Journal of Pollution

The move towards a de-carbonised world, driven partly by climate science and partly by the business opportunities it offers, will need the promotion of environmentally friendly alternatives, if an acceptable stabilisation level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be achieved. This requires the harnessing and use of natural resources that produce no air pollution or greenhouse gases and provides comfortable coexistence of human, livestock, and plants. This study reviews the energy-using technologies based on natural resources, which are available to and applicable in the farming industry. Among these are greenhouses, which are necessary for the growth of some plants (i.e., vegetables, flowers, etc.) in severe climates. However, greenhouses require some air conditioning process to control their temperature and relative humidity to suit specific plants. To achieve this, a novel air humidifier and/or dehumidifier systems using mop fans had been designed and employed in an experimental greenhouse to evaluate its performance under a controlled environment. This device helped to reduce the energy consumption of the greenhouse whilst providing a pleasant environment for the plants inside the greenhouse. The system was designed taking into account the meteorological conditions, which affect the environment inside the greenhouse. The performance of the system was monitored over a period of time by measuring the temperature and relative humidity of the greenhouse. Results of the monitoring have shown that the system was able to provide comfortable conditions (temperatures of 16-26oC and relative humidity of 65%) suitable for the plants grown in the experimental greenhouse. It also enabled the minimisation of temperature variation and, hence, avoided the hazard of any sudden climatic change inside the greenhouse.

Production of calcium carbonate by indirect carbonation of BOF (Basic Oxygen Furnace) slag usually requires a calcium extraction stage to promote the dissolution of calcium in solution. Several lines of evidence suggest that the grinding of BOF slag to smaller particle size accelerates the calcium leaching process at the expense of a high energy input and further environmental constraints such as dust management.  In order to minimize the excessive consumption of energy due to grinding, this study focused on the optimization of calcium extraction from unmilled BOF slag using 2 conventional solvents namely ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) and ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) and graphical analyses based on simple extraction mass balance.   The study was conducted at the experimentally determined threshold solvent-to-slag mass ratio of 10/1, to avoid the dissolution of impurities such as iron, silicon, magnesium and manganese and guarantee minimum extraction equipment costs. The results obtained using umilled BOF slag show that the efficiency of calcium extraction from the unmilled BOF slag reached ~ 75% for NH4NO3 and ~69% for NH4Cl in 2 extraction stages. A calcium carbonate precipitation yields of 80% was reached at 25oC and 6.5 bars. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis of the dry calcium carbonate precipitate obtained showed that it is mostly dependent on the flow rate of CO2 injected in the carbonation reactor and the system pressure. Finally, the precipitated calcium carbonate was evaluated for the treatment of acid mine drainage.

Several countries seek various measures to reduce carbon emissions because of the detrimental effects of carbon emissions on global warming, climate change and ecosystem. Therefore, an insight into the causes of carbon emissions is fundamental for policy formulation. This paper examines the non-linear effects of financial development and urbanization on carbon emissions in 31 African countries for the 1990-2016 period. This study employs various techniques to examine the integration and cointegration properties as well as estimates the parameters of the variables. First, it reveals that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between real GDP and carbon emissions in African countries, thereby supporting the EKC hypothesis. The implication of this finding is that African countries can reduce carbon emissions through the acceleration of real GDP. African countries may actually grow-out of environmental pollution. The results also show an inverted U-shaped relationship between financial development and carbon emissions, albeit the non-linear relationship between urbanization and carbon emissions is tenuous.

Human activities have led to many unintended consequences in the world of plastic pollution that cannot be understood from the outset. Modeling can help researchers to study individual and collective agent behavior in complex systems. For plastic pollution, modeling allows researchers to identify and explain those unintended consequences, and accordingly to change public policy to optimize management strategies. However, there is a critical need for more comprehensive methods to monitor the flow of plastic from source to sink. The current lack of detailed data could make finer-resolution models somewhat inaccurate. This gap in knowledge is important to address in order to control mismanagement and pollution of plastics into the environment. We propose a queueing framework called QODIC to monitor rates of plastic flow into and out of a designated system, which utilizes simple differential equations and plots them graphically. By taking the area between the two curves, we can find accumulation of plastic and cleanup times (when no plastic remains in the system). Using our model, we predict that there is 37.5 million tons of plastic floating in the ocean as of 2015 and that it will take 42.2 years to clean up plastics in the ocean if action is taken. Models like QODIC are integral to understanding the current state of plastic pollution.

From a studied to collect data’s for temperature degrees during 1973 until 2018 there is clear evidence that show climate change is happening in our region. Data’s show that the average annual temperature rat has raised by almost 1°C, the average of warmest year for this period was recorded in 2010and it was (21.55 OC). In 2016 average temperature degree was high (20.3 OC) as the global worm rising the lowest temperature in this period was (16.2 OC) recorded in 1992. Since 1973 until 1985 average worm was (18.39 OC) and since 1986 until 1998 worm average raised to (18.79 OC) then since 1999 until 2010 worm average raised again to (19.93 OC) but in period 2011 to 2018 worm average raised to (20.09 OC). The difference between warmest monthly average temperatures and the coldest month of the year or annual range in 1988 was the highest (31.9 OC) while in year 1973 was lowest (19.6 OC) but the rate for the period 1973 to 2018 was (27.9 OC). The absolute annual temperature range or differences between the maximum absolute temperature and the minimum absolute temperature during a year was wide like in 1973 was highest (53 OC) and in 1987 was the lowest (35 OC). Diurnal temperature variation or the daily difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures was limited in winter months almost (6 - 9 OC) but in summer months the ranges is bigger almost (15 - 18 OC). Over these years spatially from (2008 -2019) soils that affected with plant pathogenic nematodes increased dramatically by %50 in the study area 10km2 because of rising temperatures degrees and need to use greenhouses instead of open field cultivation these greenhouses numbers influencing on agroecosystem structure for a long a terms. From the investigation farmers to control plant pathogenic nematodes in the effected soils greenhouses use kinds of chemical pesticides that cause damages to the soils and the yields as well as changing agroecosystem stricture.       Agroecosystem structure for the study area has been changed relatively because of increasing the numbers of greenhouses that got almost 7000 greenhouse causing imbalance in acuaecosystem by using a huge amount of water (125m³ / greenhouse).