1,721,152 research outputs found
European Strategies Concerning Wastes from the Automotive Industry. A Focus on the Non-Ferrous Scrap Recovery
No full textDisposal of cars and light commercial vehicles at the end of their operational lives (end of life vehicles – ELVs) is estimated to generate over 10 million tonnes of material requiring treatment and disposal in 2005 within the EU. This volume is projected to increase to 14 million tonnes by 2015 as the number and average weight of vehicles increases.
The problems created by the generation of ELV waste arising have been addressed by Directive 2000/53/EC (the ‘ELV Directive’); which aims to reduce the amount of hazardous waste, increase the re-use, recycling and recovery of materials from ELVs and to improve the environmental performance of operators involved in the production and maintenance of vehicles and in the treatment of ELVs.
Post-shredder techniques in order to recover mainly the non-ferrous fraction are presented
Integrated Waste Management: Towards a European Recycling Society
No full textA great effort is required from EU Countries to move to a real recycling society. Waste management in many cases is still performed widely without an integrated strategy, and it results in unsustainable resource consumption, in terms of raw materials, energy and useful land.
However, there are tools, technologies and strategies which could lead the process to a more (if not absolutely) sustainable future. In particular, the application of Life Cycle concepts could really foster an enhanced knowledge of industrial activities and products, allowing a deeper detection of the most impacting steps, with positive consequences from environmental, economical and social perspectives.
Furthermore, many tools are available to assess not only the environmental impact from a global point of view, but also to understand the possible effects on the nearby areas and to the population living in the vicinity of a pollution source.
Scientific, technical and managerial knowledge which has been reached at present, could act synergistically to greatly improve the situation of many European and Developing Countries, which could benefit in a quick time of an advanced implementation of these tools
Chemical analyses of heavy metal contamination in sediments of the Venice lagoon and toxicological implications
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Bioliquefaction as a biorefinery’s approach for the production of natural bioactive compounds for functional cosmetics
No full textIn Europe the agro industrial wastes are estimated to be as much as 250 million Tons/year. In the Mediterranean area the more abundant agro industrial wastes are related to cereals, grapes and olives transformations. This leads to a production of 2,3 million Tons from the winemaking production and 1,2 million Tons from the olive oil production and only the 25 % of these wastes is reused somehow. Their special functional properties such as biocompatibility, potential biodegradability, non-toxicity and a favourable CO2 balance make these wastes as renewable raw materials of fine chemicals to be used as such or to be transformed to synthetic products or for bio-fuel production in an Integrated Use Policy. Several phytochemicals (i.e., folic acid, L-ascorbic acid, oligoelements, carotenoids, vitamins, sterols and phenols) represent high value compounds such as the phenols from vegetables, known as biophenols, which present an ubiquitous nature in terrestrial higher plants and ferns while they are essentially absent in lower organisms and in animals. Biophenols as chemical defence agents of the plants show specific bioactivities and antioxidant properties to be used in several fields such as cosmetics, cosmetoceutical, nutraceutical and fine chemistry
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Eco-designed product for an environmental friendly ink
No full textThe environmental impact of both a product and a process is generally evaluated by an approach “from bottom to up” in which the management of the environmental damage of the product during its life cycle is applied. However, the product sustainability should be preventive getting-in-ready new processes which is able to avoid the environment damage taking substantial changes of both the product and the process. The eco-design represents a fundamental tool for this approach in which each step for the realization of a product is studied using a concept of sustainability.
In this context we have development of a new ink for office inkjet technology with a reduced environmental impact using an eco-design approach. The life cycle of the product considered the three main production lines characterizing the printed paper in office such as: ink production, cartridge production and paper production including their recoveries and reuses.
LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) was used to identify the critical points on which an eco-design of the product was developed
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