Decarbonizing university campuses:A business model for food waste management at Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) Ayazağa Campus, Turkey

Food waste is a significant environmental issue today, as it contributes to depleting natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions from improper management. To address this, alternative food waste management and recovery strategies must be developed to promote nutrient recirculation and move towards decarbonization. University campuses could play a crucial role in pioneering such strategies, through pilot studies and implementation of effective waste management. The aim of this study is to devise a food waste management strategy that provides a more circular and decarbonized economy. A case example was developed based on ITU Ayazağa Campus, Turkey, with annual separated food waste of 577 tonne per year. A Life Cycle Assessment was conducted using the EASETECH software. Four scenarios were evaluated: anaerobic digestion, composting, incineration, and landfill. Of these, incineration resulted in the highest CO2-eq savings, but lacked decoupling and circularity of resources. Conversely, anaerobic digestion demonstrated the highest circularity and lowest toxicity. Based on these findings, anaerobic digestion was selected for further investigation. Economic transactions for the anaerobic digestion system's business models were analyzed, including revenues, municipality fees, and operating costs. The new economic model is expected to align with circular economy strategies and promote stakeholder collaboration as a significant social outcome

Performance of anaerobic sequencing batch reactor in the treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater containing erythromycin and sulfamethoxazole mixture

This study evaluates the joint effects of erythromycin-sulfamethoxazole (ES) combinations on anaerobic treatment efficiency and the potential for antibiotic degradation during anaerobic sequencing batch reactor operation. The experiments involved two identical anaerobic sequencing batch reactors. One reactor, as control unit, was fed with synthetic wastewater while the other reactor (ES) was fed with a synthetic substrate mixture including ES antibiotic combinations. The influence of ES antibiotic mixtures on chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, volatile fatty acid production, antibiotic degradation, biogas production, and composition were investigated. The influent antibiotic concentration was gradually increased over 10 stages, until the metabolic collapse of the reactors, which occurred at 360 days for the ES reactor. The results suggest that substrate/COD utilization and biogas/methane generation affect performance of the anaerobic reactors at higher concentration. In addition, an average of 40% erythromycin and 37% sulfamethoxazole reduction was achieved in the ES reactor. These results indicated that these antibiotics were partly biodegradable in the anaerobic reactor system

Current Situation and Future Perspectives in Municipal Wastewater Treatment and Sludge Management in Turkey

Appropriate management of wastewater and sludge requires several systems. One of these systems is the collection of data about generation rates and characteristics of sludge. This paper aims to summarize the work done as a part of a threeyear project requested by the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Urbanization. Efforts involved preparation and evaluation of a detailed questionnaire for currently operated wastewater treatment plants (INWTPs) in Turkey, collection and confirmation of information from visits to large scale plants, calculation of theoretical sludge generation rates from data provided, and its comparison to reported sludge amounts

Antimicrobial resistance in Gram-negative hospital isolates: Results of the Turkish HITIT-2 surveillance study of 2007

Resistance rates to amikacin, ciprofloxacin, ceftazidime, cefepime, imipenem, cefoperazone/sulbactam and piperacillin/tazobactam in Escherichia coli (n = 438), Klebsiella pneumoniae (n = 444), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (n = 210) and Acinetobacter baumanni (n =200) were determined with E-test in a multicenter surveillance study (HITIT-2) in 2007. ESBL production in Escherichia coli and K. pneumoniae was investigated following the CLSI guidelines. Overall 42.0% of E.coli and 41.4% of K. pneumoniae were ESBL producers. In E. coli, resistance to imipenem was not observed, resistance to ciprofloxacin and amikacin was 58.0% and 5.5% respectively. In K. pneumoniae resistance to imipenem, ciprofloxacin and amikacin was 3.1%, 17.8% 12.4% respectively. In P. aeruginosa the lowest rate of resistance was observed with piperacillin/tazobactam (18.1%). A. baumanni isolates were highly resistant to all the antimicrobial agents, the lowest level of resistance was observed against cefoperazone/sulbactam (52.0%) followed by imipenem (55.5%). This study showed that resistance rates to antimicrobials are high in nosocomial isolates and show variations among the centers