Waste Treatment Activities Research Articles

Recycling waste Nix particles for ultra-high-performance concrete: A practical way towards the sustainability

Research on Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) has demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing various types of industrial and agricultural waste to partially substitute cement or aggregates. Researchers have focused on using waste materials as mineral admixtures to substitute cement in UHPC. However, sand, the main ingredient, constitutes a significant proportion in UHPC, i.e. about 50% of the mass of concrete, thus the use of sand with a high volume can adversely affect natural resources and increase costs. This paper investigates the possibility of using Nix particle waste from ship cleaning to partially or completely substitute quartz sand in UHPC. Experimental results show that Nix particle waste has been cleaned with an average particle size of about 300 µm can be used to produce UHPC with high flowability, compressive strength above 120 MPa, and high chloride ion penetration resistance. Life cycle assessment of concrete mixes reveal that using Nix particles to substitute sand improves the environmental performance of concrete, as shown by a reduction in all six environmental impact assessment indicators. Although the reduction level is not large, only ranging from 0.95 to 6.44% depending on each indicator, it brings socio-economic benefits thanks to utilizing waste, reducing waste treatment activities, and resource efficiency as uses natural sand in large quantities.

RUMPOS: Pembenah Tanah Alternatif Produk Teknik Konversi Sampah Organik Untuk Meningkatkan Performa Tanaman Budidaya

Various organic wastes from the agricultural industry are abundantly available, easily and cheaply to process into soil conditioner that can be applied to improve SOM content. RUMPOS is an organic soil conditioner produced from organic wastes by conversion techniques to improve the performance of cultivated plants. The aim of the activity is to introduce RUMPOS as an alternative soil conditioner in crop cultivation. Application of RUMPOS soil conditioner in the right way and dosage may give benefits in plant cultivation. This activity is expected to inspire the community on the utilization of organic wastes. One of the options is the conversion into soil conditioner, leading to the establishment of ameliorant manufacturing industry to supply the need for soil quality management East Kalimantan. Organic-based ameliorant application is an effective way to prevent the deterioration of soil quality and excessive use of inorganic fertilizers. This activity was carried out in collaboration with the Kelompok Wanita Tani Mekarsari, Mugirejo Village, Sungai Pinang, Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The method used is counseling consisting of presentation of material followed by planting practices and discussions. The result of this activity is in the form of additional knowledge on RUMPOS soil conditioner and its use in the cultivation of vegetables and spice crops. Most of the participants also felt inspired to carry out organic waste treatment activities independently into soil improvement in crop cultivation on their farmland

Carbon reduction of plastic’s circular strategies: tracking the effects along supply chains with waste input–output modeling

Plastic is a material associated with various Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions along the life cycles of different products. Many economies have adopted or planned for strategies to reduce, reuse, and recycle plastic goods and materials. The benefits of reductions in waste generation and GHG emissions need to be evaluated for setting the priority to select policy instruments for managing various plastic materials, products, and wastes. Several studies have made evaluations for the circulation of plastic using different models. However, many models for the circular economy focused on the effect on the macroeconomy rather than the detailed supply chain effects of an individual policy proposal. The reason could be the lack of an environmental assessment model with sufficient clear resolutions in the sectors, waste types, and waste treatments. In addition, the structure of the models limits many studies in modeling the scenarios diverting end-of-life products from waste treatments to recycling and reuse as secondary materials. To bridge this gap, this study adopted the waste input–output analysis methodology and compiled the models of baseline and four scenarios using the material flow and waste stream data of Taiwan with reference to a classification of four kinds of circular intervention from a review paper. We provide the details about the modeling results and settings for diverting plastic to the solid recovered fuel for power generation, closing the loops of plastic bags, extending the life of plastic cabinets and other plastic products, and improving the plastic products supply chain’s resource efficiencies. In the illustration of the results of GHG reductions in the supply chains and waste treatment activities, we present Sankey diagrams, which make the analysis of supply chains more straightforward. The developed method to render the Sankey diagram from the modeling result of an input–output-based model is presented in this article.

Impacts of Heavy Metal Pollution on Ethiopian Agriculture: A Review on the Safety and Quality of Vegetable Crops

Lack of nutritive and consumption of polluted food sources are the main health implications in African countries. Vegetable production is an optional balanced food source easily grown in the urban and rural areas. However, the levels of contaminant heavy metals in cultivated vegetables have not yet been identified. This review scrutinizes the contamination route, sources, health effects, environmental problems, food safety complications, and remedial activities of vegetable production in Ethiopian agriculture. Informal settlement, the rapid rate of urbanization, and the lack of community-based industrial expansion lead to massive increases in toxic heavy metals in ecosystems. They are supplied with food source diets unrestrictedly, mainly for vegetable consumption. Among the assessed metals, Zn (112.7 mg/kg), Cr (47.7 mg/kg), Pb (17.76 mg/kg), and Cd (0.25 mg/kg) existed in vegetables, with the highest concentrations in Ethiopia. They have negative effects on public safety, environmental security, and nutrient levels in horticultural crops. Hence, Ethiopia has no permissible standards for vegetable consumption and hazard analysis, critical control point, or food safety system. Additionally, physical, biological, and natural remedial strategies such as phytoremediation, phytoextraction, phytostabilization, rhizofiltration, bioremediation, and phytovolatilization are not applied to curtail deadly substance contents in Ethiopia. Despite this, some mitigation strategies, such as industrial waste treatment activities, are underway in Ethiopia’s universities and beer and sugar factories. This review found that the use of integrated remedial strategies could help to improve the efficiency of strategies in a sustainable manner, solid safety control for heavy metal management in Ethiopia, and management should begin with local solutions.

Renewable energies in cities: Perspectives for the use of biogas in Brazil

One of the main challenges for the present and future of citiesare new energy sources that allow good efficiency and low environmental impact. In this sense, this study analyzed biogas, an energy source from the decomposition of organic matter. A theoretical essay was carried out from bibliographical research, with the aim of presenting the current scenario of the different perspectives of production and application of biogas in Brazil, in urban and rural areas of the country. The observed results showed that, in rural areas, the input for the production of biogas comes mainly from animal husbandry, and that the form of use is mainly directed towards obtaining thermal energy. In urban areas, practically all biogas production is carried out in sanitary landfills and sewage treatment plants, given the large amount of excess organic matter from the waste treatment activity. However, even though the country has relatively important indices of biogas production and use, it was clear from the theoretical framework analyzed that not only is the amount generated very low for generation potentials in Brazil, but there is also an evident lack of technologies in relation to biodigesters, in addition to a weak legislation to promote Brazilian biogas, which led to the conclusion that biogas production in the country is proceeding at a very slow pace. The study is limited in terms of detailing the barriers observed, and, therefore, it is suggested that future studies seek an in-depth analysis of these barriers.

Greenhouse Gas Inventory Standard for Cities: a Case of Jakarta

This paper presents the results of a study on developing the GHG Emissions Inventory for Cities in Indonesia, in which Jakarta has become a case study. The inventory has measured and disclosed a comprehensive GHG emissions inventory and to total these emissions using an approach that categorizes all emissions into scopes, depending on where they physically occur, i.e., Scope 1 for direct emissions and Scope 2 for indirect emissions. The GHG emission level of Scope 1 is estimated based on the IPCC 2006 (Tier-1/2), while Scope 2 employs national/local emissions factor that refers to the grid-connected emission factor of JAMALI. Based on the latest inventory in 2018, the GHG emissions profile of Jakarta is summarized as follows, i.e., the GHG emissions of Scope 1 is from direct fuels combustion in transport, industry, commercial and residential sectors (33.5%), fuels combustion in two power generations located in Jakarta (13.8%), and the remaining 3.8% is from waste treatment activity. The GHG emission of Scope 2 (48.8%) comes from the use of electricity (supplied by JAMALI-grid) generated outside the boundary of Jakarta. In addition, this study also shows estimates result of local pollutants that are affecting air quality.

MODEL OPTIMASI PENGELOLAAN SAMPAH DI TPA

The increase in waste generation is a major problem especially for urban areas such as Jakarta with insufficient landfill capacity and an inefficient and environmentally sound waste management system. To produce an optimal, integrated and sustainable landfill management strategy, an analysis of the TPST Bantargebang waste management system is then formulated towards optimization of sustainable landfill management in environmental, financial, and social aspects through a system dynamics intervention scenario model of the TPST Bantargebang waste management system. Based on the descriptive analysis carried out on the latest waste management, 3 main issues are known, namely, landfill capacity almost fully occupied, methane gas emissions increment, and the possibility waste pickers integration to increase scavenging productivity. Simulations were carried out with a system dynamics model for the 2018-2023 period with BAU conditions and an intervention scenario with a reduction in landfill waste and a reduction in waste flow. The results of the scenario are: landfill can still be utilized until 2023; methane gas emissions decreased by an average of 23,50%; the increase in the Scavenger Production Ratio to the Landfill Waste Rate reached 134,58%. As a consequence of the intervention and the addition of waste treatment activities in the TPST Bantargebang, the operational cost per ton has increased up to 309,62%. This study concludes that the scenario of incoming waste reduction and existing landfill waste reduction planned by Material Recovery Facility (MRF) construction with scavenger involvement, compost processing efficiency improvement, construction of Waste to Energy (WtE) facilities in the form of incinerator, landfill mining, and reprofiling simultaneously.

Minimizing the Environmental Impact of Industrial Production: Evidence from South Korean Waste Treatment Investment Projects

This research deals with the theoretical and practical issues of investment support activities for industrial waste management in developed countries, based on the example of South Korea. The main goal of this research is the evaluation of waste treatment investment projects and understanding their impact on the development of environmental policies. The problems of forming the sustainable systems for controlling the disposal of industrial wastes are being studied. The authors discuss the practical application of environmental policies and modern technologies of South Korean companies in the field of industrial waste processing. The approaches of waste investment project’s evaluation are applied and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods were discussed for various cases and applications. Using MCDM methods, the authors study the effectiveness of investment projects in waste treatment activities in Korea. The analyses of MCDM methods are implemented in this research to provide some instructions on how to effectively apply these methods in waste treatment investment project analyses. Furthermore, the authors propose a combination of multi-criterial selection and interval preferences to evaluate waste treatment projects. The proposed approach improves the method of calculating economic efficiency based on a one-dimensional criterion and sensitivity analysis. The main results of this research perform the investment impact and risk-analysis on the environmental policies development.

Carbon Footprint of Academic Activities: A Case Study in Diponegoro University

Carbon emissions are a significant cause of climate change. As an effort to reduce emissions in the university environment, carbon footprints at Diponegoro University (Undip) need to be calculated to find out how much campus activity contributes to the emissions produced and analyze scenarios that can be applied in minimizing them. The carbon footprint study at Undip was carried out in 3 scopes according to The Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Scope one covers clean water treatment activities. Scope two covers electricity usage activities, while scope three covers transportation, wastewater, and solid waste treatment activities in the campus environment. Carbon footprint emissions from the three scopes are calculated based on methods from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Emissions calculated are CO2, CH4, and N2O expressed in TonCO2-eq. The carbon footprint resulting from campus activities at Undip is 16, 345.83 TonCO2-eq. The first and second-largest carbon footprint contributors came from electricity and transportation activities with a total carbon footprint of 13, 953.22 TonCO2-eq and 1, 449.99465 TonCO2-eq, respectively. The emission reduction business strategies that can be carried out are through conservation and energy efficiency approaches as well as the use of Campus Buses and increasing the number of green space.

Проблемы реализации эколого-правового механизма ликвидации накопленного вреда, причиненного окружающей среде в результате деятельности по обращению с отходами

Проблемы реализации эколого-правового механизма ликвидации накопленного вреда, причиненного окружающей среде в результате деятельности по обращению с отходами

Primary Suppliers Driving Atmospheric Mercury Emissions through Global Supply Chains

Summary The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which came into force in 2017, aims to control mercury-related risks to human beings and ecosystems by reducing anthropogenic mercury (Hg) emissions. Existing studies have identified direct atmospheric Hg emitters and final consumers causing atmospheric Hg emissions but overlooked primary suppliers driving atmospheric Hg emissions through global supply chains. Here, we identify critical primary suppliers and supply-chain paths for global atmospheric Hg emissions in 2015. Results show that China, Indonesia, and India are major primary suppliers causing global atmospheric Hg emissions. Major sectors and critical supply-chain paths from the supply viewpoint are related to resource extraction and power generation. Findings of this study can support supply-side measures to implement the Minamata Convention on Mercury, such as the optimization of labor and capital input structures and the optimization of product-allocation behaviors to downstream producers.

Contribution-based prioritization of LCI database improvements: the most important unit processes in ecoinvent

Improving the quality and quantity of unit process datasets in Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases affects every LCA they are used in. However, improvements in data quality and quantity are so far rather directed by the external supply of data and situation-driven requirements instead of systematic choices guided by structural dependencies in the data. Overall, the impact of current data updates on the quality of the LCI database remains unclear and maintenance efforts might be ineffective. This article analyzes how a contribution-based prioritization approach can direct LCI update efforts to datasets of key importance. A contribution-based prioritization method has been applied to version 3 of the ecoinvent database. We identified the relevance of unit processes on the basis of their relative contributions throughout each product system with respect to a broad range of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) indicators. A novel ranking algorithm enabled the ranking of unit processes according to their impact on the LCIA results. Finally, we identified the most relevant unit processes for different sectors and geographies. The study shows that a relatively large proportion of the overall database quality is dependent on a small set of key processes. Processes related to electricity generation, waste treatment activities, and energy carrier provision (petroleum and hard coal) consistently cause large environmental impacts on all product systems. Overall, 300 datasets are causing 60% of the environmental impacts across all LCIA indicators, while only 3 datasets are causing 11% of all climate change impacts. In addition, our analysis highlights the presence and importance of central hubs, i.e., sensitive intersections in the database network, whose modification can affect a large proportion of database quality. Our study suggests that contribution-based prioritization offers important insights into the systematic and effective improvement of LCI databases. The presented list of key processes in ecoinvent version 3.1 adds a new perspective to database improvements as it allows the allocation of available resources according to the structural dependencies in the data.

Including an Odor Impact Potential in Life Cycle Assessment of waste treatment plants

Odors occupy a leading position among air quality issues of growing concern. Odors can be emitted from different economic sectors, from industrial to agricultural, including waste treatment activities. Although there are different techniques to determine odor emissions, a standardized indicator has not still been defined to include odor impact into methodological tools such as Life Cycle Assessment. In this sense, some proposals can be found in current literature. Considering these approaches, the present work proposes the Odor Impact Potential, an indicator to be used in Life Cycle Assessment or in waste treatment technologies benchmarking. A simple method is reported to calculate the Odor Impact Potential value from different types of data: chemical analysis of odorants or olfactometric determinations. Data obtained in a previous work for an industrial scale anaerobic digestion plant have been used to present an example of application. Additional Odor Impact Potential calculations from other published data (thermal waste treatment plant and wastewater treatment plant) are also included. The aim of Odor Impact Potential is not to replace parameters such as odor emission rates, odor concentration, or odor emission factors but to use those values to calculate the odor-derived impact in Life Cycle Assessment studies.

Biomonitoring of toxic metals in incinerator workers: A systematic review

Exposure to chemicals released during urban waste disposal and treatment is increasingly regarded as a potential occupational health issue. Indeed, several toxic metals emitted by an incinerator, including As, Be, Cd, Cr, Pb, Mn, Hg, Ni and V, have potentially toxic properties and their exposure, therefore, may be of concern for the health of the workers involved. The levels of exposure should therefore be carefully measured. Environmental monitoring, however, may be unable, alone, to assess true exposure, due to its intrinsic limitations mainly concerning its inability to assess oral and dermal absorption. In these cases biological monitoring may represent a fundamental supplementary tool for the definition of the workers’ true occupational exposure and for the prevention of the related health effects. There is, therefore, an increasing interest in developing and using, in these workers, sensitive and specific biomarkers for health risk assessment, particularly at low or even very low levels of exposure.Despite the large number of original and review articles present in the literature on the biomonitoring of workers exposed to metals, the data on subjects employed in waste treatment activities are scattered and results are sometimes inconsistent. This is the first systematic review, performed according to PRISMA methodology, of the major studies investigating the levels of different toxic metals measured in the main biological matrices (blood, urine, hair) of incinerator workers.The results show that the levels of metals measured in incinerators’ workers are generally low, with some notable exceptions for Cd and Pb. These results, though, can be affected by several confounders related either to non-occupational exposure, including diet, area of residence and others, and/or by a number of methodological limitations, as we found in the reported studies. Future work should focus on an integrated approach, using ideally both biological and environmental monitoring. A particular emphasis should be given to the measurement of the different granulometric fractions of the dust containing metals, i.e. inhalable, thoracic, respirable and ultrafine fractions. Moreover, an accurate description of the work tasks and the characteristics and levels of non-occupational exposure should always be provided.

A probabilistic approach for a cost-benefit analysis of oil spill management under uncertainty: A Bayesian network model for the Gulf of Finland

Large-scale oil accidents can inflict substantial costs to the society, as they typically result in expensive oil combating and waste treatment operations and have negative impacts on recreational and environmental values. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) offers a way to assess the economic efficiency of management measures capable of mitigating the adverse effects. However, the irregular occurrence of spills combined with uncertainties related to the possible effects makes the analysis a challenging task. We develop a probabilistic modeling approach for a CBA of oil spill management and apply it in the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea. The model has a causal structure, and it covers a large number of factors relevant to the realistic description of oil spills, as well as the costs of oil combating operations at open sea, shoreline clean-up, and waste treatment activities. Further, to describe the effects on environmental benefits, we use data from a contingent valuation survey. The results encourage seeking for cost-effective preventive measures, and emphasize the importance of the inclusion of the costs related to waste treatment and environmental values in the analysis. Although the model is developed for a specific area, the methodology is applicable also to other areas facing the risk of oil spills as well as to other fields that need to cope with the challenging combination of low probabilities, high losses and major uncertainties.

Performance measurement for incineration plants using multi-activity network data envelopment analysis: The case of Taiwan

This study proposes the use of multi-activity network data envelopment analysis to appraise how incineration plants in Taiwan perform. Sample data from 2006 is used to examine the trade-offs between efficiency enhancement and pollution abatement. The respective efficiencies of the waste treatment and electricity generation are also assessed in a unified framework. The empirical results indicate that it is more important to improve the efficiency of waste treatment activity than of electricity generation activity in order to enhance the overall performance of Taiwan's incinerators. Since ownership, location and length of operations do not in general affect their performance, any improvement has to come from the careful monitoring of each process of the waste treatment operations. Furthermore, given that the policy in Taiwan has moved away from incineration to recycling, the problem of an over-supply of incinerators may become apparent in the near future. Our results indicate that the availability of capacity size may be an important factor when policy-makers consider whether to close down some existing incinerators.

The carbon budget of California

Abstract The carbon budget of a region can be defined as the sum of annual fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) greenhouse gases (GHGs) into and out of the regional surface coverage area. According to the state government's recent inventory, California's carbon budget is presently dominated by 115 MMTCE per year in fossil fuel emissions of CO2 (>85% of total annual GHG emissions) to meet energy and transportation requirements. Other notable (non-ecosystem) sources of carbon GHG emissions in 2004 were from cement- and lime-making industries (7%), livestock-based agriculture (5%), and waste treatment activities (2%). The NASA-CASA (Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach) simulation model based on satellite observations of monthly vegetation cover (including those from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS) was used to estimate net ecosystem fluxes and vegetation biomass production over the period 1990–2004. California's annual NPP for all ecosystems in the early 2000s (estimated by CASA at 120 MMTCE per year) was roughly equivalent to its annual fossil fuel emission rates for carbon. However, since natural ecosystems can accumulate only a small fraction of this annual NPP total in long-term storage pools, the net ecosystem sink flux for atmospheric carbon across the state was estimated at a maximum rate of about 24 MMTCE per year under favorable precipitation conditions. Under less favorable precipitation conditions, such as those experienced during the early 1990s, ecosystems statewide were estimated to have lost nearly 15 MMTCE per year to the atmosphere. Considering the large amounts of carbon estimated by CASA to be stored in forests, shrublands, and rangelands across the state, the importance of protection of the natural NPP capacity of California ecosystems cannot be overemphasized.

Measuring spatial repercussion effects of regional waste management

The present paper proposes an analytical framework for measuring the spatial pollution repercussion effects of regional waste management. The empirical analysis using the 1995 nine-region waste input–output table reveals that as the regional population size become larger, the intraregional waste treatment level directly and indirectly induced by a person's consumption behaviour tends to be large due to economies of scale. In contrast, we especially find that the indirect household contributions per capita of the Chugoku and Shikoku region were, conversely, about 1.4 times larger than that of the Kanto region, because of the differences in the regional commodity consumption patterns. In comparing the actual economic system in 1995 with the hypothetical complete intraregional waste treatment system, we also find that the latter system increased total waste landfill by 18,103 tonnes, which amounts to 0.03% of the total waste landfill, revealing the location advantage of intermediate inputs for waste treatment activities and regional technological differences.

AN INTERTEMPORAL GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS OF THE WASTE-ECONOMIC SYSTEM

This study examines the intertemporal interaction between economic activities and waste generation /treatment in Hokkaido, Japan. For the objective we construct an intertemporal general equilibrium (ICGE) model incorporating waste generation/treatment. Econcomic agencies included in the model are; industries, households, government, extemal sector, and waste treatment activities. Households determine consumption, leisure, and savings maximizing the integration of present value of utility over time. Then households savings constitute capital investment generating the economic dynamics. Wastes generated by industries and households are disposed of by waste treatment activities inputting, like industries, intermediate goods, capital, and labor. Intertemporal economic effects of charging waste discharge, promotion of recycling etc. are examined by applying the model.

A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS OF THE WASTE-ECONOMIC SYSTEM

This study aims to analyze the interaction between the waste discharge/treatment and the economy of Hokkaido in 1985. So as to implement the objective, we construct a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model internalizing waste generation/treatment activities. The model consists of several economic activities including; industries, households, the government, the external sector, industrial waste self-treatment activites, and waste contract/public treatment activity. Industries generate waste in production, while households discharge waste in consumption. These wastes are cleared by waste treatment activities inputting, like industries, production factors. Effects of charging waste, promoting recycling etc. on the economy including income, prices, welfare level are examined by applying the model.