Towards the implementation of the Green Building concept in agricultural buildings: a literature review

The “Green Building” is an interdisciplinary theme, where the green building concept includes a multitude of elements, components and procedures which diverge to several subtopics that intertwined to form the green building concept.  Generally, the green building is considered to be an environmental component, as the green building materials are manufactured from local eco-sources, i.e. environmentally friendly materials, which are then used to make an eco-construction subject to an eco-design that provides a healthy habitat built on the cultural and architectural heritage in construction while ensuring conservation of natural resources.  This ensures disassembling the building components and materials, after a determined building lifetime, to environmentally friendly materials that can be either re-used or recycled.  During their lifecycle, the green buildings minimize the use of resources (energy and water); reduce the harmful impact on the ecology, and provide better indoor environment.    Green buildings afford a high level of environmental, economic, and engineering performance.  These include energy efficiency and conservation, improved indoor air quality, resource and material efficiency, and occupant's health and productivity.  This study focuses on defining green buildings and elaborating their interaction with the environment, energy, and indoor air quality and ventilation.  Furthermore, the present study investigates the green building materials (e.g. biocement, eco-cement and green concrete), green designs, green roofs, and green technologies.  Additionally, the present study highlights the green buildings rating systems, the economics of green buildings, and the challenges that face the implementation. Eventually, the interdependency between the green buildings and agriculture has been discussed.   Keywords: green building, agricultural buildings, biocement, eco-cement, green concrete, green roofs, low-energy building, zero-carbon building, eco-constructio

Enhancing the efficiency of evaporative cooling pads for livestock barns and greenhouses by moisture adsorption

High levels of relative humidity negatively affect the efficiency of the evaporative cooling pads installed in livestock barns and greenhouses. Consequently, the productivity decreases causing economic losses. Therefore, this project aims at prototyping innovative dehumidifying/desiccant segments to be installed on the conventional cooling pads enabling them to provide suitable microclimate conditions, especially temperature and relative humidity, for animals and plants. The hypothesis is that desiccant segments adsorb air moisture before introducing the air into the pads; consequently, the treated air is then able to absorb more moisture from the cooling pads, i.e. the cooling pads evaporate more water in the treated air, where water evaporation requires heat energy which is absorbed from the treated air which results in decreasing the treated air temperature. Theoretical and experimental investigations were conducted, where 211 laboratory experiments were performed for testing this hypothesis. The theoretical investigations (calculations and designs) were conducted using the results of the lab experiments. This study presents a methodology for testing desiccant materials and assessing their suitability as filling for the desiccant segments. The water adsorption capacity was 125, 158, 257, 132, 142 g H2O/kg desiccant, and the water adsorption rate was 17, 22, 36, 18, 20 g H2O/(kg desiccant h) for ARTSorbTM, PROSorbTM, Silica Gel, Silica Gel Macro-porous, and the mixture of all 4 desiccants, respectively. Model calculations showed that the required amount of desiccant per unit area of pads is 70 kg/m2. The thickness of the desiccant segments is 10 cm, with a total pressure drop of 0.6 kPa under the toughest conditions of air velocity of 2.5 m/s and 2 mm bead size. The desiccant segments require 0.18 kW extra energy per m2 of pads to overcome the extra pressure drop, i.e. 63.5 kWh/m2 and month which is the energy required by the extractor fans and costs 12.7 € / m2 month approximately. The results show potential for developing a desiccant system to improving the efficiency of cooling pads for livestock barns and greenhouses

Emissions inventory of greenhouse gases and ammonia from livestock housing and manure management

An emission inventory is a database on the amount of pollutants released into the atmosphere.  The anthropogenic emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases are detrimental to the environment and the ecosystems.  Therefore, reducing emissions is crucial. One key issue is to inventory these emissions, and consequently databases on anthropogenic emissions will be available for making decisions on implementing suitable mitigation strategies.  Such investigations aim at developing national emissions inventory for domestic livestock and to identify possible abatement techniques in order to reduce these emissions.  Therefore, the objectives of this study are to introduce and define the emissions inventories, review the emission inventory guides, introduce the relation between the emissions inventory and livestock buildings and manure stores and the relevant emission factors and algorithms, review the tools for processing the emissions inventories (e.g. models, software), show the evaluation and improvement methods of emissions inventories, review the emissions abatement techniques, and present examples and paradigms of available national emissions inventories for several countries.   Keywords: emissions inventory, greenhouse gases, methane, nitrous oxide, ammonia, particulate matter, livestock buildings, manure, emission factors, emissions abatement technique

Biobutanol and bioethanol production from agricultural wastes: A cell phone application for computing the bioconversion rates

To carry out the calculations required for modelling and computing for kinetics biobutanol and bioethanol yields and production rates, several procedures should be accomplished; this requires time and effort, and there is a chance that mistakes will be made. The goal of this study is to provide a tool that will assist users, engineers, and experts in conducting these computations by creating a mobile application to reduce time and effort. The calculations were carried out using a mathematical model. The mathematical model was then included in a flowchart that was created later. After that, Kodular was used to configure the mobile application by fusing the interface design, mathematical model, and flowchart. Information was gathered from publications, wastewater treatment facilities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and government groups. To offer output data that matched the output data obtained from the configured program, the data collected for doing the calculations in the conventional manner was used. Both the standard strategy and the program's outcomes were consistent. The created mobile application can do kinetic modeling and determine the yields and rates of generation of biobutanol and bioethanol from agricultural waste

Biological and Chemical Wastewater Treatment Processes

This chapter elucidates the technologies of biological and chemical wastewater treatment processes. The presented biological wastewater treatment processes include: (1) bioremediation of wastewater that includes aerobic treatment (oxidation ponds, aeration lagoons, aerobic bioreactors, activated sludge, percolating or trickling filters, biological filters, rotating biological contactors, biological removal of nutrients) and anaerobic treatment (anaerobic bioreactors, anaerobic lagoons); (2) phytoremediation of wastewater that includes constructed wetlands, rhizofiltration, rhizodegradation, phytodegradation, phytoaccumulation, phytotransformation, and hyperaccumulators; and (3) mycoremediation of wastewater. The discussed chemical wastewater treatment processes include chemical precipitation (coagulation, flocculation), ion exchange, neutralization, adsorption, and disinfection (chlorination/dechlorination, ozone, UV light). Additionally, this chapter elucidates and illustrates the wastewater treatment plants in terms of plant sizing, plant layout, plant design, and plant location

Increasing biodiesel production from microalgae using chemical additives

At present, the major body of research is focused on weaning the world from fossil fuels. The problem is that the world is running out of fossil fuel. Therefore, an alternative source must be identified. The biofuels are promising alternatives. In the case of petrodiesel, a promising alternative is biodiesel production from algae. The ability of microalgae to generate large quantities of lipids with a fast growth rate made them superior biodiesel producers. An important factor of determining optimal microalgal activity is the bioresponse to changes in trace metal concentration and quantity. The effects of the addition of the following chemicals were investigated: calcium chloride (CaCl2) with a concentration of 2 mg/L, potassium chloride (KCl) with a concentration of 4.5 mg/L, and ferric chloride (FeCl3) with a concentration of 1.2 mg/L. Further treatment is a mixture of all additives with the same listed concentrations. According to the results of this study, it was found that calcium, potassium, and iron concentration have great influence on the algal growth and lipid production. Furthermore, the mixture of all additives yielded the highest lipid and, therefore, the highest biodiesel production among all treatments

Implementation of Nanotechnology for Increasing Biohydrogen Production from Anaerobic Digestion of Biomass

Biohydrogen has significant feasibility since biological processes are much less energy intensive compared with electrolysis and thermo-chemical processes. Biological processes and bacterial fermentation are considered as the most environmentally friendly alternatives for satisfying future hydrogen demand. Biohydrogen production from biomass is considered profitable as biomass is abundant, cheap, and biodegradable. The combustion of H2 with O2 produces water as its only product: Unlike other fuels, the combustion of H2 does not produce CO2, CO, NOx, or SO2. Therefore, H2 is an environmentally friendly fuel. The objective of this study is to increase biohydrogen production from biomass using nanotechnology. In this study, it is hypothesized that the biostimulation of hydrogen-producing purple non-sulfur (PNS) bacteria through the addition of nutrients in form of nanomaterials can enhance the bioresponses of such bacteria, where this leads to increase biohydrogen production from biomass. A biohydrogen production system and a model of photobioreactor were manufactured and installed. Food wastes were collected from kitchen leftovers of different fast-food suppliers and were used in this study as feedstocks for biohydrogen production. The production process was conducted as following: addition of 50 mg/l of nickel nanoparticles to the bacterial inoculum and then mixing them with biomass and water by a ratio of 0.5:1:2 which were then kept in the photobioreactor exposed to white light emitting diodes (LEDs) with a luminous flux of 3600 lumen and at 30oC for 14 days with mixing for 5 min every 30 min to produce biohydrogen. The results showed that the maximum biohydrogen yield was 40.7 mol H2/mol sugar (2.68 times control) when Ni nanoparticles were added. Besides, during the active production period the H2 percentages were ranging from 48.0 to 51.7% when Ni nanoparticles were added which were higher by 15% than the control. It was concluded that the addition of nanomaterials leads to biostimulate the bacterial cells and enhance their activity and growth rate and, therefore, increase biohydrogen production from biomass

Cell phone application for sizing anaerobic digesters and computing energy production, biogas and methane yields

To perform the calculations required for sizing anaerobic digesters and computing energy production and biogas and methane yields, various procedures should be conducted; this requires time and efforts, with the risk of making mistakes. The objective of this study was to create a tool to aid users and specialists in managing these computations by offering an application which can be installed on cell phones. A mathematical model was developed to perform the calculations. Then, a flowchart was created, and the mathematical model was incorporated into the flowchart. Then, MIT App Inventor was used to configure an application software by combining the flowchart and the mathematical model and making the user interface. Data were acquired from governmental institutions, livestock farms having biogas units, biogas plants, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and literatures. The data acquired were used to perform the calculations through applying the conventional method to produce results which were compared with results produced by the developed application software. The results of both conventional method and the application software were identical. The developed cell phone application can size the anaerobic digesters and compute the energy production and biogas and methane yields from livestock manure and agricultural crop residues

FDI And Economic Growth In CEE And MENA Countries: A Tale Of Two Regions

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in two different regions: Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The main findings of our analysis suggest that FDI has a positive effect on growth only in EU accession countries while the effect of FDI on growth in MENA and non-EU accession countries is negative. Candidacy to EU membership is considered as a driving force for stronger commitment and more serious reforms that may have led to the positive effect of FDI on growth.