Evaluation of the biogas potential of agricultural biomass waste for energy applications in Greece: A case study of the western Greece region

2020 ◽  
pp. 0734242X2097060
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Moustakas ◽  
Dimitrios Sotiropoulos ◽  
Stergios Vakalis

Agricultural biomass can be best described as the organic matter residues from farming that remain within the fields after harvesting, along with tree trimmings. From the overall Greek Energy Balance, only a small fraction consists of biomass and this has been the main driving force behind this study. Due to the numerous ongoing agricultural activities, western Greece was selected as an ideal area for a case study. As a second step, the aim was to investigate the feasibility of the current anaerobic digestion plants to utilize the total biomass as feedstock. An additional scope to provide certifiable proof of the essential rural biomass assets available. Information on the potential of agricultural biomass is provided, with a focus on the performance specifications and the social advantages, but also the soil added substances and the produced biofuels. Subsequently, two options for waste management were discussed to illustrate the possibility of generating energy. The anaerobic digestion plants available in western Greece are illustrated in detail and the yearly rate of the main agrarian biomass is evaluated to be 715,080 tons. Arable crops, mechanical plants and tree trimming are recorded as the noteworthy sources. It is estimated that the proposed anaerobic digestion system will handle the entire amount of biomass and deliver max per year electricity 775 GWh and thermal energy 1.119 GWh.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3411
Author(s):  
Clara Fernando-Foncillas ◽  
Maria M. Estevez ◽  
Hinrich Uellendahl ◽  
Cristiano Varrone

Wastewater and sewage sludge contain organic matter that can be valorized through conversion into energy and/or green chemicals. Moreover, resource recovery from these wastes has become the new focus of wastewater management, to develop more sustainable processes in a circular economy approach. The aim of this review was to analyze current sewage sludge management systems in Scandinavia with respect to resource recovery, in combination with other organic wastes. As anaerobic digestion (AD) was found to be the common sludge treatment approach in Scandinavia, different available organic municipal and industrial wastes were identified and compared, to evaluate the potential for expanding the resource recovery by anaerobic co-digestion. Additionally, a full-scale case study of co-digestion, as strategy for optimization of the anaerobic digestion treatment, was presented for each country, together with advanced biorefinery approaches to wastewater treatment and resource recovery.


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1672
Author(s):  
Ysadora A. Mirabelli-Montan ◽  
Matteo Marangon ◽  
Antonio Graça ◽  
Christine M. Mayr Marangon ◽  
Kerry L. Wilkinson

Smoke taint has become a prominent issue for the global wine industry as climate change continues to impact the length and extremity of fire seasons around the world. Although the issue has prompted a surge in research on the subject in recent years, no singular solution has yet been identified that is capable of maintaining the quality of wine made from smoke-affected grapes. In this review, we summarize the main research on smoke taint, the key discoveries, as well as the prevailing uncertainties. We also examine methods for mitigating smoke taint in the vineyard, in the winery, and post production. We assess the effectiveness of remediation methods (proposed and actual) based on available research. Our findings are in agreement with previous studies, suggesting that the most viable remedies for smoke taint are still the commercially available activated carbon fining and reverse osmosis treatments, but that the quality of the final treated wines is fundamentally dependent on the initial severity of the taint. In this review, suggestions for future studies are introduced for improving our understanding of methods that have thus far only been preliminarily investigated. We select regions that have already been subjected to severe wildfires, and therefore subjected to smoke taint (particularly Australia and California) as a case study to inform other wine-producing countries that will likely be impacted in the future and suggest specific data collection and policy implementation actions that should be taken, even in countries that have not yet been impacted by smoke taint. Ultimately, we streamline the available information on the topic of smoke taint, apply it to a global perspective that considers the various stakeholders involved, and provide a launching point for further research on the topic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vânia G. Zuin ◽  
Luize Z. Ramin ◽  
Mateus L. Segatto ◽  
Aylon M. Stahl ◽  
Karine Zanotti ◽  
...  

AbstractIncreasing demands to obtain chemicals via greener and more sustainable materials and processes introduces concepts that should be considered and applied from lab to larger scales. Obtaining bioactive chemicals from agro-industrial non-food biomass waste can combine benign techniques and bio-circular economy to reach this goal. After extraction, evaluating profitability and environmental impacts to decide whether separation – and to what extent – is necessary or not is indispensable. This could be integrated into an approach known as sufficiency, as an important criterion for sustainability. From this perspective, Brazil’s annual generation of 8 million tons of orange waste is relevant, since citrus waste has large amounts of high-value compounds, such as pectin, d-limonene and flavonoids. This case study aimed at developing and comparing green and sustainable analytical methods to obtain flavonoids from orange peel. Homogenizer, ultrasound and microwave-assisted extractions were employed using chemometric tools, considering time, sample/solvent ratio, temperature and ethanol concentration as variables to obtain extracts containing hesperidin, naringenin, hesperetin and nobiletin. The bioactive flavonoids were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC-UV). Microwave extraction was the most efficient method for obtaining the majority of flavonoids studied, six times more for hesperidin. Moreover, orange waste from different farming models showed diverse chemical profiles showing the importance of this alternative in natural product resources.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trygve Eftestøl ◽  
Lawrence D. Sherman

Background.During resuscitation of cardiac arrest victims a variety of information in electronic format is recorded as part of the documentation of the patient care contact and in order to be provided for case review for quality improvement. Such review requires considerable effort and resources. There is also the problem of interobserver effects.Objective.We show that it is possible to efficiently analyze resuscitation episodes automatically using a minimal set of the available information.Methods and Results.A minimal set of variables is defined which describe therapeutic events (compression sequences and defibrillations) and corresponding patient response events (annotated rhythm transitions). From this a state sequence representation of the resuscitation episode is constructed and an algorithm is developed for reasoning with this representation and extract review variables automatically. As a case study, the method is applied to the data abstraction process used in the King County EMS. The automatically generated variables are compared to the original ones with accuracies≥90%for 18 variables and≥85%for the remaining four variables.Conclusions.It is possible to use the information present in the CPR process data recorded by the AED along with rhythm and chest compression annotations to automate the episode review.


2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 2070 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Vassilopoulou ◽  
K. Chousianitis ◽  
V. Sakkas ◽  
B. Damiata ◽  
E. Lagios

The present study is concerned with the management of multi-thematic geo-data of Cephallonia Island, related to crustal deformation. A large amount of heterogeneous data (vector, raster, ascii files) involving geology, tectonics, topography, geomorphology and DGPS measurements was compiled. Crustal deformation was studied using GPS network consisting of '23 stations. This was installed and measured in October 2001 and re-measured during September 2003 following the Lefkas earthquake of August 2003 (Mw=6.2), and also in July 2006. With proper spatial analysis, a large number of thematic and synthetic layers and maps were produced. Simultaneously, a GIS Data base was organized in order to make an easy extraction of conclusions in specific questions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document