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Abstract Worldwide the search for new raw materials that are suitable for the production of energy pellets is increasing. Each new raw material undergoes evaluation through various analytical processes and quality assessments before being considered for use as energy pellet. In recent times, the raw materials such as agricultural, forestry, and food waste, as well as the surpluses originating from the agri-food production have become very popular for the production of energy pellets. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of using lignocellulosic raw materials such as chamomile waste, birch sawdust, pea waste, and soybean waste for the production of pellets. In this study, we focused on the production of thermal energy from pellets by assessing the pellets in accordance with the required standards. The results have shown that lignocellulosic raw materials can be used to produce good quality energy pellets. The proportion of individual raw materials determines the individual strength characteristics of pellets and the suitability of pellets to produce thermal energy.

AbstractVineyard pruning is a potential lignocellulosic feedstock for bioethanol production from agricultural woody residues, due to its high sugar content and ready availability in whole Europe. Ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass requires a pretreatment step and then enzymatic hydrolysis process to release sugars for fermentation to ethanol. In this work, alkaline pretreatment with NaOH on vineyard residues was investigated on laboratory scale. The raw material was firstly characterized in order to determine cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin content, using the standard laboratory analytical procedures for biomass analysis provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Then, based on Response Surface Methodology tool (RSM), a Box-Behnken model was chosen to define a design of experiments (DoE) in terms of the three independent variables that influence the process: the NaOH concentration, the reaction time and the temperature of the pretreatment process. According to the design, 15 samples of raw material were submitted to alkaline pretreatment and subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis and the glucose yield from whole process was calculated. The statistical optimization was carried out with Minitab 17 software, in order to determine the best operative pretreatment condition by maximizing the glucose yield from enzymatic hydrolysis.Results show that the best glucose yield was obtained at the highest sodium hydroxide concentration and temperature of the reaction; this condition allowed to achieve very significant glucose yield thanks to lignin removal performed with the pretreatment.

Since the 1970s but with greater intensity in the 1980s, strong, social, economic, and cultural transformations have led to the post-Fordist or post-productivist countryside determining what researchers identify as “rural restructuring” [...]

From the comparison of regulations and/or standards for the organic, conventional and/or integrated citrus production method and a voluntary certification, it emerges that farms certified with voluntary non-regulated certification systems, such as the IFA FV GLOBALG.A.P, are obliged to take into account the highest number of aspects, reported in a more complete register, than the organic ones. Moreover, this is also supported by a continuous-time planned process of revision and updating of the applicable versions of the standard. The environmental impact of the food production, the safety aspects of food products, as well as the health, ethics, and safety aspects of workers, are largely considered and inspected in the GLOBALG.A.P., while the organic system, despite the IFOAM suggestions and indications, is only considered partially. This means that, from a practical point of view, the organic product can be considered “clean and safe”, but not more environmentally friendly than the GLOBALG.A.P. products.

The biotechnological development has traditionally focused on the compliance with regulatory demands rather than optimising the processes or analysing their sustainability. This work proposes the combination of available tools for the comprehensive sustainability assessment of a blue biotechnology process based on the cultivation of the microalgae Haematococcus pluvialis. The work aims to include environmental, economic and social dimensions to measure the sustainability of the production of a carotenoid with potential applications in food, nutraceutical, cosmetics and eventually pharmaceutical industries. Electricity for cultivation was identified as the major contributor to the environmental impacts, which depended significantly on the production scale. Social benefits were mainly related to workers and consumers, while the economic assessment suggested a profitable process with a relatively short period to recover the initial investment.

Abstract It is known how the complete gasification of liquefied natural gas (LNG) can return about 230 kWh/t of energy. Nevertheless out of fifty-one gasification plants in the world, only thirty-one of them are equipped with systems for the partial recovery of the available energy. At the moment most of these plants mainly produce electric energy; however the employment of the cold energy results very interesting, in fact, it can be recovered for agro-food transformation and conservation as well as for some loops in the cold chain. Cold energy at low temperatures requires high amounts of mechanical energy and it unavoidably increases as the required temperature diminishes. Cold energy recovery from LNG gasification would allow considerable energy and economic savings to these applications, as well as environmental benefits due to the reduction of climate-changing gas emissions. The task of this work is to assess the possibility to create around a gasification plant an industrial site for firms working on the transformation and conservation of agro-food products locally grown. The cold energy recovered from gasification would be distributed to those firms through an opportune liquid carbon dioxide network distribution capable of supplying “the cold” to the different facilities. A LNG gasification plant in a highly agricultural zone in Sicily would increase the worth of the agro-food production, lower transformation and conservation costs when compared to the traditional systems and bring economic and environmental benefits to the interested areas.

Supplementing the diet of ruminants with agro-industrial by-products is a common practice. In this study, we applied an untargeted lipidomics approach to study the changes in the milk lipid metabolite profiles linked to the addition of different doses of spent coffee grounds (SCG) to the diet of lactating goats. The carryover of caffeine from feed to milk was also studied. Compared to controls, the milk of goats on the SCG diet showed higher levels of cholesteryl esters, sphingomyelins, and phospholipids, while nonesterified fatty acids were downregulated. After 12 h from the last SCG dose, the carry-over of caffeine was, on average, 3%. Collectively, our results establish that SCG supplementation induces changes in the milk levels of complex lipid molecules and causes the transfer of caffeine and caffeine metabolites from feed to milk.

Globalization has resulted in several technical advancements, including the ability to connect people all over the world and drive the economies with higher agricultural output. With agricultural productivity expanding quickly, the negative impact of globalization on environmental degradation is being disregarded. Rapid agricultural expansion and globalization have resulted in significant increases in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The primary purpose of this research is to assess the role of Pakistan’s massive agriculture industry in encouraging or discouraging CO2 emissions under Globalization scenario. Therefore, we applied Non-linear Autoregressive Distributive Lag Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag model from 1971 to 2021. Our results showed that in presence of globalization, agricultural production shows asymmetries in case of positive and negative shocks. A positive shock in Agricultural production increased the CO2 emissions while negative shock in agricultural production decreased CO2 emissions. Furthermore, GDP, energy consumption and economic globalization have positive association with economic globalization while on the other hand, surprisingly trade and urbanization in the presence of globalization have negative association with CO2 emissions. Environmental deterioration due to greenhouse emissions causes climatic variation in the economy and several mitigation strategies are required on sustainable basis in Pakistan. So, our study recommends that farmers of Pakistan should adopt organic farming this will help to reduce CO2 emissions.