再生促进会”；⑤改变“线性经济”背景下的传统观念。     

Homophily and Agency: Creating Effective Sustainable Development Networks

Community networks are self-organized groupings that form for many different reasons. Some networks, connected mainly through bonding ties, are based on personal interests and relationships; others, based mainly on bridging ties, centre around broader interests. These networks form to create collective agency for engaging with social, environmental, and other issues through the concentration of social capital. The multi-scaled and evolutionary nature of sustainable development issues requires that community groups dedicated to engaging with such issues be particularly diverse, resilient, and flexible. As such, they must build a large number of bridging ties leading to external resources and limit the potential for bonding ties to impose constraining norms upon the group. Over time, however, volunteer groups tend towards a state of homophily, the tendency of groups to form from similar actors and then become more similar with time. This tendency leads to a decrease in the number of the bridging ties that help to provide group agency. Homophily must be actively recognized within community sustainable development groups if they are to remain effective over the long term. This paper suggests methods to prevent and control group homophily drawn from experience in forming small, time-limited sustainable development networks. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue     

Field‐Scale Application of Three Types of Neural Networks to Predict Ground‐Water Levels1

Abstract: In this paper, a field‐scale applicability of three forms of artificial neural network algorithms in forecasting short‐term ground‐water levels at specific control points is presented. These algorithms are the feed‐forward back propagation (FFBP), radial basis networks (RBN), and generalized regression networks (GRN). Ground‐water level predictions from these algorithms are in turn to be used in an Optimized Regional Operations Plan that prescribes scheduled wellfield production for the coming four weeks. These models are up against each other for their accuracy of ground‐water level predictions on lead times ranging from a week to four weeks, ease of implementation, and execution times (mainly training time). In total, 208 networks of each of the three algorithms were developed for the study. It is shown that although learning algorithms have emerged as a viable solution at field scale much larger than previously studied, no single algorithm performs consistently better than others on all the criteria. On average, FFBP networks are 20 and 26%, respectively, more accurate than RBN and GRN in forecasting one week ahead water levels and this advantage drops to 5 and 9% accuracy in forecasting four weeks ahead water levels, whereas GRN posted a training time that is only 5% of the training time taken by that of FFBP networks. This may suggest that in field‐scale applications one may have to trade between the type of algorithm to be used and the degree to which a given objective is honored.     

水处理技术发展对电力工业水循环利用的经济性影响

讨论了一些为提高生产力和降低成本而发展起来的废水零排放或水回收循环利用前沿技术,并将这些技术的经济性与原有的水循环利用系统进行比较.     

Analysis of Products Generated from the Thermal and Catalytic Degradation of Pure and Waste Polyolefins using Py-GC/MS

The possibility of transforming waste plastics into valuable hydrocarbons via catalytic cracking and reforming is attracting increasing interest. Pyrolysis coupled with Gas Chromatographic separation and Mass Spectrometry detection (Py-GC/MS) has been used in this work to study the product selectivity of various catalysts in the conversion of pure and residual polyethylene samples into hydrocarbon products. Five acid solids of comparable aluminium contents but different textural and acid properties were tested as catalysts, including three zeolites (standard ZSM-5, nanocrystalline n-ZSM-5 and Beta) and two mesostructured solids (Al-MCM-41 and Al-SBA-15). Thermal cracking of the pure and residual polymers generated a similar range of products to each other, with a high proportion of linear paraffins and olefins of varying lengths. The presence of zeolitic materials resulted in complete elimination of heavy linear products, an increase in the light hydrocarbon fraction and a marked selectivity towards the formation of single-ring aromatic species, particularly benzene, toluene and xylene. Aromatic formation was particularly notable with the small crystal size n-ZSM-5 (aromatic selectivity up to 53.9%) and less marked in the case of standard ZSM-5 (up to 36.4%) and Beta zeolite (up to 35.0%). Mesostructured catalysts like Al-MCM-41 and Al-SBA-15 favoured the production of light C₂–C₅ hydrocarbons (up to 57.9%) while the formation of aromatic products was significantly lower than with zeolitic materials. The paper examines the extent and the causes for this product selectivity and discusses its connection with the acid and textural properties of each catalyst. It was also observed that, under the experimental conditions employed, the products generated were not significantly affected by the nature and origin of the polymers employed.     

基于贝叶斯网络的人因可靠性评价

提出一种贝叶斯网络的人因可靠性评价(HRABN)方法,其中的每个因子对应于贝叶斯网络中的节点,该方法可对人因可靠性作定量分析和定性分析。在定性分析上,节点的因果关系(HRA中的因子关系)及需要改进的薄弱节点都直观地显示在层次图中;在定量分析方面,对节点因子后验概率的推断通过HRA中的先验信息(包含仿真数据、现场操作及专家知识等)和最新信息得到。如果人因可靠性贝叶斯网络中的每个节点的先验概率分布和后验概率分布都已知,模型的可信性就可通过贝叶斯因子进行定量验证。贝叶斯网络扩展性好,当有新的节点因子需要考虑时,只需要补充对应的节点;笔者的方法也能很好地应用在不同行业的HRA。     

Effect of Decalin Solvent on the Thermal Degradation of HDPE

The thermal cracking of HDPE in presence of different amounts of decalin was studied and compared with the reaction carried out in the absence of solvent. The decalin favours the mass and heat transfer during the reaction. In addition, it modifies the thermal degradation mechanism, which facilitates the formation of specific products. The use of decalin substantially increases the C₅–C₃₂ yield in comparison with the solventless reaction. In all cases, linear hydrocarbons such as n-paraffins, α-olefins and α,ω-dienes were detected. Increasing the decalin/plastic ratio led to enhanced α-olefin and n-paraffins yields, but the increase was more significant in the case of α-olefins, which are valuable compounds useful as raw chemicals. A reaction mechanism was proposed to explain the results obtained in presence of decalin. In these reactions, intramolecular radical transfer, secondary radical β-scission and hydrogen transfer from both decalin to intermediate radicals and from the polymer chain to regenerate the decalin play a significant role in determining the plastic conversion and the relative amounts of each product.     

Improvement of Waste Recycling in PET Fiber Production

Production of polyethylene teraphtalate (PET) fiber in the world is increasing every year and reached to an amount of about 20 million tons a year in 2001. The wastes occur in the production of PET fiber in the amount of about 3–5% of total production. The PET does not degrade for a long time in nature. Since PET is a derivative of petroleum, the wastes of PET are valuable and must be recycled. One of the recycling method of PET wastes is re-melting. Thus, various properties of the PET wastes were improved using the re-melting method by employing an extruder manufactured for the work. Degradation during re-melting decreases the properties of the final product. The results indicate that the properties of recycled PET wastes can be monitored by designing the parameters of the extruder. Also, the further degradation of the material can be prevented and the recycling costs are minimized.     

世界废弃印刷电路板的机械处理技术现状

电子废弃物中废印刷电路板的处置 ,一直是相当复杂的问题。根据废电路板中各种组分的结合方式 ,采用机械方法进行材料的分离 ,是经济适用并与环境相协调的处理手段。本文介绍了废电路板再利用技术中采用的各种机械设备 ,并总结了国外机械处置方法的实践进展。