preliminary optimization of alkaline pretreatment for ethanol production from vineyard pruning

Abstract Vineyard 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

Energy and Environmental Performance Analysis of Biomass-fuelled Combined Cooling and Heating System for Commercial Building Retrofit: An Italian Case Study

Abstract This study focuses on the operating performance of a biomass boiler (100 kW) coupled with an absorption chiller machine at the service of a commercial building in central Italy. A detailed life cycle environmental assessment (LCA) was performed by comparing the biomass-fuelled system to conventional system, using the SimaPro software. To assess the environmental impact, experimental data, such as energy consumptions and emission factors of the biomass boiler, were used as input data. Biomass-fuelled system was found to have the lowest impact in cumulative energy demand (CED), global warming potential (GWP), and ReCiPe single score method

the milk supply chain in italy s umbria region environmental and economic sustainability

This article aims to investigate the environmental and economic sustainability of five dairy farms in the Umbria Region (Italy). The study also provides an assessment of aggregate sustainability, which is less investigated with reference to cattle milk both globally and in Italy, through the analysis of the relationship between economic and environmental performance. Primary data were collected through a direct survey carried out in 2014. The environmental assessment was conducted with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) "cradle to farm gate" approach, while the economic dimension was evaluated by determining the direct and indirect costs related to the factors involved in the production process. A correlation analysis and a linear regression were performed in order to study the relationship between the carbon footprint (CF) and operating income. The average operating income amounted to 0.03 Euro/L of milk. The CF values of the five companies are contained within a variation range comprised between 0.90 and 1.76 kg CO 2 eq/L of milk. The existence of an inverse relationship between the CF of milk and operating income confirms the hypothesis regarding the possibility of implementing strategies aimed at improving performance in both investigated dimensions at the same time, thus increasing the aggregate sustainability

driftwood biomass in italy estimation and characterization

In Italy, the accumulation of driftwood along the shore is a significant issue, especially for the coastal municipalities of the Central and Northern regions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the distribution and availability of the coastal driftwood in Italy and its impacts, as well as analyzing its chemical–physical properties to evaluate possible employment in combustion applications. On the basis of a data gathering campaign for the period 2010–2014, about 60,000 tons of driftwood are reported to accumulate along the Italian shores every year. The two regions hardest-hit were Liguria and Veneto, with about 15,000 tons and 12,000 tons, respectively. Three sites were selected for driftwood sampling. The main issue deriving from chemical characterization was the high chlorine content (up to 2% on dry basis) and metal oxides in the ashes. Driftwood samples were then subjected to a natural washing cycle for 1 month; results revealed a significant drop in chlorine and metal oxides contents (up to 80%) and a low decrease of the lower heating value (about 20%). Furthermore, the percolated water was analyzed in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD), showing values (up to 1100 mg O 2 /L) above the Italian limits for discharges into surface waters

The Need of Multidisciplinary Approaches and Engineering Tools for the Development and Implementation of the Smart City Paradigm

This paper is motivated by the concept that the successful, effective, and sustainable implementation of the smart city paradigm requires a close cooperation among researchers with different, complementary interests and, in most cases, a multidisciplinary approach. It first briefly discusses how such a multidisciplinary methodology, transversal to various disciplines such as architecture, computer science, civil engineering, electrical, electronic and telecommunication engineering, social science and behavioral science, etc., can be successfully employed for the development of suitable modeling tools and real solutions of such sociotechnical systems. Then, the paper presents some pilot projects accomplished by the authors within the framework of some major European Union (EU) and national research programs, also involving the Bologna municipality and some of the key players of the smart city industry. Each project, characterized by different and complementary approaches/modeling tools, is illustrated along with the relevant contextualization and the advancements with respect to the state of the art

XIPE: the x-ray imaging polarimetry explorer

XIPE, the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer, is a mission dedicated to X-ray Astronomy. At the time of writing XIPE is in a competitive phase A as fourth medium size mission of ESA (M4). It promises to reopen the polarimetry window in high energy Astrophysics after more than 4 decades thanks to a detector that efficiently exploits the photoelectric effect and to X-ray optics with large effective area. XIPE uniqueness is time-spectrally-spatially- resolved X-ray polarimetry as a breakthrough in high energy astrophysics and fundamental physics. Indeed the payload consists of three Gas Pixel Detectors at the focus of three X-ray optics with a total effective area larger than one XMM mirror but with a low weight. The payload is compatible with the fairing of the Vega launcher. XIPE is designed as an observatory for X-ray astronomers with 75 % of the time dedicated to a Guest Observer competitive program and it is organized as a consortium across Europe with main contributions from Italy, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Poland, Sweden