Assessment of Environmental Effects of Post-Blasted Explosive on the Ecosystem of Old Netim Village in Akamkpa Local Government Area of Cross River State, Nigeria

The study investigated the effects of post-blast explosive residues on ecosystems around Prodeco Quarry industry in Calabar Nigeria by collecting explosives residues and air/fumes samples. The variation between the intensity and temperature of explosive dissolution in the mine environment shows that TNT appears at the lowest temperature of 10oC and PETN reflected at about 35oC and NG shows almost at 58oC. Consequently, 5-15 kg of ANFO produced 10-30 lit/kg of nitrogen oxide compound (NOx) fumes while 20 kg ANFO produced 40 lit/kg of carbon monoxide fume. Also, 0.2 μg/L concentration of explosive in water recorded the highest mean recovery of 116.0 % while 1.0 μg/L recorded the highest values of 99.0 %. The mean recovery in soil sample is range between 105.0-126.0 % while that of forest is range between 91.0-107.0 % with the 50.0 μg/L concentration of explosive. The study concluded that the contaminating effects of the explosives residues have direct and indirect influences on the growth and development of the ecosystems

In-situ upgrading of Napier grass pyrolysis vapour over microporous and hierarchical mesoporous zeolites

This study presents in-situ upgrading of pyrolysis vapour derived from Napier grass over microporous and mesoporous ZSM-5 catalysts. It evaluates effect of process variables such catalyst–biomass ratio and catalyst type in a vertical fixed bed pyrolysis system at 600 °C, 50 °C/min under 5 L/min nitrogen flow. Increasing catalyst–biomass ratio during the catalytic process with microporous structure reduced production of organic phase bio-oil by approximately 7.0 wt%. Using mesoporous catalyst promoted nearly 4.0 wt% higher organic yield relative to microporous catalyst, which translate to only about 3.0 wt% reduction in organic phase compared to the yield of organic phase from non-catalytic process. GC–MS analysis of bio-oil organic phase revealed maximum degree of deoxygenation of about 36.9% with microporous catalyst compared to the mesoporous catalysts, which had between 39 and 43%. Mesoporous catalysts promoted production olefins and alkanes, normal phenol, monoaromatic hydrocarbons while microporous catalyst favoured the production of alkenes and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. There was no significant increase in the production of normal phenols over microporous catalyst due to its inability to transform the methoxyphenols and methoxy aromatics. This study demonstrated that upgrading of Napier grass pyrolysis vapour over mesoporous ZSM-5 produced bio-oil with improved physicochemical properties