The Law of Marine Fishing: Challenges and Coping Strategies for Sustainable Marine Fishing in Ghana

Waters off the coasts of West Africa are very rich with many different types of fish and marine life. Some species like sardines, tuna, mackerel, tilapia and shrimps are important to many local communities and economies in West Africa. However, the current overfishing of these fish affects the sustainability of fishery industry. Despite Ghana ratifying to a number of international marine laws to ensure a sustainable marine fishing, there seem to be some challenges that are associated with marine fishing in Ghana. This paper further examines the strategies that have been employed by the fishing community and the fisheries ministry in Ghana as a response to restrictive measures for the challenges identified and discussed in literature. This paper is fundamentally an extensive review of marine fisheries literature. In general terms, it was found that, Ghana has ratified to a number of international marine laws including the UNCLOS

“Temporal not Permanent:” The impact of Covid-19 cities lockdown on improving Air Quality — a critical review of Africa

The WHO declared the novel Covid-19 virus a global pandemic shortly after it broke out. The deadly virus spread has affected human health and seriously halted many economic and industrial activities globally. However, there has been a blight as there has generally been an improvement in air quality since the deadly Covid-19 pandemic caused various governments to lockdown their cities to regulate the spread of the virus. Since the widespread of Covid-19, there have been several researches to measure the extent of impact Covid-19 city lockdown has had global air quality, but no critical review has been done in Africa as a continent to assess the impact of Covid-19 on the impact of lockdowns on air quality. This study is geared towards a critical review of the impact of lockdowns on air quality in Africa. A total of 117 studies were found after a thorough review, and 87 studies met the screening criteria for the review. The literature was examined from Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed and Web of Science. The study unraveled that in Africa, most of the studies were carried out on West Africa (45.6%), followed by North Africa (26.6%), East Africa (12.6%), South Africa (10.6%), and Central Africa (4.6%). Most of the studies have assessed the air pollutants like PM2.5, NO2, SO2 and CO. The study shows a significant improvement in air quality in Africa during the Covid-19 city lockdown. The research concludes that economic and industrial activities have resumed as various governments resort to partial city lockdowns. The improved air quality has just become an almost lost battle. Various governments in Africa should lock for other effective means to help continue the fight against air pollution in Africa since Covid-19 lockdowns seem to be short-lived. This varied study on the impact of Covid-19 city lockdowns on air quality will certainly aid policymakers in Africa in finding any gaps, as it defines the perceptions of the existing systematic research. Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic, urban city lockdown, air pollution, air quality, Afric

Research Progress, Trends, and Current State of Development on PEMFC-New Insights from a Bibliometric Analysis and Characteristics of Two Decades of Research Output

The consumption of hydrogen could increase by sixfold in 2050 compared to 2020 levels, reaching about 530 Mt. Against this backdrop, the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has been a major research area in the field of energy engineering. Several reviews have been provided in the existing corpus of literature on PEMFC, but questions related to their evolutionary nuances and research hotspots remain largely unanswered. To fill this gap, the current review uses bibliometric analysis to analyze PEMFC articles indexed in the Scopus database that were published between 2000-2021. It has been revealed that the research field is growing at an annual average growth rate of 19.35%, with publications from 2016 to 2012 alone making up 46% of the total articles available since 2000. As the two most energy-consuming economies in the world, the contributions made towards the progress of PEMFC research have largely been from China and the US. From the research trend found in this investigation, it is clear that the focus of the researchers in the field has largely been to improve the performance and efficiency of PEMFC and its components, which is evident from dominating keywords or phrases such as 'oxygen reduction reaction', 'electrocatalysis', 'proton exchange membrane', 'gas diffusion layer', 'water management', 'polybenzimidazole', 'durability', and 'bipolar plate'. We anticipate that the provision of the research themes that have emerged in the PEMFC field in the last two decades from the scientific mapping technique will guide existing and prospective researchers in the field going forward

Techno-Economics and the Identification of Environmental Barriers to the Development of Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plants in India

India is endowed with a lot of solar radiation as a result of its location. The Indian government therefore intends to maximize the usage of its solar energy resources through the development of solar power plants across the country. The concentrated solar power plant (CSP) is one of the technologies that rely on solar energy for its electricity generation. The type of condenser model in the CSP technology has the potential to affect its techno-economic viability. In this paper, a 100 MW solar tower power plant (STPP) with two different condenser models, i.e., the dry-cooled STPP and wet-cooled STPP models, are studied using the System Advisor Model (SAM) at six different geographical areas in India. The study employed the optimization of the thermal energy storage and the solar field size to identify the minimum levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for all six locations. Results from the simulation show that the LCOE will range between 13 and 17 cents/kWh under the optimization conditions for the STPP dry-cooled condenser model, while that of the wet-cooled condenser model will range between 12.40 and 12.96 USD cents/kWh for the study locations. It was also observed that the optimized solar multiple (SM) for the dry-cooled STPP model ranges between 1.4 and 1.8, whereas that of the wet-cooled model ranges between 1 and 1.8. The study identified Bhopal as the best location for installing the STPP plant for both condenser models. In addition, this paper also discusses major potential barriers and government policies that are needed to develop CSP technologies in India. The outcome of the study is expected to help both government and other stakeholders in decision making and policy formulation for the sector

Techno-Economics and the Identification of Environmental Barriers to the Development of Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plants in India

India is endowed with a lot of solar radiation as a result of its location. The Indian government therefore intends to maximize the usage of its solar energy resources through the development of solar power plants across the country. The concentrated solar power plant (CSP) is one of the technologies that rely on solar energy for its electricity generation. The type of condenser model in the CSP technology has the potential to affect its techno-economic viability. In this paper, a 100 MW solar tower power plant (STPP) with two different condenser models, i.e., the dry-cooled STPP and wet-cooled STPP models, are studied using the System Advisor Model (SAM) at six different geographical areas in India. The study employed the optimization of the thermal energy storage and the solar field size to identify the minimum levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for all six locations. Results from the simulation show that the LCOE will range between 13 and 17 cents/kWh under the optimization conditions for the STPP dry-cooled condenser model, while that of the wet-cooled condenser model will range between 12.40 and 12.96 USD cents/kWh for the study locations. It was also observed that the optimized solar multiple (SM) for the dry-cooled STPP model ranges between 1.4 and 1.8, whereas that of the wet-cooled model ranges between 1 and 1.8. The study identified Bhopal as the best location for installing the STPP plant for both condenser models. In addition, this paper also discusses major potential barriers and government policies that are needed to develop CSP technologies in India. The outcome of the study is expected to help both government and other stakeholders in decision making and policy formulation for the sector

Investigating the influence of plastic waste oils and acetone blends on diesel engine combustion, pollutants, morphological and size particles: Dehalogenation and catalytic pyrolysis of plastic waste

Most research into the treats of plastic wastes have concentrated mainly on single-exposure pathways or products. These practices fail to acknowledge that the complications of carbon particles from engines are produced not only by diesel but by any plastic oils due to the vast amount of contaminants. With the potential to significantly weaken the impact of contaminants, the present study investigates the effects of dehalogenation and catalytic pyrolysis on plastic waste, as well as the risks associated with plastic oil blends on diesel engine. Different types of washing were conducted to effectively dehalogenate plastic waste. After pretreatment, odor compounds were analyzed using GC–MS. Subsequently, various types of pretreated plastic samples underwent catalytic pyrolysis with a 5:1 ratio of HDPE to Al2O3·2SiO2·2H2O. Differences in physico-chemical properties and hydrocarbon compounds of oils were determined. Experiments were performed using different fuel blends in a diesel engine under steady-state conditions, and their effects on combustion, emissions, morphology, and size particles were analyzed. The results show that sample B exhibited a lower toxicity level of 1,3-butadiene compared to other samples, while acetone and terpenes represented the second and third-highest emission levels in flakes, respectively. Sample C started to degrade at low temperatures (<300 °C) due to carbon addition from ethyl acetate solvent into the tertiary carbon chain of the flakes. DAP3 fuel achieved a higher reaction due to its degree of unsaturation and lower viscosity, resulting in the formation of smaller fuel droplets at high injection pressure and heat release rate (HRR). Higher emission levels were observed by DAP1 and D100, exceeding the Euro 5/6 standard limits. However, DAP3 fuel resulted in an average reduction of ∼17.14% and 21.86% in CO and smoke emissions, respectively, accompanied by a slight decrease in NOx and HC levels. Conversely, there were inconsistencies in the emission results observed with DAP2. Compared to D100, both DAP1 and DAP2 exhibited a significant accumulation and coarse particles in the PM10 forms at a peak of ∼83 nm. Whereas the DAP3 showed a smaller mobility Dp with a low nucleation particle peak, which was prone to absorb the unburned HC soot and later change to accumulation mode particles