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Progressive urban density affects city centers especially and results in growing congestion, lack of parking spaces, and increasing environmental costs of transportation, causing increased air pollutant emissions and noise. These phenomena reduce the attractiveness of the city and result in a degradation of the quality of life for its residents. In light of these phenomena, there is a clear need for intelligent management of urban space using new technologies that would be complementary to existing intelligent transportation systems. Expanding information resources obtained from mobile cameras will have a positive impact on increasing the efficiency of transportation management and use of limited space in city centers. It will also have an impact on reducing external transport costs and increasing the quality of logistics services provided in the city. The main aim of the paper is to develop a concept of a transport management system in cities using mobile vision systems mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles. The model will concern the cases of lane occupation by freight vehicles and the analysis of parking spaces in the city in order to improve their management. The results of the developed model will contribute to the automation of the parking space management process and increase the efficiency of the use of city parking space resources.

The authors would like to make the following corrections about the published paper [...]

Information technology advancements integrated with the e-commerce supply chain allow participants in the business process to effectively work with large volumes of data and control transactions. To improve the profitability and competitiveness of e-commerce companies, a blockchain solution was incorporated into the global B2B (Business-to-Business) supply chain. This technology simplified the transaction process by providing all participants in the sustainable B2B buying process with the same data about the trade. Overall, the use of blockchain improved the efficiency of logistics and digital documentation which reached 74% and 75%, respectively. The main advantage of using blockchain is that it creates a decentralized database that is secure. In addition, it increases the speed of payment and the reliability and transparency of data transfer. Further research may focus on the use of blockchain in green logistics to improve environmental sustainability in the e-commerce supply chain.

With regard to underground mining, methane is a gas that, on the one hand, poses a threat to the exploitation process and, on the other hand, creates an opportunity for economic development. As a result of coal exploitation, large amounts of coal enter the natural environment mainly through ventilation systems. Since methane is a greenhouse gas, its emission has a significant impact on global warming. Nevertheless, methane is also a high-energy gas that can be utilized as a very valuable energy resource. These different properties of methane prompted an analysis of both the current and the future states of methane emissions from coal seams, taking into account the possibilities of its use. For this reason, the following article presents the results of the study of methane emissions from Polish hard coal mines between 1993–2018 and their forecast until 2025. In order to predict methane emissions, research methodology was developed based on artificial neural networks and selected statistical methods. The multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network was used to make a prognostic model. The aim of the study was to develop a method to predict methane emissions and determine trends in terms of the amount of methane that may enter the natural environment in the coming years and the amount that can be used as a result of the methane drainage process. The methodology developed with the use of neural networks, the conducted research, and the findings constitute a new approach in the scope of both analysis and prediction of methane emissions from hard coal mines. The results obtained confirm that this methodology works well in mining practice and can also be successfully used in other industries to forecast greenhouse gas and other substance emissions.

Nuclear power can replace fossil fuels and will have a decisive impact on the change in the approach to conventional energy. However, nuclear (or radioactive) wastes are produced by the operation of the nuclear reactors should be safely and properly disposed of. This paper assesses the uranium resources and the global state of nuclear power plants and determines the energy mixes in different countries using the most nuclear energy. Furthermore, this paper analysed the nuclear waste management and disposal and the depletion of abiotic resources, and the primary energy sources of a basic production process using electricity mix and nuclear electricity for a basic production (PET bottle manufacturing) process. The life cycle assessment was completed by applying the GaBi 8.0 (version 10.6) software and the CML method. In this study, we limit our discussion to high-level nuclear waste (HLW) and spent nuclear fuel (SNF) waste. We do not consider waste generated from uranium mining and milling, which is usually disposed of in near-surface impoundments close to the mine or the mill. The investigation of waste management methods is limited to European countries. This research work is relevant because determining abiotic resources is important in a life cycle assessment and current literature available on LCA analysis for nuclear powers remains under-developed. These results can guide and compare manufacturing processes involving a nuclear electricity and electricity grid mix input. The results of this research can be used to develop production processes using nuclear energy with lower abiotic depletion impacts. This research work facilitates the industry in making predictions for a production-scale plant using an LCA of production processes with nuclear energy consumption.

This article discusses the problems of exhaust gas emissions in the context of the possibility of their reduction through the use of fuels with hydrogen as an additive or hydrotreatment. These fuels, thanks to their properties, may be a suitable response to more and more demanding restrictions on exhaust emissions. The use of such fuels in reactivity controlled dual fuel engines (RCCI) is currently the most effective way of using them in internal combustion (IC) engines. Low-temperature combustion in this type of engine allows the use of all modern fuels intended for combustion engines with high thermal efficiency. Thermal efficiency higher than in classic engines allows for additional reduction of CO2 emissions. In this work, the research on this subject was compiled, and conclusions were drawn as to further possibilities of popularizing the use of these fuels in a wide spectrum of applications and the prospect of using them on a mass scale.

Biomass is one of the most important sources of renewable energy in the energy industry. It is assumed that by 2050 the global energy deposit could be covered in 33–50% of biomass combustion. As with conventional fuels, the combustion of biomass produces combustion by-products, such as fly ash. Therefore, along with the growing interest in the use of biomass as a source of energy, the production of ash as a combustion by-product increases every year. It is estimated that approximately 476 million tons of ashes per year can be produced from biomass combustion. For example, the calorific value of dry wood mass tends to be between 18.5 MJ × kg−1 and 19.5 MJ × kg−1, while the ash content resulting from thermal treatment of wood is from 0.4 to 3.9% of dry fuel mass. However, biomass ash is a waste that is particularly difficult to characterize due to the large variability of the chemical composition depending on the biomass and combustion technology. In addition, this waste is, on the one hand, a valuable fertilizer component, as it contains significant amounts of nutrients, e.g., calcium (Ca), potassium (K) and microelements, but on the other hand, it may contain toxic compounds harmful to the environment, including heavy metals and substances formed as a result of combustion, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) or volatile organic compounds (VOCs). PAHs and VOCs are formed mainly in the processes of incomplete combustion of coal and wood in low-power boilers, with unstable operating conditions. However, it is important to remember that before the fly ash is used in various industries (e.g., zeolite synthesis, recovery of rare earth metals or plastic production) as an additive to building materials or fertilizers for cultivation, a number of analyses are to be conducted so that the by-products of combustion could be used to allow the by-product of combustion to be used. It is important to conduct tests for the content of heavy metals, chlorides, sulphates, microelements and macroelements, grain and phase composition and organic compounds. If such ash is characterized by low pollution levels, it should be used in agriculture and reclamation of degraded land and not directed to landfills where it loses its valuable properties. The purpose of this review is to present the properties of ashes generated as a result of biomass combustion in Poland and the world, to discuss factors influencing changes in its composition and to present the possibilities of their reuse in the environment and in various branches of industry.

Lithium-ion batteries are currently one of the most important mobile energy storage units for portable electronics such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. Their widespread application leads to the generation of large amounts of waste, so their recycling plays an important role in environmental policy. In this work, the process of leaching with sulfuric acid for the recovery of metals from spent Li-ion batteries in the presence of glutaric acid and hydrogen peroxide as reducing agents is presented. Experimental results indicate that glutaric-acid application improves the leaching performance compared to the use of just hydrogen peroxide under the same conditions. Obtained samples of leaching residues after mixed inorganic-organic leaching were characterized with Scanning Electron Microscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction.