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The presented Solid Fuel Entrained Flow Gasification Database contains complete datasets on individual solid fuels considering the most important physical properties and conversion behavior analysis necessary for the simulation of pressurized high temperature entrained flow gasification. This includes their composition (proximate- and ultimate analysis, XRF of ash at 200, 450, 815 and 1500 °C) as well as physical properties such as original mineral phase composition (XRD), density (true and tap) and particle size distribution. The database also contains data on fuel behavior such as heating values, swelling factors, fragmentation index, slag viscosity, ash melting behavior and ash mineral phase evolution during heat-up and cool-down. Moreover, the database provides model parameters describing their pyrolysis behavior, gasification kinetics including product gas inhibition, thermal deactivation and surface area development. Chars produced and gasified in pressurized high temperature entrained flow reactors like the PiTER (located at the Chair of Energy Systems of the Technical University of Munich) and the KIVAN (operated by the Institute of Energy Process Engineering and Chemical Engineering of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg) were analyzed in thermogravimetric and structural analyzer. Since these reactors are designed for temperatures up to 1800 °C (PiTER) and pressures up to 100 bar (KIVAN), the resulting model parameters are relevant for the simulation of industrial scale applications. In order to validate the applied models for entrained flow gasification kinetics, the database refers to several publications describing the models and experimental setups as well as providing additional experimental data points.

Dynamics of societal material stocks such as buildings and infrastructures and their spatial patterns drive surging resource use and emissions. Building up and maintaining stocks requires large amounts of resources; currently stock-building materials amount to almost 60% of all materials used by humanity. Buildings, infrastructures and machinery shape social practices of production and consumption, thereby creating path dependencies for future resource use. They constitute the physical basis of the spatial organization of most socio-economic activities, for example as mobility networks, urbanization and settlement patterns and various other infrastructures. This dataset features a detailed map of material stocks for the whole of Germany on a 10m grid based on high resolution Earth Observation data (Sentinel-1 + Sentinel-2), crowd-sourced geodata (OSM) and material intensity factors. Temporal extent The map is representative for ca. 2018. Data format Per federal state, the data come in tiles of 30x30km (see shapefile). The projection is EPSG:3035. The images are compressed GeoTiff files (*.tif). There is a mosaic in GDAL Virtual format (*.vrt), which can readily be opened in most Geographic Information Systems. The dataset features area and mass for different street types area and mass for different rail types area and mass for other infrastructure area, volume and mass for different building types Masses are reported as total values, and per material category. Units area in m² height in m volume in m³ mass in t for infrastructure and buildings Further information For further information, please see the publication or contact Helmut Haberl (helmut.haberl@boku.ac.at). A web-visualization of this dataset is available here. Visit our website to learn more about our project MAT_STOCKS - Understanding the Role of Material Stock Patterns for the Transformation to a Sustainable Society. Publication Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Schug, F., Frantz, D., Virág, D., Plutzar, C., Gruhler, K., Lederer, J., Schiller, G. , Fishman, T., Lanau, M., Gattringer, A., Kemper, T., Liu, G., Tanikawa, H., van der Linden, S., Hostert, P. (accepted): High-resolution maps of material stocks in buildings and infrastructures in Austria and Germany. Environmental Science & Technology Funding This research was primarly funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (MAT_STOCKS, grant agreement No 741950). ML and GL acknowledge funding by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (CityWeight, 6111-00555B), ML thanks the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; project Multi-Scale, Circular Economic Potential of Non-Residential Building Scale, EP/S029273/1), JL acknowledges funding by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), project ESR17-067, TF acknowledges the Israel Science Foundation grant no. 2706/19.

Anaerobic digestion is a technology which is used to produce methane from organic solids and energy crops. Especially in recent years, the fermentation of energy crops has become more and more important because of increasing costs for energy and special benefits for renewable energy sources in Germany. Anaerobic bacteria require macro and micro nutrients to grow. Absence of these elements can inhibit the anaerobic process significantly. In particular mono-substrates like maize or certain industrial wastewater often cannot provide all required nutrients. For this reason this research investigates the influence of substrate and trace elements on anaerobic digestion in detail. Different agricultural anaerobic biomasses are analysed with special regard to their trace element content. Based on these results, the influence of three trace elements (iron, cobalt, and nickel) on anaerobic digestion was studied in anaerobic batch tests at different sludge loading rates and for different substrates (maize and acetate). Biogas production was found to be 35% for maize silage and up to 70% higher for acetate with trace element dosage than in the reference reactor.

AbstractMicroalgal biotechnology could generate substantial amounts of biofuels with minimal environmental impact if the economics can be improved by increasing the rate of biomass production. Chlorella kessleri was grown in a small‐scale raceway pond and in flask cultures with the entire volume, 1% (v/v) at any instant, periodically exposed to static magnetic fields to demonstrate increased biomass production and investigate physiological changes, respectively. The growth rate in flasks was maximal at a field strength of 10 mT, increasing from 0.39 ± 0.06 per day for the control to 0.88 ± 0.06 per day. In the raceway pond the 10 mT field increased the growth rate from 0.24 ± 0.03 to 0.45 ± 0.05 per day, final biomass from 0.88 ± 0.11 to 1.56 ± 0.18 g/L per day, and maximum biomass production from 0.11 ± 0.02 to 0.38 ± 0.04 g/L per day. Increased pigment, protein, Ca, and Zn content made the biomass produced with magnetic stimulation nutritionally superior. An increase in oxidative stress was measured indirectly as a decrease in antioxidant capacity from 26 ± 2 to 17 ± 1 µmol antioxidant/g biomass. Net photosynthetic capacity (NPC) and respiratory rate were increased by factors of 2.1 and 3.1, respectively. Loss of NPC enhancement after the removal of magnetic field fit a first‐order model well (R2 = 0.99) with a half‐life of 3.3 days. Transmission electron microscopy showed enlarged chloroplasts and decreased thylakoid order with 10 mT treatment. By increasing daily biomass production about fourfold, 10 mT magnetic field exposure could make algal oil cost competitive with other biodiesel feedstocks. Bioelectromagnetics 33:298–308, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Interest in biomass to produce heat, power, liquid fuels, hydrogen, and value-added chemicals with reduced greenhouse gas emissions is increasing worldwide. Gasification is becoming a promising technology for biomass utilization with a positive environmental impact. This review focuses speci-fically on woody biomass gasification and recent advances in the field. The physical properties, chemical structure, and composition of biomass greatly affect gasification performance, pretreatment, and handling. Primary and secondary catalysts are of key importance to improve the conversion and cracking of tars, and lime-enhanced gasification advantageously combines CO2 capture with gasification. These topics are covered here, including the reaction mechanisms and biomass characterization. Experimental research and industrial experience are investigated to elucidate concepts, processes, and characteristics of woody biomass gasification and to identify challenges.

Biotechnology can greatly improve the efficiency of forest tree breeding for the production of biomass, energy, and materials. However, EU regulations impede the market introduction of genetically modified (GM) trees so their socioeconomic and environmental benefits are not realized. European policy makers should concentrate on a science-based regulatory process.

Reducing methane (CH4) emission from paddy rice production is an important target for many Asian countries in order to comply with their climate policy commitments. National greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory approaches like the Tier-2 approach of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are useful to assess country-scale emissions from the agricultural sector. In paddy rice, alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a promising and well-studied water management technique which, as shown in experimental studies, can effectively reduce CH4 emissions. However, so far little is known about GHG emission rates under AWD when the technique is fully controlled by farmers. This study assesses CH4 and nitrous oxide (N2O) fluxes under continuous flooded (CF) and AWD treatments for seven subsequent seasons on farmers’ fields in a pumped irrigation system in Central Luzon, Philippines. Under AWD management, CH4 emissions were substantially reduced (73% in dry season (DS), 21% in wet season (WS)). In all treatments, CH4 is the major contributor to the total GHG emission and is, thus, identified as the driving force to the global warming potential (GWP). The contribution of N2O emissions to the GWP was higher in CF than in AWD, however, these only offset 15% of the decrease in CH4 emission and, therefore, did not jeopardize the strong reduction in the GWP. The study proves the feasibility of AWD under farmers’ management as well as the intended mitigation effect. Resulting from this study, it is recommended to incentivize dissemination strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of mitigation initiatives. A comparison of single CH4 emissions to calculated emissions with the IPCC Tier-2 inventory approach identified that, although averaged values showed a sufficient degree of accuracy, fluctuations for single measurement points have high variation which limit the use of the method for field-level assessments.