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Online-measurement systems for agricultural and industrial AD plants – A review and practice test
(2014)
Online-measurement systems for AD plants in general are crucial to allow for detailed and comprehensive process monitoring and provide a basis for the development and practical application of process optimisation and control strategies.
Nevertheless, the online measurement of key process variables such as Volatile Fatty Acids (VFA) and Total Alkalinity (TA) has proven to be difficult due to extreme process conditions. High Total Solids (TS) concentrations and extraneous material often damage the sensors or have a strong negative impact on measurement quality and long-term behaviour.
Consequently, there is a need for new robust and accurate online-measurement systems.
The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of existing online-measurement systems, to present the current state of research and to show the results of practice tests at an agricultural and industrial AD plant. It becomes obvious that a broad variety of measurement solutions have been developed over the past few years, but that the main problem is the upscaling from lab-scale to practical application at full-scale AD plants. Results from the practice tests show that an online-measurement of pH, ORP, TS is possible.
Circular economy (CE) has received considerable interest in recent years as a strategy to resolve some of our modern urban resource challenges, and circular city models often incorporate systems of urban agriculture in their design. Much work has analyzed the benefits of urban agriculture for creating a resilient food system and as a strategy for supporting urban green space and social cohesion, however, the contributions from business models that operate within urban agriculture have not been thoroughly studied. Many urban agriculture businesses often claim high levels of resource recycling and material circularity, though whether a resource efficiency throughout the entire product lifetime (including energy and material footprint for the cultivation equipment) in comparison to current industrial strategies is truly feasible or even possible is still to be debated. This thesis builds upon work that incorporates social dimensions of CE definitions and begins to research whether the potential resource efficiency contradiction can be justified as to make urban agriculture a valid approach for circular city design. This study examined an urban mushroom farm that implements a circular business model. A qualitative summary of the business operations and resource flows were unpacked and sorted into 24 socio-economic contributions based on their interpreted relevance. The interpreted data shows that an urban agriculture business model can contribute to the building blocks of a CE through economic, ecological, social, and spatial contributions. While these contributions can contribute positively to the operationalization of CE, potential trade-offs regarding resource efficiency, use of urban space, and investment priorities need to be considered and addressed to avoid a possible watering down or greenwashing of the CE concept.
Carbon Sequestration under different land uses and soils in the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico
(2017)
Rising in global temperature is evidently related to atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) concentrations; this has become an environmental problem. The use of renewable energy, the development of eco-friendly merchandise and the enforcement of biomass management have been proposed to mitigate the issue. In the ecosphere, the pedosphere stores 1,500 to 2,500 PgC, which is four times more than the carbon stored in biomass; hence, it is very important to carry out soil carbon studies because of more long-term stability of such storage. In the study, soil carbon quantification was applied to the entire state of Quintana Roo, using a purpose oriented sampling, to observe the dynamic between land uses and soils, relating all relevant characteristics and properties of the landscape. To study the carbon content stored in soils, total carbon was estimated through loss-on-ignition, organic carbon by Walkley-Black method and inorganic carbon by calcium carbonate determination. The result portrays that the coastal dune vegetation-Arenosol (1,256 Mg C ha-1) is the combination with the highest soil carbon density, while Leptosol is the soil type with the highest storage capacity (852 MtC). Consequently, the soil carbon storage not only relates to soil properties but also associates with the surface area occupied by the specific soil type. In addition, the characteristics of the landscape play an important role in the storage of soil carbon. Due to that, soil carbon storage can be explained by biogeomorphoedaphic factors.
Die Regelung heutiger, industriell genutzter Biomasse-Feuerungsanlagen erfolgt meistens über fest eingestellte Parameter. Bei Veränderungen des Brennstoffs dienen visuelle Beobachtungen der Mitarbeiter als Basis der Neueinstellung dieser Parameter. Das Ziel der Forschung besteht in der Optimierung solcher Regelungen durch den Einsatz von Kamerasystemen in Kombination mit einer automatisierten Regelung, die auf Basis von Flammenbild-Analysen funktioniert. Ein solches System wäre auch unabhängig von der Art des Brennstoffs.
Human civilization has a great history of managing Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) services. But such services in rural areas have been neglected throughout our history. Numerous multimillion dollars WaSH interventions have been implemented in rural areas to eradicate open defecation, but most of them failed to create a demand for sanitation. Lack of equity and fair participation in approaches to change behavior and mindset, rather than habits, has made it hard for governments to achieve their WaSH related targets. Participatory rural sanitation approaches that focus on behavior change and ownership building among the community members have helped in the transition to open defecation free (ODF) societies. A justice-focused sanitation approach shows potential in fast-tracking this transition. Just transition is a concept that has not been endured in the sanitation discussion yet but shows the potential of sustainable WaSH solutions. This social empirical research has explored the feasibility of a justice-based sanitation approach guiding a transition towards societies with universal access to sanitation services. A just sanitation transition framework was adapted from the considered theoretical foundations and was used to map the capability and justice dimensions of two rural sanitation approaches being implemented in schools in the Mukuyu community in Trans-Nzoia county, Kenya. The adapted framework has been able to compute both sanitation approaches on a scoring tool, quantitatively assessing the productivity and justice dimensions of both approaches. This research has helped in establishing the viability of a just sanitation transition framework to produce an informed understanding of the potential of rural sanitation approaches to produce desired results while being just. Study findings help in filling research gaps and laying the foundation to the just transition debate in the sanitation sector and opens a window to further researches on the same, in the future.
This paper presents a series of flow and temperature measurements on the principal heat network of :metabolon in Lindlar, Germany. These measurements intend to show the behaviour of the system on specific production areas of :metabolon for future monitoring and optimisation purposes. Such measurements allow the analysis of the system’s heat flow through the network, which showed that losses exist, some areas. The results demonstrate successfully that the temperature and flow changes deserve more detailed and fixed monitoring in specific areas to help the user decide the optimum measuring point.
Biogas, mit geringen Konzentrationen an Methan, entsteht unter anderem bei verschiedenen industriellen Prozessen. Wegen der Umweltschädlichkeit des Methans gilt es dessen Eintrag in die Umwelt zu vermeiden.
Das Ziel des vorgestellten Projektes war die Überprüfung eines umweltfreundlichen Verfahrens zur Reduzierung des Methans durch methanotrophe Bakterien. Die einzelnen Batchversuche liefen über 15 Stunden und zeigten eine starke Reduzierung des Methans von 18 auf 1 Vol.-%.
Water is an eminently important element for societal development. It must be available in sufficient quantity and quality to meet human requirements of consumption, food production and sanitation. The riverine ecosystems are increasingly deteriorated due to human interventions. This leads to changes in the natural flow patterns. The concept of environmental flow started to emerge. Due to the importance of environmental flow in the integrated river basin management, researchers and scientists worldwide have made great efforts towards assessing the environmental flow requirements in river ecosystems. Various tools and techniques were defined. Governmental authorities and water ministries (all over the world including Egypt) have introduced regulations and policies to assure the vitality of environmental flow in river management and water allocation too.
Although different methods are available for the environmental flow assessment, those techniques are not practically applied. Implementing the environmental flow in real world is a challenge, due to the lack of political will and the stakeholder support, the institutional barriers and conflicts of interest, and finally the insufficient resources and capacity in environmental management institutions. It is a multidisciplinary and intersectoral process.
The present study aims to report the importance of environmental flow regarding the inhabitants’ daily life as well as the overall Egyptian socio-economic, political and health status. It demonstrates the methods of applying the Environmental flow concept in Egypt with a focus on social and political aspects, detailing the current situation in Egypt, and clarifying the obstacles that face the implementation process. The data was collected via local people questionnaires, stakeholders’ interviews and field visits. The study proposes solutions to evade the environmental flow implementation obstacles and overcome current challenges. Moreover, the study predicts future issues and offers solutions to avoid their occurrence.
The utilization of roadside-green-cuttings (grass) for anaerobic digestion increases provides an additional possible source of organic waste for use as a renewable energy source. Grass can be used as a substrate to increase biogas yield. Nevertheless, the anaerobic digestion of this kind of waste can be limited due to the fact that it could be contaminated with heavy metals, in particular from traffic emissions and industrial activity. For this reason the biogas production of grass from a busy road was assessed. Samples of roadside-grass were washed with an organosulphide, which is used for the removal of heavy metals from wastewater.
A comparison of the anaerobic digestion of washed and unwashed roadside grass was performed. Results showed that the anaerobic digestion of the unwashed grass was much more effective than the washed grass. A second experiment was carried out and co-fermentation of manure and farm-grass was prepared for anaerobic digestion. Lead was added in the concentrations 500, 1000 and 2000 mg Pb2+/kg. The results showed that the higher the lead concentration, the lower the inhibition of the biogas yield. The grass could be acting as phytoremediator for high lead concentrations. The grass could contain organic compounds, which can as-similate heavy metals.
Intelligent use of energy is one of the keys to success for an energy revolution. To meet this challenge, smart meters are suitable tools because INTELLIGENT use of energy means not only to use efficiency technology, but also to determine load shifting potentials and use them accordingly. Especially farms with high power consumption are becoming increasingly concerned about reducing energy costs due to rising energy prices and need a systematic analysis of their operational energy flow. To find solutions for farms, the NaRoTec e.V., the TH Köln, and the Machinery Ring Höxter-Warburg have joined forces with partners and launched the project "Intelligent Energy in Agriculture", which is funded by the state of NRW in Germany. The aim of the project is to be able to give individual advice recommendations for energy optimization of agricultural holdings. This will be achieved inter alia through an operational energy audit and current measurements in different operating ranges. To achieve this, smart meters were installed in selected energy-intensive dairy and pig farms.
As part of the project, the installed smart meter information of one of the dairy Farms is used to optimize the energy consumption of the farm and increase the degree of self-sufficiency. A good way to achieve this is by taking a closer look at the cooling process of the produced milk since it is one of the most energy consuming processes on a dairy farm. In addition an installation of an ice cooling system instead of a direct cooling system enables the possibility to store self-produced energy in the form of ice and use it later on when it is needed to cool the milk. This flattens the usual energy peaks throughout the day and increases the degree of self-sufficiency. To ensure a sufficient amount of self-produced energy with solar power plants of various sizes were designed. The different sizes of the power plants are defined by the use of the gathered smart meter data is used to cover different electric loads in addition to the ice water cooling system. Afterwards the different simulated models are compared to find the best balance between energy production, investment cost and a high degree of self-sufficiency. First results show that using an ice cooling system in combination with a solar power plant improvement the degree of self-sufficiency by up to 7.8 %.