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Search results for: CARBON FOOTPRINT
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Energy Neutrality Versus Carbon Footprint Minimization In Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants
PublicationThe study presents analysis of the carbon footprint (CF) in six medium and large-size municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) located across Poland. The novelty of the presented study is searching the relationship between level of energy neutrality and CF in the case studies. Although energy and CF go hand-in-hand to some degree but moving towards energy neutrality in WWTPs might also lead to an increase in the total CF of...
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Energy neutrality versus carbon footprint minimization in municipal wastewater treatment plants
PublicationThis work aimed to compare the carbon footprint (CF) of six full-scale wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The CF was estimated in the range of 23–100 kg CO2e per population equivalent. In the total CF, the direct emissions held the highest share (62–74%) for the plants with energy recovery from biogas. In the plants depending entirely on the power grid, the indirect emissions due to energy consumption dominated the total CF (69–72%)....
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Reducing Carbon Footprint of Agriculture—Can Organic Farming Help to Mitigate Climate Change?
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Comprehensive evaluation of the carbon footprint components of wastewater treatment plants located in the Baltic Sea region
PublicationFinland and Poland share similar environmental interests with regard to their wastewater effluents eventually being discharged to the Baltic Sea. However, differences in the influent wastewater characteristics, treatment processes, operational conditions, and carbon intensities of energy mixes in both countries make these two countries interesting for carbon footprint (CF) comparison. This study aimed at proposing a functional...
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The effect of agro-waste co-digestion and sludge disposal on carbon footprint in municipal wastewater treatment plants
PublicationThe study presents analysis of the carbon footprint (CF) in 6 wastewater treatment plants in northern Poland with a special focus on the effect of co digestion of sewage sludge and food waste. Although co-digestion increases the on-site energy production, but it has a negative effect on the total CF. To overcome the negative effect, several sludge disposal scenarios were analysed and their effect on the CF reduction was determined....
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Evaluating the effect of different operational strategies on the carbon footprint of wastewater treatment plants – case studies from northern Poland
PublicationNowadays, low greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is expected at wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, emission quantification and evaluation still faces difficulties related to data availability and uncertainty. The objective of this study was to perform carbon footprint (CF) analysis for two municipal WWTPs located in northern Poland. Slupsk WWTP is a large biological nutrient removal (BNR) facility (250,000 PE) which benefits...
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Strategies for mitigating nitrous oxide production and decreasing the carbon footprint of a full-scale combined nitrogen and phosphorus removal activated sludge system
PublicationNitrous oxide (N2O) emitted from biological nutrient removal activated sludge systems contributes significantly to the total carbon footprint of modern wastewater treatment plants. In the present study, N2O production and emissions were experimentally determined in a large-scale plant (220,000 PE) employing combined nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) removal. As a modelling tool, the Activated Sludge Model 2d (ASM2d) was extended...
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Ecological footprint of Rawalpindi; Pakistan's first footprint analysis from urbanization perspective
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Comparison of the water footprint in Poland and Ukraine
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Net-zero carbon condition in wastewater treatment plants: A systematic review of mitigation strategies and challenges
PublicationThe wastewater sector accounts for up to 7 and 10% of anthropogenic CH4 and N2O emissions, respectively. Nowadays wastewater treatment plants are going through a paradigm shift to approach a net-zero carbon condition. Numerous ongoing measures have taken place to identify the sources of greenhouse gases and minimize the carbon footprint. This paper systematically reviews all known practices leading towards net-zero carbon wastewater...
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Comparative Analysis of Carbon, Ecological, and Water Footprints of Polypropylene-Based Composites Filled with Cotton, Jute and Kenaf Fibers
PublicationComposites containing natural fibers are considered environmentally friendly materials which is related to the reduced use of fossil fuels and the emission of carbon dioxide compared to petroleum-based polymers. Nevertheless, a complete evaluation of their environmental impact requires a broader view. This paper presents a carbon, ecological, and water footprints assessment of polypropylene-based composites filled with cotton,...
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A Broadband Circularly Polarized Wide-Slot Antenna with a Miniaturized Footprint
PublicationThis letter presents a novel and simple feeding technique for exciting orthogonal components in a wide-slot antenna. In this technique, a rectangular bracket-shape parasitic strip is placed at the open end of the straight microstrip line to excite the fundamental horizontal and vertical components of the circular polarization (CP). The proposed technique—when employed in conjunction with the asymmetrical geometry of coplanar waveguide...
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Analysis of the Water Footprint of Central and Eastern Europe Countries
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Resource productivity and environmental degradation in EU-27 countries: context of material footprint
PublicationThis study explores the relationship between the resource productivity and environmental degradation in European Union-27 countries. This study tests this relationship in context of high, moderate, and low material footprint sub-samples; these samples are formed utilizing the expectation–maximization machine learning algorithm. Using the panel data set of EU-27 countries from 2000 to 2020, linear and non-linear autoregressive distributed...
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Water Footprint Assessment of Selected Polymers, Polymer Blends, Composites, and Biocomposites for Industrial Application
PublicationThis paper presents a water footprint assessment of polymers, polymer blends, composites, and biocomposites based on a standardized EUR-pallet case study. The water footprint analysis is based on life cycle assessment (LCA). The study investigates six variants of EUR-pallet production depending on the materials used. The system boundary included the production of each material and the injection molding to obtain a standardized...
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MINIMIZATION OF THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT THROUGH THE USE OF THE BUBBLES MECHANISM IN THE ARCHITECTURE DESIGN PROCESS
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Water Footprint Index (WFTP) for Poznań as a Tool for Assessing Water Management in Urban Areas
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Integrated plant-wide modelling for evaluation of the energy balance and greenhouse gas footprint in large wastewater treatment plants
PublicationModern wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) should maintain a balance between three combined sustainability criteria, including effluent quality, energy performance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. All of these criteria were considered in the integrated plant-wide model developed in this study. The proposed model incorporates new features, including: (i) the addition of associated facilities to the overall energy balance and...
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The Dilemmas of Choosing a Suitable Technology for Low Energy and Passive Houses in the Context of their Overheating Issues
PublicationIn compliance with European Union directives, numerous countries are introducing increasingly stricter legal limits on the estimated energy consumption of newly designed residential buildings. However, the fact, that regulations and designers' efforts are focused on decreasing energy consumption (and consequently carbon dioxide emissions) only at the post-occupancy stage, may lead to a significant increase in the carbon footprint...
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Environmental impact of construction. Methods of conscious shaping architecture in terms of ecological solutions
PublicationShaping an ecologically conscious society is a process that also affects architecture. Currently, designers are eagerly looking for solutions that are beneficial in terms of carbon footprint. For the proper multi-criteria assessment and selection of adequate solutions, it is necessary to use appropriate tools such as, for example, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method or the rules of ecological certification (BREEAM and LEED)....
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The Co-Culture of Staphylococcal Biofilm and Fibroblast Cell Line: The Correlation of Biological Phenomena with Metabolic NMR1 Footprint
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Waste printer ink as modifier for natural rubber/carbon black composites: No haste, use waste
PublicationFrom a sustainability perspective, achieving a greener future with a minimal carbon footprint requires maximizing waste materials' reuse. The four pillars of satisfying customer demands are processing, price, properties, and performance. Along with such a global policy, this work seeks to utilize waste printer ink (WPI) as a source of carbon in combination with low- and high-surface carbon black (LCB and HCB, respectively) additives...
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Towards Carbon Neutral Settlements. The Importance of Early-Stage Urban and Energetic Optimizations
PublicationThe aim of the research was to verify the essence of interdisciplinary energy optimizations in earlystage urban design process. A further aim was to the find most optimal design variant and scenario in terms of urban energy efficiency for the future development in Nowy Port, located in Gdansk, Poland - a place requiring complex revitalization. The research combined qualitative and quantitative approaches; an urban design layer...
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The effect of aeration mode (intermittent vs. continuous) on nutrient removal and greenhouse gas emissions in the wastewater treatment plant of Corleone (Italy)
PublicationThe paper reports the results of an experimental study aimed at comparing two configurations of a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP): conventional activated sludge (CAS) and oxic-settling-anaerobic process (OSA) with intermittent aeration (IA). A comprehensive monitoring campaign was carried out to assess multiple parameters for comparing the two configurations: carbon and nutrient removal, greenhouse gas emissions, respirometric...
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A new relevant membrane application: CO2 direct air capture (DAC)
PublicationSince carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere due to human activities, strong research efforts have been developed towards capturing and decreasing its production. Unfortunately, specific processes and activities make it impossible to avoid CO2 emissions. Among the different strategies scientists propose for CO2 reduction, direct CO2 capture from the atmosphere, also known as direct air capture...
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Ultrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS) of cerium oxide-based compound
PublicationUltrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS) is an innovative sintering technique that can densify ceramics in a few seconds, dramatically reducing the carbon footprint and firing costs. In this work, the feasibility of applying UHS in Gd-doped ceria (GDC) and GDC-Er-stabilized bismuth oxide (ESB) composite powders was investigated. At high UHS currents (22-24 A), a fully dense GDC sample with a large grain size was obtained. Nonetheless,...
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Model-based identification of the dominant N2O emission pathway in a full-scale activated sludge system
PublicationActivated sludge models (ASMs), extended with an N2O emission module, are powerful tools to describe the operation of full-scale wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Specifically, such models can investigate the most contributive N2O production pathways and guide towards N2O and carbon footprint (CF) mitigation measures. A common practice is to develop and validate models using data from a single WWTP. In this study, a successfully...
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Valorization of Bioplastic Waste: A Review on Effective Recycling Routes for the Most Widely Used Biopolymers
PublicationPlastics-based materials have a high carbon footprint, and their disposal is a considerable problem for the environment. Biodegradable bioplastics represent an alternative on which most countries have focused their attention to replace of conventional plastics in various sectors, among which food packaging is the most significant one. The evaluation of the optimal end-of-life process for bioplastic waste is of great importance...
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Mathematical modelling and computer simulation of activated sludge systems.Second edition
PublicationMathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation of Activated Sludge Systems – Second Edition, provides, from the process engineering perspective, a comprehensive and up-to-date overview regarding various aspects of the mechanistic (“white box”) modelling and simulation of advanced activated sludge systems performing biological nutrient removal. In the new edition of the book, a special focus is given to nitrogen removal and an overview...
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Comparative Analysis of the Coffee and Cocoa Industry By-Products on the Performance of Polyethylene-Based Composites
PublicationThe application of plant-based by-products from the food industry as minimally processed functional fillers for polymeric composites is an increasingly popular trend among researchers and manufacturers. While minimizing the preprocessing of lignocellulosic fillers leads to an increase in the sustainability of the overall composite and a decrease of the carbon footprint, filler modification is usually indispensable to obtaining...
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Comparative Analysis of the Cofee and Cocoa Industry By‑Products on the Performance of Polyethylene‑Based Composites
PublicationThe application of plant-based by-products from the food industry as minimally processed functional fillers for polymeric composites is an increasingly popular trend among researchers and manufacturers. While minimizing the preprocessing of lignocellulosic fillers leads to an increase in the sustainability of the overall composite and a decrease of the carbon footprint, filler modification is usually indispensable to obtaining...
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Pyrolysis of Waste Biomass: Technical and Process Achievements, and Future Development-A Review
PublicationPyrolysis has been applied in the human economy for many years, and it has become a significant alternative to the production of chemical compounds, including biofuels. The article fo-cuses mostly on recent achievements in the technical and processing aspects of pyrolysis. The aim of the review is to present the latest research on the process of waste biomass pyrolysis to fuel production. The paper describes the mechanisms of...
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The smartest location for an eco-district– investigation of urban spatial energy efficiency
Publicationncreasing awareness concerning environmental aspects of spatial and architectural planning led to more deliberated projects of eco-districts. Located all over the world and constantly being improved, apart from excellent energetical parameters, most of them have one specific characteristic in common, which is location in the outskirts. The aim of this article was to understand the importance of ecological district location depending...
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Eco-friendly modification of bitumen: The effects of rubber wastes and castor oil on the microstructure, processability and properties
PublicationThe bitumen industry in the European Union is facing several difficulties, including rising demand, unstable oil supply, rising prices for synthetic polymer modifiers, and a focus on lowering carbon footprint. Bitumen modification with crumb rubber (CR) is one of the most promising solution to these challenges. However, CR-modified bitumen have poor processability and low storage stability. To overcome these flaws we are introducing...
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Renewable Resources for Polyurethanes and Polyurethane Composites: A Review
PublicationEach year, more than two million tons of polyurethane is produced in the EU by reacting isocyanates with polyols made from fossil fuel. In addition, there are appreciable quantities of petroleum based functional additives applied in the industry nowadays for both polyols and polyurethane materials. It is therefore of key importance to develop sustainable economically viable polyols with enhanced functionalities, and thereby reducing...
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Electrochemical oxidation of landfill leachate using boron-doped diamond anodes: pollution degradation rate, energy efficiency and toxicity assessment
PublicationElectrochemical oxidation (EO), due to high efficiency and small carbon footprint, is regarded as an attractive option for on-site treatment of highly contaminated wastewater. This work shows the effectiveness of EO using three boron-doped diamond electrodes (BDDs) in sustainable management of landfill leachate (LL). The effect of the applied current density (25–100 mA cm−2) and boron doping concentration (B/C ratio: 500 ppm, 10,000...
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Integrating conventional nitrogen removal with anammox in wastewater treatment systems: Microbial metabolism, sustainability and challenges
PublicationThe various forms of nitrogen (N), including ammonium (NH4+), nitrite (NO2−), and nitrate (NO3−), present in wastewaters can create critical biotic stress and can lead to hazardous phenomena that cause imbalances in biological diversity. Thus, biological nitrogen removal (BNR) from wastewaters is considered to be imperatively urgent. Therefore, anammox-based systems, i.e. partial nitrification and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (PN/anammox)...
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An algorithm for selecting a machine learning method for predicting nitrous oxide emissions in municipal wastewater treatment plants
PublicationThis study presents an advanced algorithm for selecting machine learning (ML) models for nitrous oxide (N2O) emission prediction in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) employing the activated sludge process. The examined ML models comprised multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS), support vector machines (SVM), and extreme gradient boosting (XGboost). The study explores the concept that involves new criteria to select the...
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Blowing Kinetics, Pressure Resistance, Thermal Stability, and Relaxation of the Amorphous Phase of the PET Container in the SBM Process with Hot and Cold Mold. Part II: Statistical Analysis and Interpretation of Tests
PublicationThe technology of filling drinks without preservatives (such as fresh juices, iced tea drinks, and vitaminized drinks) is carried out using hot filling. Mainly due to the production costs and lower carbon footprint, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles are increasingly used in this technology. In this paper, the main aim is to describe and interpret the results of statistical analysis of the influence of the temperature of...
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Blowing Kinetics, Pressure Resistance, Thermal Stability, and Relaxation of the Amorphous Phase of the PET Container in the SBM Process with Hot and Cold Mold. Part I: Research Methodology and Results
PublicationThe technology of filling drinks without preservatives (such as fresh juices, iced tea drinks, vitaminized drinks) is carried out using hot filling. Mainly due to the production costs and lower carbon footprint, polyethylene terephthalate bottles, commonly called PET, are increasingly used in this technology. In this paper, the main aim is to describe the statistical analysis methodology of the influence of the temperature of the...
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Novel structure and design of compact UWB slot antenna
PublicationIn this paper, a novel structure of a compact UWB slot antenna is presented along with a simulation-driven design optimization algorithm for adjusting geometry parameters of the device. Our primary objective is to obtain small footprint of the structure while maintaining its acceptable electrical performance. It is achieved by introducing sufficiently large number of geometry degrees of freedom, including increased number of parameterized...
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Objective relaxation algorithm for reliable simulation-driven size reduction of antenna structure
PublicationThis letter investigates reliable size reduction of antennas through electromagnetic-driven optimization. It is demonstrated that conventional formulation of the design task by direct footprint miniaturization with imposing constraints on electrical performance parameters may not lead to optimum results. The reason is that—in a typical antenna structure—only a few geometry parameters explicitly determine the antenna footprint,...
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Size-Reduction-Oriented Design of Compact CPW-Fed UWB Monopole Antenna
PublicationA structure and design optimization of compact CPW-fed UWB monopole antenna is presented. Explicit size reduction through constrained numerical optimization of all relevant geometry parameters of the structure leads to a very small footprint of only 321 mm2. At the same time, a very wide antenna bandwidth is achieved from 3.1 GHz to 17 GHz.
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The Way One Defines Specification Matters: On the Performance Criteria for Efficient Antenna Optimization in Aggregated Bi-Objective Setups
PublicationDesign of antenna structures for real-world applications is a challenging task that often involves addressing multiple design requirements at a time. Popular solution approaches to this class of problems include utilization of composite objectives. Although configuration of such functions has a significant effect on the cost and performance of the optimization, their specific structure is normally determined based on engineering...
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Novel structure and size-reduction-oriented design of microstrip compact rat-race coupler
PublicationIn this paper, a novel structure of a miniaturized microstrip rat-race coupler has been proposed. Surrogate-based optimization procedures are applied to explicitly reduce the coupler size while maintaining equal power split at the operating frequency of 1 GHz and sufficient bandwidth for return loss and isolation characteristics. The optimization is performed using the objective function with four penalty components. The footprint...
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Highly-Miniaturized Microfluidically-Based Frequency Reconfigurable Antenna Diplexer Employing Half-Mode SIRW
PublicationThis article introduces a super-miniaturized frequency reconfigurable antenna diplexer based on microfluidic techniques. The proposed structure is developed using a half-mode substrate-integrated rectangular waveguide (HMSIRW). The antenna architecture consists of two HMSIRW cavities loaded with L-shaped slots, which are excited by two microstrip feedlines to realize two distinct radiating frequency bands. The footprint of the...
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Size reduction of ultra-wideband antennas with efficiency and matching constraints
PublicationAntenna design is a multifaceted task that involves handling of various performance figures concerning both electrical performance of the structure as well as its geometry. Simultaneous control of several objectives through rigorous optimization is very challenging and virtually impossible through conventional approaches such as parameter sweeping. In this work, we investigate size reduction of ultra‐wideband antenna structures...
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Millimeter Wave Retrodirective Van Atta Arrays in LTCC Technology
PublicationThe millimeter wave Van Atta arrays, intended for chipless RFID applications and fabricated in LTCC technology, are presented in this paper. The arrays are designed for 24 GHz and 60 GHz bands. The method for an easy modification of the RCS characteristic by increasing the number of single-dimensional arrays, intended for increasing the RCS level, is also presented. The LTCC manufacturing process is described in detail. The fabricated...
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Novel Structure and EM-Driven Design of Small UWB Monopole Antenna
PublicationA novel structure of a small UWB monopole antenna is presented. In our approach, a compact size is achieved by means of a meander line for current path enlargement as well as the two parameterized slits that introduce additional degrees of freedom helping to ensure good impedance matching. The antenna design is carried out using surrogate-based optimization involving variable-fidelity EM simulations. This allows us to simultaneously...
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A Concept and Design Optimization of Compact Planar UWB Monopole Antenna
PublicationA novel structure concept of a compact UWB monopole antenna is introduced together with a low-cost design optimization procedure. Reduced footprint is achieved by introduction of a protruded ground plane for current path increase and a matching transformer to ensure wideband impedance matching. All geometrical parameters of the structure are optimized simultaneously by means of surrogate based optimization involving variable-fidelity...