scholarly journals Formation and assessment of ecological risks of urban landscapes in industrial cities of Belarus

Author(s):  
Galina I. Martsinkevich ◽  
Iryna I. Shchasnaya ◽  
Aliaksandr A. Karpichenka ◽  
Dzmitry S. Varabyou

The problems of the formation of hazardous natural and man-made processes in industrial cities, contributing to the emergence of environmental risks, are presented. To date, an extensive literary material has been accumulated on this problem, concerning the causes of its occurrence, analysis of the patterns of development, and the possibilities of managing risks, including the environmental ones. It has been established that the list of reasons for the formation of risks in cities lacks one of the most important factors that we have discovered – the structure of urban landscapes, which are quite large objects of urban development. To identify the role of these objects in the formation of environmental risks, the cities of Orsha and Pinsk were selected. These cities were laid down almost simultaneously at the beginning of the 11th century, but they have a different history of development. Maps of urban landscapes of cities were compiled, geochemical studies of their soil cover were carried out, geochemical and thermal anomalies of the surface were revealed, the volumes of ecosystem services (carbon absorption) by green spaces were calculated. It was found that urban landscapes perform various functions in the system of environmental risks: some of them contribute to the development of hazardous processes, others – to mitigate them. So, soil pollution with heavy metals (with an excess of the content of Pb, Cr and Cu over the MPC by 1.2–5.6 times in Pinsk), the strongest heating of the surface (8–16 °C higher than the air temperature in Pinsk and Orsha) and low carbon deposition (100–500 t per year) are typical for urban landscapes of the historical center, urban landscapes with a predominance of industrial buildings, urban landscapes for complex residential multi-storey, public and industrial buildings. Urban landscapes, in the structure of which there are elements of landscape and recreational areas of public use (parks, forest parks, squares), as well as agricultural lands and water bodies, are characterised by a low content of heavy metals in soils (below the MPC in Pinsk, below the background in Orsha), low surface temperature (2–3 °C higher than the air temperature), high volume of carbon deposition (2.6–2.8 thsd t per year). An assessment of the probability of risks associated with the described processes was carried out, which helped to find out that they correspond to the categories of «acceptable» and «neglected», options for risk management were proposed.

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-189
Author(s):  
Ioan Zaharie ◽  
Mircea Goloşie

Abstract The paper presents some conclusions regarding the identification, processing and monitoring of sites contaminated with heavy and radioactive metals. The following categories of sites have been researched: abandoned mining areas, industrial perimeters for the processing of alloys containing radioactive metals, chemical wastes from the chemical fertilizer industry, railways and run- ways that serve to locate radioactive ores, military sites with forgotten radioactive waste, abandoned mines in which chemical and radioactive materials have been deposited, civil and industrial buildings where radioactive materials were used, tourist resorts affected by anthropic and entropic pollution, cases of radioactive floods and heavy metals from food, contamination of external geographic causes. The research includes the results related to the identification, processing and monitoring of the data of more than 350 contaminated sites.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahito Ueyama ◽  
Tomoya Ando

Abstract. To evaluate CO2 emissions in urban areas and their temporal and spatial variabilities, continuous measurements of CO2 fluxes were conducted using the eddy covariance method at three locations in Sakai, Osaka, Japan. Based on the flux footprint at the measurement sites, CO2 fluxes from the three sites were partitioned into five datasets representing a dense urban center, a moderately urban area, a suburb, an urban park, and a rural area. Distinct biological uptake of CO2 was observed in the suburb, urban park, and rural areas in the daytime, whereas high emissions were observed at dense and moderate urban areas in daytime. Weekday CO2 emissions in the dense urban center and suburban area were approximately 50 % greater than during weekend and holidays, but the other landscapes did not exhibit a clear weekly cycle. Seasonal variations in the urban park, rural area, and suburban area were influenced by vegetation activities, exhibiting the lowest daily emissions or even uptakes during summer months. In contrast, the dense and moderately urban areas exhibited higher emissions in winter and summer months, when emissions significantly increased as air temperature increased in summer and air temperature decreased in winter. Irrespective of the landcover type, all urban landscapes measured in this study acted as net annual CO2 sources, with emissions ranging from 0.5 to 4.9 kg C m−2 yr−1. The magnitude of the annual CO2 emissions was negatively correlated with green fraction; areas with a smaller green fraction had higher annual CO2 emissions. Upscaled flux estimates based on the green fraction indicated that the emissions for the entire city were 3.3 kg C m−2 yr−1, which is equivalent to 0.5 Tg C yr−1 or 1.8 Mt CO2 yr−1 based on the area of the city (149.81 km2). A network of eddy covariance measurements is a powerful tool to evaluate CO2 emissions from urban areas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 2121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing Xia ◽  
Jiquan Zhang ◽  
Yanan Chen ◽  
Qing Ma ◽  
Jingyao Peng ◽  
...  

Residents in industrial cities may be exposed to potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in soil that increase chronic disease risks. In this study, six types of PTEs (Zn, As, Cr, Ni, Cu, and Pb) in 112 surface soil samples from three land use types—industrial land, residential land, and farmland—in Tonghua City, Jilin Province were measured. The geological accumulation index and pollution load index were calculated to assess the pollution level of metal. Meanwhile, the potential ecological risk index, hazard index, and carcinogenic risk were calculated to assess the environmental risks. The spatial distribution map was determined by the ordinary kriging method, and the sources of PTEs were identified by factor analysis and cluster analysis. The average concentrations of Zn, As, Cr, Ni, Cu, and Pb were 266.57, 15.72, 72.41, 15.04, 20.52, and 16.30 mg/kg, respectively. The results of the geological accumulation index demonstrated the following: Zn pollution was present in all three land use types, As pollution in industrial land cannot be neglected, Cr pollution in farmland was higher than that in the other two land use types. The pollution load index decreased in the order of industrial land > farmland > residential land. Multivariate statistical analysis divided the six PTEs into three groups by source: Zn and As both originated from industrial activities; vehicle emissions were the main source of Pb; and Ni and Cu were derived from natural parent materials. Meanwhile, Cr was found to come from a mixture of artificial and natural sources. The soil environment in the study area faced ecological risk from moderate pollution levels mainly contributed by As. PTEs did not pose a non-carcinogenic risk to humans; however, residents of the three land use types all faced estimated carcinogenic risks caused by Cr, and As in industrial land also posed high estimated carcinogenic risk to human health. The conclusion of this article provides corresponding data support to the government’s policy formulation of remediating different types of land and preventing exposure and related environmental risks.


2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Amade Halász ◽  
József Dezső ◽  
Viktoria Poor

Abstract The study is focused on environmental assessments of impacts by former briquette factory at the Nagymányok area in South Hungary. The (former) industrial zone is located in a northern valley of the Eastern Mecsek Mountains. Until the 1990s this company was the largest briquette factory in Hungary and the demolition works are still incomplete. former investigations were based on only five samples. our sampling sites were selected on the basis of the source of the contaminations and then we covered the whole area in equal distribution. We used the A1-F6 codes for the sample places. We have started from southwest to northeast. The samples were analyzed for Total Petrol Hydrocarbons (TPHs), Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and for heavy metals. The area was heavily contaminated by TPHs and moderately heavy metals (such as Cu, Cr, Zn and Pb). Highest contaminant concentrations were found around the former industrial buildings, especially between the boiler-house and the coal-pillbox. In the industrial area the mean of the detected values is below the upper limit of the legal exposure values, but among the former industrial buildings higher (e.g. toxic level) concentration values were detected in multiple samples. Based on our investigation the pollutant can be transported by wind or by water on the surface (stream bed) or underground. The hazardous material can easily reach some part of the city, therefore reclamation is necesarry.


Author(s):  
Sung Pil Yoon ◽  
Hyun Jae Kim ◽  
Byung-Tak Park ◽  
Suk Woo Nam ◽  
Jonghee Han ◽  
...  

In order to develop SOFC running on hydrocarbon fuels, we have focused on a new method of improving electrode performance and reducing carbon deposition by coating thin films of samaria-doped ceria (SDC) within the pores of electrode by a sol-gel coating technique. The SDC coating on the pores of anode made it possible to have a good stability for long-term operation due to low carbon deposition and nickel sintering. In this study, we demonstrated a new method of improving electrode performance and reducing carbon deposition by coating thin films of samaria-doped ceria (SDC) and applied the modification technique to two different types of fuel cell structures, anode-supported SOFC and comb-shaped SOFC. From our results, the maximum power density of an anode-supported cell (electrolyte; 8 mol% YSZ and thickness of 30 μm, and cathode; La0.85Sr0.15MnO3) with the modified anode was about 300 mW/cm2 at 700 °C in the mixture of methane (25%) and air (75%) as the fuel and air as the oxidant. The cell was operated for 500 h without significant degradation of cell performance. For the comb-shaped SOFCs operated in the mixed-fuels fuel cell (MFFC) conditions, the cell performance was 40 mW/cm2 at 700 °C in the CH4/O2 ratio of 1.


Minerals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liwei Yao ◽  
Xiaobo Min ◽  
Yong Ke ◽  
Yunyan Wang ◽  
Yanjie Liang ◽  
...  

Non-ferrous metal smelting enterprises produce hundreds of thousands of tons of arsenic sulfide sludge (ASS) each year in China. Most of the ASS are stored at the companies without enough preventive measures. During the storage and natural drying process, arsenic sulfide is easily oxidized, thereby causing secondary pollution and increasing environmental risks. In this paper, experiments of simulated storage were used to study the release characteristics of heavy metals. During the simulated storage, the release concentrations of As, Pb, and Cd increased rapidly at first and then slowly. Although the total amount of arsenic released was the largest, the release ratio was in the order of Cd > Pb > As. The effects of different atmospheres and conditions on the release of arsenic and heavy metals were explored. The more the H2SO4 in the sludge, the higher the release concentration, and the addition of an appropriate amount of Ca(OH)2 is beneficial for reducing the release of heavy metals. Finally, SEM, XRD and TG-DTG techniques were carried out to confirm that the release of heavy metals was caused by the oxidation process resulting from the residual H2SO4 in the ASS and the air.


2020 ◽  
Vol 166 ◽  
pp. 06007
Author(s):  
Myroslav Sanytsky ◽  
Tetiana Kropyvnytska ◽  
Stanislav Fic ◽  
Hanna Ivashchyshyn

Sustainable development depends on a consistency of interests, social, ecological and economic, and that the interests are evaluated in a balanced manner. In order to reduce CO2 emissions, the conception of decreasing clinker factor and increasing the role of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in the cementitious materials has high economical and environmental efficiency. The performance of clinkerefficient blended cements with supplementary cementitious materials were examined. The influence of superfine zeolite with increased surface energy on the physical and chemical properties of low-carbon blended cements is shown. Increasing the dispersion of cementitious materials contributes to the growth of their strength activity index due to compaction of cement matrix and pozzolanic reactions in unclincker part. In consequence of the early structure formation and the directed formation of the microstructure of the cement matrix is solving the problem of obtaining clinker-efficient concretes. Shown that low-carbon blended cements with high volume of SCMs are suitable, in principle, for producing structural concretes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 250-258
Author(s):  
Xixiang Yin ◽  
Guolan Fan ◽  
Jianjun Liu ◽  
Tenglong Jiang ◽  
Lihong Wang

1977 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Yeh ◽  
P. Y. Chen ◽  
S. Tanaka

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