1,720,989 research outputs found
The Environmental and Economic Benefits of Industrial Symbiosis Between a Cement Manufacturing Plant and The Produciton of Biofuel from a Microalgal Processing Facility
No full textThe aim of this research is to assess the potential environmental impact and economic viability for the production of biodiesel from microalgae using flue gas CO2 from cement manufacturing plants and municipal wastewater as a source of water and nutrients. A theoretical Canadian case study examining the industrial symbiosis between the cement plant, wastewater treatment plant and the production of a biofuel from a co-located microalgal processing facility will be reported. The analysis will be carried out through a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) which will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each technique in the biodiesel production process. A positive environmental impact arising from the use of cement production by-products or waste, such as flue gas CO2 and waste heat for the biofuel production process have been reported. Moreover, adopting wastewater as nutrients in the microalgae cultivation are clearly critical positive benefits in the life cycle analysis. These impacts must be evaluated in combination based on operational values from realistic test case scenarios to enable informed decisions to be made in the selection of operational conditions and predicting realistic production, and treatment, performances, which can ultimately lead to the development of techno-economically viable approaches
Biofuels and heavy industry: maximizing environmental benefits associated with cement production by adding microalgae cultivation to support biofuels
No full textLife cycle approach for the sustainability assessment of intensified biorefineries
No full textIn the global push to develop bio-based products that can help meet climate-related goals, researchers have increasingly utilized life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies. These methodologies have been applied to understand environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of an existing product or process. These methods have also evolved into a powerful eco-design tool, where LCA can be applied in the initial stages of the development of a product or process, with the aim of guiding choices toward a greater sustainability. In recent years, LCA approach has expanded to include economic (life cycle cost or LCC) and social (social life cycle assessment or S-LCA) considerations, and thus it has emerged as a reference for more comprehensive assessments aimed at including the multiple dimensions of sustainability. This chapter presents the main LCA tools that can be used to assess the environmental, economic and social impact of emerging bioproducts. To properly evaluate new bioproducts requires a review of the facilities that can produce them (“biorefineries”) as well as impacts felt both upstream and downstream of the processing facility. Some of the challenges with LCA, as well as with S-LCA implementation are considered. A case study is then presented more in detail in order to demonstrate how these assessment tools can guide research and development activities in this field
Wastewater and waste CO2for sustainable biofuels from microalgae
No full textIn the new frontier of energy, biofuels will play an important role in overcoming our dependence on fossil fuels and its associated environmental impacts. In the biofuels sector, the exploitation of microalgal biomass has the potential to be beneficial, as they do not compete on land use with food crops and their cultivation systems can be designed to have a lower water footprint. Even though a number of LCAs (Life Cycle Assessment) involving biofuel production from microalgae have been reported, few of them have focused on the use of by-product streams in algal biomass production, such as wastewater or waste CO2 recovered from flue gas, which could further reduce the environmental impact of the recovered biofuels, and none have considered a combination of different by-product streams. In this paper, an LCA is applied to compare 6 alternative scenarios, where the potential environmental benefits achievable using CO2 from different sources (commercial liquid CO2, CO2 recovered from flue gas and flue gas as is) and wastewater in the cultivation of microalgae for the production of biofuels are investigated. The analysis is based on a virtual, but realistic case, using an open microalgal cultivation pond facility located in Kingston (Canada). The results indicate that the source of CO2 is the most relevant factor affecting environmental impacts, and that the direct injection of flue gas into the algal pond and the use of wastewater represent the most environmentally friendly alternative. © 2017 Elsevier B.V
Critical indicators of sustainability for biofuels: An analysis through a life cycle sustainabilty assessment perspective
No full textThe reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change poses challenges across
multiple sectors. Biofuels have been touted as a replacement for petroleum-based fuels, but policy guiding this
sector must ensure that biomass is obtained in a sustainably. In this context, Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment
(LCSA) tools have been identified as a means to conduct comprehensive impact evaluations of the biofuel sector.
The objective of this work is to highlight key environmental, economic, and social indicators currently being
assessed using LCSA, and to relate these back to the framework of Principles and Criteria (P&C) developed by the
Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) to assess the ability of LCSA approaches to effectively inform all
Principles within the RSB. 60 LCSA studies, published since 2007, were selected to include a range of biofuel
production scenarios, including various technologies and geographic settings. System boundaries and functional
units used in these studies were evaluated and compared. The ability of each study to provide quantitative
indicators related to environmental, economic, and social sustainability was tabulated. It was found that some
RSB Principles can be effectively evaluated using an LCSA approach, including Principle 3 (greenhouse gas
emissions) and Principle 10 (air quality). Most other Principles within the RSB P&C framework, however, are
only partially addressed, and Principle 11 (technology, inputs, and management of waste) is not informed in any
way by existing LCSA. The results suggest that existing LCSA studies, while expanding to consider more economic
and social sustainability considerations, are unlikely to cover all aspects of biofuel production systems and
are not sufficient to completely inform the full range of RSB Criteria. In the future, LCSA should be further
extended to help address critical aspects of sustainability, while the RSB framework should be strengthened to
employ a life cycle approach across all Principles
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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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