Dynamic Green Growth Assessment of China’s Industrial System with an Improved SBM Model and Global Malmquist Index

This study proposes a method for resource management and optimisation in the industrial sector of China. Differing from previous research on the green assessment of industrial systems focusing on “black box” evaluation, our approach contributes to the two-stage structure of an industrial system that consists of an industrial production process and a pollution treatment process. The corresponding network slack-based model (SBM) is proposed to analyse the performance of China’s provincial industry sector. Based on our network SBM, the global Malmquist index is built to analyse the total factor productivity changes of system and individual processes to evaluate the consistency of sustainable development where dynamic green growth assessment is realized. The results show that the whole system and its pollution treatment process performance are poor and disorganised, while the industrial production process maintains a stable ranking for the 30 regions in China. We find that the main cause of this phenomenon is the variable technical efficiency change in the 30 regions, which reflects the immaturity of the management of the pollution treatment process. System performance is also highly related to regionalism.

Evaluation of Farmers satisfaction with Ecological Governance and its improvement path

As the participants and stakeholders of rural ecological governance, the evaluation of farmers’ satisfaction plays an important role in improving the performance of government ecological governance. Based on the criteria of ecological civilization construction and customer satisfaction, this paper constructs an evaluation system of farmers’ ecological governance satisfaction, which includes 34 indicators. Factor analysis is used to classify indicators, and IPA model is used to analyze the ecological governance plates that affect satisfaction. The research shows that the comprehensive satisfaction of rural ecological governance farmers in four towns of Changde City, Hunan Province is 3.6, which is basically recognized by farmers. The factors that farmers’ demand is strong but does not meet the expectations are sewage treatment, chemical fertilizer and pesticide pollution treatment, ecological legal system implementation, government investment and other indicators. The evaluation section of restriction satisfaction mainly focuses on ecological environment, institutional culture and infrastructure, and finally puts forward suggestions from three aspects: ecological environment, infrastructure and farmers’ sense of participation.

Assessing environmental efficiency of China’s industry system using two-stage range-adjusted measure model

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the industrial production efficiency, pollution treatment efficiency, total factor energy efficiency and water efficiency in China with the consideration of technological innovation. This study also explores the distribution proportion of technological innovation between industrial production substage and pollution treatment substage.Design/methodology/approachA nonparametric method, data envelopment analysis (DEA), is used as the model foundation of this study. Specifically, a novel two-stage range-adjusted measure (RAM-DEA) with shared inputs is constructed to analyze the China’s industrial system. In this study, the panel data of 30 provinces from 2008 to 2015 are used.FindingsThis study found that although the current environmental regulation reduced the efficiency of industrial production, it could significantly improve the pollution treatment level. However, the lack of pollution treatment capacity was still an obstacle for development of China's industrial system. Compared with the total factor energy efficiency, the total factor water efficiency had more room for improvement. The optimal distribution of technological innovation in the two substages performed little change and the distribution roughly followed the “three-seven principle”.Practical implicationsMore attention should be paid to improve the pollution treatment level and total factor water efficiency. And more R&D expenditure should be used in the industrial production substage in the eastern coastal areas, while in the inland areas, more R&D expenditure should be used in the pollution treatment substage.Originality/valueThis study proposed a model to environmental efficiency score with considering interval data under two-stage evaluation structure, which could strengthen the theory and expand the application scope of DEA approach.

Treatment of Flue Gas from an Infectious Waste Incinerator using the Ozone System

Recently, levels of air pollution caused by exhaust gases from infectious waste combustion have been rising at a startling rate. Pollutant gases such as carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have numerous health implications when unsafe amounts are released into the atmosphere. Thus, Pollution Control Systems (PCS) and Gas Cleaner Systems (GCS) play an important role in industries and the monitoring of incinerators. This research evaluated the GCS of rotary kilns in medical facilities located in the Northeast of Thailand. Data was collected from various sites, analyzed, and examined. Furthermore, Ozone (O3) technology was applied to the rotary kiln allowing for the collection of new information on the pollution treatment systems. O3 technology was installed along with the Wet Scrubber System (WSS) catalyzing the oxidation of O3 and pollutant gases. In addition, a chiller was added to control and stabilize the temperature of the water. After the water temperature was controlled, the concentration of O3 increased resulting in an efficient pollution treatment system. Levels of pollutant gas emission were found to be beneath control standards of both Thailand and those of the U.S. EPA. TSP content was reduced significantly from 22.0 mg/m³ to 3.4 mg/m³ (97%), CO content from 13.6 mg/m³ to 1.7 mg/m³ (96%), and NO₂ content fell from 16.3 (mg/m³) to 2.0 mg/m³ (99%). It is clear that the rotary kiln and Ozone technology should be used together in order to create a new and far more effective method of pollution treatment in small and mid-sized cities of Thailand.

Spatial Optimization Layout of Best Management Practices through SWAT and Interval Fractional Programming Under Uncertainty

Uncertainty in nature and human society affect pollution control efficiency and the rationality of the scheme of spatial optimization layout of best management practices (BMP) for agricultural non-point-source (NPS) pollution treatment. Based on this idea, the study innovatively develops a mathematical model that integrates soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) model and interval fractional programming. The advantage of the model are the following: (1) ability to process a BMP spatial optimization layout in watershed in uncertain situations, (2) ability to effectively reflect the uncertain factors involved in the scheme without having to set all the variables as uncertain factors, and (3) results are in the form of schemes in upper and lower limit scenarios, thereby reflecting the limit of uncertainty impact on the schemes. The results of this study can provide decision-makers with a wide range of optional schemes. This study examines how to set up the BMP spatial optimal layout scheme for agricultural non-point-source pollution treatment under the influence of uncertain factors. The proposed method is universal and can be extended to other cases.

Immobilization of TiO2 Nanoparticles in Hydrogels Based on Poly(Methyl Acrylate) and Succinamide Acid for the Photodegradation of Organic Dyes

Hydrogels have excellent properties that make them ideally suited as host matrices for the immobilization of photoreactive materials such as TiO2 nanoparticles that serve as catalysts in the photodegradation of organic dyes, which is of great importance in practical water pollution treatment applications. However, the application of hydrogels for this purpose remains poorly studied. The present study addresses this issue by developing two types of hydrogels based on poly(methyl acrylate) and succinamide acid with embedded TiO2 nanoparticles for use as photocatalysts in the photodegradation of organic dyes. The results of the analysis demonstrate that the TiO2 nanoparticles are distributed uniformly in the hydrogel matrices, and the hydrogels maintain their original structures after use. The photodegradation efficiencies of the developed TiO2-hydrogels are demonstrated to be reasonably close to that of freely distributed TiO2 nanoparticles in solution for four different organic dyes. In addition, the results of degradation-regeneration cycling tests demonstrate that immobilizing the TiO2 nanoparticles into the hydrogels greatly reduces their loss during utilization, and the photocatalysts can be easily reused. In fact, the two TiO2-hydrogels retain reasonably high photocatalytic degradation performance after four degradation-regeneration cycles.