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The requirements for pH buffer addition for hydrogen production and acidogenesis in batch acidogenic digestion of a food waste (FW) feedstock with limited alkalinity was studied at various initial pH conditions (6.0-8.0). The results showed that, without buffer addition, hydrogen production from this feedstock was insignificant regardless of the initial pH. With buffer addition, hydrogen production improved significantly if the initial pH was greater than 6.0. Substantial hydrogen production occurred when the pH at the end of the batch digestion was higher than 5.5. The maximum hydrogen production was found to be 120 mL/g VS added when the initial pH was 6.5 and buffer addition was in the range of 15-20 mmol/g VS. The effect of pH buffering on the formation of volatile fatty acids (acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid) was similar to its effect on hydrogen production. The results of this study clearly indicated shifts in the metabolic pathways with the pH of fermentation. The changes in metabolic pathways impacted upon the dosage of buffer that was required to achieve maximum hydrogen generation.

AbstractAs part of the Barroso Package on Climate Change and Energy, adopted on 23 January 2008, the European Commission proposed an enabling legal framework for carbon capture and geological storage. This paper sets out and explains the approach. The legal framework comprises a Proposal for a Directive on the geological storage of sarbon dioxide (COM(2008)18 final) and explicit recognition of capture, transport and storage of CO2 in the proposal amending Directive 2003/87/EC so as to improve and extend the greenhouse gas emissions allowance trading system of the Community (COM(2008)16 final). The first proposal covers the regulation of the elements of the CCS chain. Capture and transport are regulated using existing legal frameworks, but the proposal lays out a dedicated legal framework for storage. The framework builds on the IPCC 2006 Inventory Guidelines and the OSPAR 2007 risk management framework for CCS, and covers site exploration, selection, permitting, monitoring, reporting, measures in case of leakage, liabilities, financial provisions for any leakage, and access to the transport and storage network. The second proposal provides that capture, transport and storage of CO2 are activities under Annex I of the Emissions Trading Directive, without any free allocation (as they are abatement activities). Emissions captured, transported and safely stored will be considered as not emitted under the ETS, but allowances will have to be surrendered for any leakage. Auctioning revenues from the third phase of the ETS (which proposes full auctioning for the power sector) will provide a potential source of finance for CCS demonstration.

AbstractBiotechnology has many applications in health care, agriculture, industry and the environment. By using renewable raw materials, biotechnology contributes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions and moving away from a petro‐based towards a circular sustainable economy. However, major developments are still needed to make industrial biotechnology an economic alternative to conventional processes for fuels, specialty and/or bulk chemicals production.Process integration is a holistic approach to process design, which emphasizes the unity of the process and considers the interactions between different unit operations from the outset, rather than optimizing them separately. Furthermore, it also involves the substitution of two or more unit operations by one single novel unit capable of achieving the same process goal.Conversely, process systems engineering (PSE) deals with the analysis, design, optimization, operation and control of complex process systems, as well as the development of model‐based methods and tools that allow the systematic development of processes and products across a wide range of systems involving physical and chemical change. Mature tools and applications are available for chemical technology and steps have been taken to apply PSE principles also to bioprocess technology. This perspective paper argues that an interdisciplinary approach is needed towards integrated bio‐processing in order to link basic developments in biosciences with possible industrial applications. PSE can foster the application of existing and the development of new methods and tools for bioprocess integration that could promote the sustainable production of bio‐/chemical products. The inclusion of PSE principles and methods in biochemical engineering curricula and research is essential to achieve such goals. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry

The data presented in this paper are related to the research article "Ammonia recovery from food waste digestate using solar heat-assisted stripping-absorption" [1]. The raw and filtered data are associated to daily monitoring of NH4 concentration of food waste digestate, pH of digestate and absorption solution and temperature of food waste digestate throughout experiments at different conditions. In addition, data of temperature monitoring in different points of solar-heat assisted stripping-absorption device are presented. The data could help further studies aiming to improve this system. The detailed data of these experiments could help to improve the performance and to reduce costs of nitrogen recovery from digestate using stripping-absorption technology.

Water resource management poses a challenge in the process industry because a large amount of water must be used, even when prices increase. Companies struggle to minimize consumption by reusing wastewater, and the resulting water-reuse-network problem has been actively investigated. With the rising impact of global climate change, it is necessary to develop a sustainable methodology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the process industry. This paper proposes a mathematical model for sustainable water reuse networks that explicitly considers CO2 emissions. To construct a sustainable network, emissions due to the construction and operation of the water network and additional water demand due to CO2 capture facilities are incorporated. Actual case studies of steel manufacturing processes and eco-industrial parks are presented to illustrate the applicability of the model.

Fossil fuels are used throughout the world as the main sources of energy, they are present in nature thanks to the accumulation of biomass over millions of years. Although many countries depend largely on exports of oil and its derivatives to maintain their economy, fossil fuels have caused pollution to the environment due to their extraction from the subsoil, causing harmful effects on the human being and the environment as a result of the operations related to their exploitation. This bibliographic review article exposes a series of theoretical and conceptual considerations about the effects of the exploration, exploitation, and production of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, focusing on the negative effects that these activities cause on natural resources in Colombia. and Latin America, in addition to considering different measures to prevent and mitigate the impacts caused.

Abstract The inevitable escalation in economic development have serious implications on energy and environment nexus. The International Energy Outlook 2016 (IEO2016) predicted that the Non Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (non-OECD) countries will lead with 71% rise in energy demand in contrast with only 18% in developed countries from 2012 to 2040. In Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, about 40% of primary energy is consumed for cogeneration based power and desalination plants. The cogeneration based plants are struggling with unfair primary fuel cost apportionment to electricity and desalination. Also, the desalination processes performance evaluated based on derived energy, providing misleading selection of processes. There is a need of (i) appropriate primary fuel cost appointment method for multi-purposed plants and (ii) desalination processes performance evaluation method based on primary energy. As a solution, we proposed exergetic analysis for primary fuel percentage apportionment to all components in the cycle according to the quality of working fluid utilized. The proposed method showed that the gas turbine was under charged by 40%, steam turbine was overcharged by 71% and desalination was overcharged by 350% by conventional energetic apportionment methods. We also proposed a new and most suitable desalination processes performance evaluation method based on primary energy, called universal performance ratio (UPR). Since UPR is based on primary energy, it can be used to evaluate any kind of desalination processes, thermally driven, pressure driven & humidification-dehumidification etc. on common platform. We showed that all desalination processes are operating only at 10–13% of thermodynamic limit (TL) of UPR. For future sustainability, desalination must achieve 25–30% of TL and it is only possible either by hybridization of different processes or by innovative membrane materials.

In 2015 all the United Nations (UN) member states adopted 17 sustainable development goals (UN-SDG) as part of the 2030 Agenda, which is a 15-year plan to meet ambitious targets to eradicate poverty, protect the environment, and improve the quality of life around the world. Although the global community has progressed, the pace of implementation must accelerate to reach the UN-SDG time-line. For this to happen, professionals, institutions, companies, governments and the general public must become cognizant of the challenges that our world faces and the potential technological solutions at hand, including those provided by chemical engineering. Process intensification (PI) is a recent engineering approach with demonstrated potential to significantly improve process efficiency and safety while reducing cost. It offers opportunities for attaining the UN-SDG goals in a cost-effective and timely manner. However, the pedagogical tools to educate undergraduate, graduate students, and professionals active in the field of PI lack clarity and focus. This paper sets out the state-of-the-art, main discussion points and guidelines for enhanced PI teaching, deliberated by experts in PI with either an academic or industrial background, as well as representatives from government and specialists in pedagogy gathered at the Lorentz Center (Leiden, The Netherlands) in June 2019 with the aim of uniting the efforts on education in PI and produce guidelines. In this Part 1, we discuss the societal and industrial needs for an educational strategy in the framework of PI. The terminology and background information on PI, related to educational implementation in industry and academia, are provided as a preamble to Part 2, which presents practical examples that will help educating on Process Intensification.