Advanced Technologies for Biomass

The use of biomass and organic waste material as a primary resource for the production of fuels, chemicals, and electric power is of growing significance in light of the environmental issues associated with the use of fossil fuels. For this reason, it is vital that new and more efficient technologies for the conversion of biomass are investigated and developed. Today, various advanced methods can be used for the conversion of biomass. These methods are broadly classified into thermochemical conversion, biochemical conversion, and electrochemical conversion. This book collects papers that consider various aspects of sustainability in the conversion of biomass into valuable products, covering all the technical stages from biomass production to residue management. In particular, it focuses on experimental and simulation studies aiming to investigate new processes and technologies on the industrial, pilot, and bench scales

Overview of non-thermal mixed waste treatment technologies: Treatment of mixed waste (ex situ); Technologies and short descriptions

This compendium contains brief summaries of new and developing non- thermal treatment technologies that are candidates for treating hazardous or mixed (hazardous plus low-level radioactive) wastes. It is written to be all-encompassing, sometimes including concepts that presently constitute little more than informed ``ideas``. It bounds the universe of existing technologies being thought about or considered for application on the treatment of such wastes. This compendium is intended to be the very first step in a winnowing process to identify non-thermal treatment systems that can be fashioned into complete ``cradle-to-grave`` systems for study. The purpose of the subsequent systems paper studies is to investigate the cost and likely performance of such systems treating a representative sample of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) mixed low level wastes (MLLW). The studies are called Integrated Non-thermal Treatment Systems (INTS) Studies and are being conducted by the Office of Science and Technology (OST) of the Environmental Management (EM) of the US Department of Energy. Similar studies on Integrated Thermal Treatment Systems have recently been published. These are not designed nor intended to be a ``downselection`` of such technologies; rather, they are simply a systems evaluation of the likely costs and performance of various non- thermal technologies that have been arranged into systems to treat sludges, organics, metals, soils, and debris prevalent in MLLW

A review of air filtration technologies for sustainable and healthy building ventilation

Urbanization increased population density in cities and consequently leads to severe indoor air pollution. As a result of these trends, the issue of sustainable and healthy indoor environment has received increasing attention. Various air filtration techniques have been adopted to optimize indoor air quality. Air filtration technique can remove air pollutants and effectively alleviate the deterioration of indoor air quality. This paper presents a comprehensive review on the synergistic effect of different air purification technologies, air filtration theory, materials and standards. It evaluated different air filtration technologies by considering factors such as air quality improvement, filtering performance, energy and economic behaviour, thermal comfort and acoustic impact. Current research development of air filtration technologies along with their advantages, limitations and challenges are discussed. This paper aims to drive the future of air filtration technology research and development in achieving sustainable and healthy building ventilation

Impacts of Western Coal, Oil Shale, and Tar Sands Development on Aquatic Environmental Quality: A Technical Information Matrix; Volume 1 Introduction and Instructions

Introduction: The Upper Colorado River Basin contains vast deposits of coal, oil shale, and tar sands, which could undergo extensive development should oil prices rise or an international situation restrict oil imports. Naturally, the prospect of development of these alternative fossil fuels resources has led to concern over how extraction and conversion activities will impact environmental quality. A thorough understanding of the nature and magnitude of the resulting envionemental impacts is a necessary prerequisite, if the costs and risks of such activites are to be weighed against the economic benefits. When we set out to evaluated these costs and risks, it soon became obvious that the voluminous literature in this area is difficult to access, often repetitive, and not well integrated into state-of-the-art reviews. This led us to realize the need to categorize and collate the results of such energy-related impact research in a way that would go beyond the compilation of a bibliography, or even keyworking relevant citations. The form of presentation that we eventually selected was the technical information matrix presented in this report. This matrix consists of information on the impacts of coal mining and conversion, oil shale mining and retoring, and tar sands development on four aspects of aquatic environmental quality: surface water and groundwater chemsitry, aquatic ecology, and aquifer modification. The report consists of three parts. This introductory volume contains instruction for use of the technical information matrix, a glossary, and sources of data on energy development and environmental impacts. Two additional looseleaf volumes contain the coal (II), and oil sahel and tar sands matrices (III), respectively, along with the corresponding matrix references and a bibliography of general (summary or overview) references. Each matrix volume also includes a list of symbols and abbreviations used in the matrix. Qualitatively, information on the three categories of fossil fuel development differs principally in amount, type, and geographical specificity. Coal extraction is a well-studied process in the East, where acid mine drainage and metal toxicity are well documented. In the West, surface mining of vast arid and semiarid tracts, as well as generally more alkaline mine drainage, has been less thoroughly studied. Nonetheless, commercial scale operations have been in place for a sufficiently long period, even in the West, to ahve produced a reasonably large data base. Coal conversion processes, although new, have also reached the commercial scale, and information is becoming relatively abundant. Conversely, environmental information is not generally availabel for the Scottish and Russian oil shale industries, or for the primitive industry in the Colorado Basin earlier in the century, and the present day oil shale industry in the west is insufficiently developed to have produced commerical scale case studies. Most information at present comes from pilot or semi-works facilities, and the impacts of a full-scale development over a 20-30 year project life are difficult to predict. Although Alberta, Canada, has a well developed tar sands industry, site specific information on tar sands development in the Colorado Basin is lacking. There are several areas of ommission in the coverage of sources of fossil fuel impact on aquatic environmental quality. Petroleum drilling, whose principal impacts in the Colorado Basin are related to interconnection of saline with good quality aquifers, creation of saline surface springs during exploration and illegal brine disposal practices has been omitted. Also, we have not pursued the effects of acid (e.g., Sox) base (e.g., NH3) or volatile metal (e.g., Hg) emissions to the atmosphere and their subsequent effects on downwind ecosystems when they are returned by precipitation or dry deposition. We have generally omitted the toxicological literature relating to occupational exposure (e.g., skin painting tests, etc.), as well as the impacts of water withdrawals on fish habitat through reduction of natural instream flows. In the latter cases such impacts require site specific consideration of hydrology and channel morphology. The more than 1300 citations in these matrices were gathered from a wide variety of refereed journals, symposium proceedings, government documents, abstracting services, and personal communications with researchers. The papers cited emphasize the period 1970-1981. Greatest emphasis was placed on the more recent literature, but late 1981 papers are probably underrepresented. There is also little doubt that we have failed to include some valuable material found in project reports, oral presentations, masters these, disserations, and similar sources. Certainly some citations were not optimally summarized or categorized, particularly when it was necessary to work from an abstract or summary. Hopefully, such exclusions or poor representations will not result in loss of excessive information or unduly mislead the users. We plan to update the matrix periodically, supplementing new information found with the searching techniques developed thus far and especially with information supplied by users. Updates will be in the form of looseleaf pages to be added to or substituted in Volumes I and II, and will be published as frequently as deemed necessary to cover developments in the subject areas. We would very much appreciate receiving copies (or summaries) of pertinent reports from the users of this matrix, together with corrections or improvements in the content or categorization of material presently in the matrix. There should be sent to: F.J. Post (coal) or Jay Messer (oil shale and tar sands) Utah Water Research Laboratory UMC 82 Utah State University Logan, UT 84322 They will be gratefully included in the next update

Indoor air treatment by coupling biofiltration and adsortion

225 p.La calidad del aire interior juega un papel importante en la salud de las personas y su bienestar puesto que la población pasa una parte importante de su vida dentro de lugares cerrados. Los Compuestos Orgánicos Volátiles (COVs) representan un grupo prioritario dentro de la lista de contaminantes de aires interiores. Si bien la concentración individual de cada uno de los contaminantes es generalmente baja, cientos de ellos pueden encontrarse simultáneamente, lo que ha llevado a que las concentraciones de COVs en ambientes interiores sean de 1 a 20 veces superiores a las del aire exterior. Actualmente no existe ninguna tecnología que pueda considerarse plenamente satisfactoria en el tratamiento de la contaminación del aire interior. Es por esto que la tecnología de la biofiltración y el sistema híbrido de biofiltración-adsorción fueron propuestos y estudiados como nuevos posibles métodos para el tratamiento de la contaminación del aire interior. Como resultado de este estudio, se concluyó que la biofiltración es capaz de lograr altas eficiencias de eliminación para los contaminantes estudiados (tolueno, p-xyleno y etilbenceno) a concentraciones bajas y tiempos de residencia bajos. Sin embargo, frente a la heterogeneidad de los contaminantes en aires interiores, las interrupciones operacionales y la generación de subproductos, el sistema híbrido resulta ser el más robusto y podría ser la mejor alternativa en el tratamiento de este tipo de contaminación

Development and application of a rapid sampling technique for identification and quantification of compounds in high temperature process gas streams produced from biomass gasification and pyrolysis

A commercially applicable measurement technique for measuring volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in hot process gas streams was developed. The method was validated by quantifying the amount tar in a syngas stream generated from a pilot-scale gasification reactor and gas cleaning process development unit (PDU) and comparing the value to that of conventional measurements. Conventional approaches to measuring VOCs suffer from extensive amounts of equipment and require substantial preparation time in the lab before data are recovered. This makes them impractical for use in rapid process monitoring and drastically inhibits attempts to optimize new tar removal techniques for syngas. The novel method is capable of sampling directly from process piping and provides results within the time-resolution of the analytical equipment (typically 1-2 h for mass spectrometry or flame ionization detection). The method is based on time-weighted average solid-phase microextraction (TWA-SPME) theory. Testing the theory on a lab scale system for the analytes of interest (benzene, toluene, styrene, indene, and naphthalene) yielded important limitations to the technique using high temperature (\u3e115C) process environments. The TWA-SPME method was applied on the pilot-scale (20 kg/h of switchgrass feed) PDU within appropriate sample extraction conditions dictated by the lab-scale testing. The method returned results within 10% of the conventional impinger approach for most analytes, and within 20% for all analytes downstream of the gas cleaning unit. When coupled with a new rapid measurement technique for heavy tar using a pressure cooker, the new method is capable of providing the concentration of tar for any syngas stream in an hour or less compared to the conventional method that requires several days for wet-chemical analysis. Additional applications of the technique are currently underway including the measurement of key light VOCs generated in a free-fall pyrolysis reactor in an attempt to gain valuable process kinetics data. An extension of this research is based on the development of a method for measurement of VOCs at much higher temperatures (exceeding 300C) using an internally-cooled SPME fiber

Thermochemical Conversion Processes for Solid Fuels and Renewable Energies

It is widely believed that a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions originated anthropogenically from the use of fossil fuels with additional contributions coming from manufactured materials, deforestation, soil erosion, and agriculture (including livestock). The global society actively supports measures to create a flexible and low-carbon energy economy to attenuate climate change and its devastating environmental consequences. In this Special Issue, the recent advancements in the next-generation thermochemical conversion processes for solid fuels and renewable energies (e.g., the operational flexibility of co-combustion of biomass and lignite, integrated solar combined cycle power plants, and advanced gasification systems such as the sorption-enhanced gasification and the chemical looping gasification) were shown