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Tuesday 18 October 2016

Follow-up to previous post_The Biowaste4SP

MORE ON BIOWASTE ENERGY FOR AFRICA_
PARTNERS NAMED FOR MORE INFO

"The Biowaste4SP project focused on biowaste in Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco and South Africa, identifying streams that could be put to better use. It produced a catalogue of residues from agriculture and food production, and looked into ways of transforming these materials into bioethanol, biogas, chemicals, biofertiliser, or food and feed ingredients.

READ MOREBiowaste from EC /europa.eu/research/infocentre/

Enjoy.

Making the most of Africa's biowaste - Information Centre - Research & Innovation - European Commission

Making the most of Africa's biowaste -
from my EU RSS feed on my other pages Converstions... Materials Sci....etc (tweeked) I am sorry to add. But readers, especially my African readers, will find the direct link below


 "Making the most of Africa's biowaste
Cassava peel, sugar cane vinasse and overripe bananas - residues such as these may be known as biowaste, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily wasted. An EU-funded project identified sources and current uses of such materials in five African countries and proposed quick, simple ways of processing them into products with higher added value."

A company name is easy to make "Biowaste African Energy"? Comments welcome.

Cheers and Best wishes.



READ MORE:Making the most of Africa's biowaste - Information Centre - Research & Innovation - European Commission:



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Friday 14 October 2016

Decyphering Eco-terms Blue & Green Water_forget the colours



A picture is worth a thousand words or to cite Napoleon Bonaparte:

 "Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours"
"A good sketch is better than a long speech" 


                                    WATER APPEARS IN TWO FORMS




Voici voila ,but do visit  Professor M.Falkenmark, of Stockholm International Water Institute Stockholm International Water Institute for a well documented and illustrated paper. 

Enjoy.

DO READ MORE...  Water and food LINK to full article:

The Water Perspective by Professor M.Falkenmark, Stockholm International Water Institute (pdf free to download).


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Saturday 17 September 2016

Carbon capture, storage and utilisation technologies: A critical analysis and comparison of their life cycle environmental impacts

Following my previous post I would like to bring readers attention to this paper taken from my RSS feed today 17/09/2016.

"Highlights
27 life cycle assessment studies reviewed of which 11 focus on CCS and 16 on CCU.
CCS reduces the GWP by 63–82% but increases some other life cycle impacts.
The GWP of CCS is significantly lower than that of CCU.
However, other environmental impacts from CCS are higher compared to CCU." 
Read the full review paper 100% FREE LINK






Our best shot at cooling the planet might be right under our feet Ref: Global Dev Professionals Network_The Guardian UK

Our best shot at cooling the planet might be right under our feet.- brought to us by the Global Development Professionals Network.



Global temperature record brocken:

"Every one of the past 14 months has broken the global temperature record. Ice cover in the Arctic sea just hit a new low, at 525,000 square miles less than normal. And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees." quoted from the Guardian.


Global Temperature Targets and how to achieve them

"If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8%–10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050. If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most." 


Quick look


"Maybe our engineers are missing the point. The problem with geo-engineering is that it proceeds from the very same logic that got us into this mess in the first place: one that treats the land as something to be subdued, dominated and consumed. But the solution to climate change won’t be found in the latest schemes to bend our living planet to the will of man. Perhaps instead it lies in something much more down to earth – an ethic of care and healing, starting with the soils on which our existence depends.

Of course, regenerative farming doesn’t offer a permanent solution to the climate crisis; soils can only hold a finite amount of carbon. We still need to get off fossil fuels, and – most importantly – we have to kick our obsession with endless exponential growth and downsize our material economy to bring it back in tune with ecological cycles. But it might buy us some time to get our act together." ref The Guardian
Well known but quickly forgotten. 
"Feeding the world isn’t about higher yields; it’s about fairer distribution. We already grow enough food for 10 billion people. In any case, it can be argued that regenerative farming actually increases crop yields over the long term by enhancing soil fertility and improving resilience against drought and flooding. So as climate change makes farming more difficult, this may be our best bet for food security, too." 


READ MORE? 


1. Our-best-shot-at-cooling-the-planet-might-be-right-under-our-feet? from The Guardian Global Development Professionls Network


REFERENCES brought to us by the Guardian


a) PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Enhanced top soil carbon stocks under organic farming 

read for free at their link above.

Wednesday 8 June 2016

Journal of CO2 Utilization _Open Access Feed added to my Main Header Space. Content thanks to Elsevier

I trust readers will profit from this globally important new open access feed inclusion due to the highly reputable peer reviewed journal Elsevier.

I have just downloaded the following Review Article for addition to my personal library:

"Carbon capture, storage and utilisation technologies: A critical analysis
and comparison of their life cycle environmental impacts. " Rosa M. Cue´ llar-Franca, Adisa Azapagic *, from the highly reputable School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science,  University of Manchester,

I trust readers will enjoy joining me in reading this and related articles and hopefully put into practice sustainable climate frendly projects.

Enjoy,
JA.

Tuesday 19 April 2016

CO2 as a raw material_How to make the most of carbon dioxide free via Nature contents:


On 29 September, the XPRIZE Foundation based in Culver City, California, announced a 4½-year competition that will award US$20 million to the research team that can come up with the best way to turn carbon dioxide from a liability into an asset.

Read  full information, chemical sequence schemas and example of production from Nature News 


29 Oct. 2015






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And from New Scientist's Environment RSS feed on my page_Pollutants found in fish we eat can compromise body’s defences

And I know of at least on PhD here in France, with international study experience in the field of marine biology unable to find work!!!! Now planing to undertake Nursing training!!!! Hardly preventive medcine!!!!
!
No further comment


Risk assessment of radioisotope contamination for aquatic living resources in and around Japan_encouraging figures for sea fish. Full paper on PNAS

Risk assessment of radioisotope contamination for aquatic living resources in and around Japan:



Risk assessment of radioisotope contamination for aquatic living resources in and around Japan

  1. Shinto Eguchib
  1. Edited by David Cox, Nuffield College, Oxford, United Kingdom, and approved January 26, 2016 (received for review October 6, 2015)

Significance

Quantification of contamination risk caused by radioisotopes released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is useful for excluding or reducing groundless rumors about food safety. Our new statistical approach made it possible to evaluate the risk for aquatic food and showed that the present contamination levels of radiocesiums are low overall. However, some freshwater species still have relatively high risks. We also suggest the necessity of refining data collection plans to reduce detection limits in the future, because a small number of precise measurements are more valuable than many measurements that are below detection limits.

Abstract

Food contamination caused by radioisotopes released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is of great public concern. The contamination risk for food items should be estimated depending on the characteristics and geographic environments of each item. However, evaluating current and future risk for food items is generally difficult because of small sample sizes, high detection limits, and insufficient survey periods. We evaluated the risk for aquatic food items exceeding a threshold of the radioactive cesium in each species and location using a statistical model. Here we show that the overall contamination risk for aquatic food items is very low. Some freshwater biota, however, are still highly contaminated, particularly in Fukushima. Highly contaminated fish generally tend to have large body size and high trophic levels.

Footnotes

  • Author contributions: H.O. designed research; H.O. performed research; H.O., S.I., T.M., and S.E. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; H.O. analyzed data; and H.O., S.I., T.M., and S.E. wrote the paper.
  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.
  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
  • See Commentary on page 3720.
  • This article contains supporting information online atwww.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1519792113/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.


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Ecology: Global change and terrestrial plant community dynamics_from the renowned PNAS, (US Academy of Science) Paper freely available.

Global change and terrestrial plant community dynamics


Is I believe, a most welcomed contribution to help adjust to climate change.

Read the full paper below (page foot)  
  1. Helen M. Regand
  1. Contributed by Janet Franklin, February 2, 2016 (sent for review October 8, 2015; reviewed by Gregory P. Asner, Monica G. Turner, and Peter M. Vitousek)

Significance

Global terrestrial vegetation plays a critical role in biogeochemical cycles and provides important ecosystem services. Vegetation has been altered by anthropogenic global change drivers including land-use change, altered disturbance regimes, invasive species, and climate change, for decades to centuries, or in some cases millennia. Vegetation responses to land use and disturbance can be more immediate than to climate change and can be long lasting. The effect of global warming on water balance may have a stronger influence than the direct effects of temperature on vegetation. Models deployed at multiple ecological scales, populations, communities, and landscapes will be required to forecast vegetation responses and feedbacks to accelerated global change.

Abstract

Anthropogenic drivers of global change include rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses and resulting changes in the climate, as well as nitrogen deposition, biotic invasions, altered disturbance regimes, and land-use change. Predicting the effects of global change on terrestrial plant communities is crucial because of the ecosystem services vegetation provides, from climate regulation to forest products. In this paper, we present a framework for detecting vegetation changes and attributing them to global change drivers that incorporates multiple lines of evidence from spatially extensive monitoring networks, distributed experiments, remotely sensed data, and historical records. Based on a literature review, we summarize observed changes and then describe modeling tools that can forecast the impacts of multiple drivers on plant communities in an era of rapid change. Observed responses to changes in temperature, water, nutrients, land use, and disturbance show strong sensitivity of ecosystem productivity and plant population dynamics to water balance and long-lasting effects of disturbance on plant community dynamics. Persistent effects of land-use change and human-altered fire regimes on vegetation can overshadow or interact with climate change impacts. Models forecasting plant community responses to global change incorporate shifting ecological niches, population dynamics, species interactions, spatially explicit disturbance, ecosystem processes, and plant functional responses. Monitoring, experiments, and models evaluating multiple change drivers are needed to detect and predict vegetation changes in response to 21st century global change.

Please do not hesitate to read the full paper via the link below:

Global change and terrestrial plant community dynamics:



And why not join the community of readers of highly credible peer reviewed journal PNAS.(Proceedings of the American Academy of Science)  Link to all subject matter.


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Friday 15 April 2016

Shale Gas Debate-UK widget added to my pages. NB. CO2 sequestration and use as a raw material in innovative materials

The struggle control and reduce  ever increasing CO2 gas (and all major green house gases)  is far from over.

Many thanks to The Insitute, IOM3 -Materials World (MW) prompted by their page,"members letters" in particular to F. Glasser and his team at Aberdeen Uni.,Scotland for their work in the "Extraction of CO2 like Sulphur") and CO2 capture in cement and concrete.

Cf. REF's as follows:

1. F.P. Glasser et al. Sequestering CO2 by Mineralization into Useful Nesquehonite-Based Products.
Iom3.org nanocem-cements-future

2. F.P.Glasser et al. Magnesium based cements for CO2 Capture and Utilisation. Cement and Concrete Research.

Capture and sequestering of CO2 -carbon dioxide-otherwise liberated to the atmosphere, is it appears, a minimum requirement in any shale gas extration project. Better, I guess, is the use of CO2 as a raw material to include in innovative materials products. This would certainly help responsible exploitation of such mineral reserves as Coal and Shale.

 It is also imperative that coal exploitation, coal burning for power generation must be orientated (urgently) in a similar direction ie in the direction of CO2 sequestration and in the CO2 incorporation in materials to provide new and innovative products.

Fredrik Glasser FIMMM, FRSE replies to a IOM3 member's question "Can we capture CO2 like sulphur." His response is brief "YES WE CAN",

"But the the road to market is not straight forward.

"The intense conservatism of the building industry is an important hold point,  so too is the obsession of UK policy with underground storage of liquid CO2 largely to the exclusion of other routes that might deliver positive economic value This policy is neither cheap nor assured and will require massive capital investment investment and ongoing subsidy." [NB. as mentioned Prof Glasser is based in Aberdeen, Scotland the capital (and capital intensive) of UK's fossil energy, North Sea Gas."

 My Comment :Glasser's remarks on policy are of particular importance. Considering CO2 as a raw material in the sustainable economic sense to innovate production of new and improved products and processes could possibly stimulate a more diverse and lively economic playing field as opposed to (or at least complimentary to) the "brushing the dirt under the carpet,  Capturing and sequestration, building prisons approach.

ALSO
Huge reserves are still available and exploited in several nearby countries, eg. Germany and even moreso Poland in our EU. cf . MW on the huge still unexploited Polish coal reserves

But, could Poland have seen the light?


"Prof. Lewiński's group has shown that appropriately designed precursor compounds in reaction with carbon dioxide lead to fabrication of a microporous material (with pore diameters below 2 nm) resulting from self-assembly of luminescent nanoclusters. Novel microporous material, composed of building blocks with zinc carbonate core encapsulated in appropriately designed organic shell (hydroxyquinoline ligands), is highly luminescent, with photoluminescence quantum yield significantly higher than those of classical fluorescent compounds used in state-of-the-art OLEDs."
Ref:
INSTITUTE OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY OF THE POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 


This above is an over simplified introduction to the huge amount of reaseach being undertaken world wide, on "CO2 as a very useful raw material in a mulitude of processes and products" .


Raw Materials demanding Innovations

"The emissions paradox

Compared to other building materials concrete has a low carbon footprint, i.e. it emits less CO2 per tonne. And yet, the enormous volumes used mean that concrete production accounts for about 3 - 8 percent of the man-made CO2 emissions worldwide.

Comparative relative energy and CO2 per construction material

However, given the very large volumes, total emissions are considerable. Because a small reduction in emission can make a real difference, our team of researchers can punch well above their weight and lay the basis for a global reduction of millions of tonnes of CO2 annually." cf Source:nanocem.org/cement-concrete/sustainability-emissions

AND from "The concrete solution, IOM3 Conference News MW June 2015 

 More  facts: 
Standard concrete mix releases up to 79.7kg of CO2 per tonne cf. nanocem value of 0.13 kgCO2/kg concrete. ie. 130kgCO2/tonne roughly 1.6x nanocem's figure. PARADOX indeed must find the reason for this 
By 2020 concrete’s embodied CO2 is estimated to reduce to 71.8kg per tonne of concrete
Certification to responsible sourcing standard BES 6001  has risen to 91%.

Thursday 21 January 2016

LINK: 'Plastics, the environment and human health

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences | Table of Contents — July 27, 2009, 364 (1526): "Theme Issue 'Plastics, the environment and human health' compiled by R. C. Thompson, C. J. Moore, F. S. vom Saal and S. H. Swan"



Repeat :"Theme Issue 'Plastics, the environment and human health'