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Resources, Conservation and Recycling
Pergamon
Resources, Conservation and Recycling

Pergamon

0921-3449

Resources, Conservation and Recycling/Journal Resources, Conservation and RecyclingEI
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    Potential contributions of wind and solar power to China's carbon neutrality

    Liu, LaibaoWang, YangWang, ZhengLi, Shuangcheng...
    9页
    查看更多>>摘要：China's goal of being carbon-neutral by 2060 requires a green electric power system dominated by renewable energy. However, the potential of wind and solar alone to power China remains unclear, hindering the holistic layout of the energy development plan. Here, after taking temporal matching of supply and demand (60 min), land use, and government policy into account and assuming lossless transmission, we demonstrate that deploying wind and solar capacity of 2495 and 2674 GW, respectively, within flexible and optimized grids can meet ~67% of electricity demands by all society sectors for 2050 (~6.3% curtailment rate), even without other costly power sources or storage. Spatially explicit configurations of the grids are provided simultaneously to support this achievement. The resulting green electricity supply of 10.4 PWh per year help secure China's carbon-neutral goal and reduces 2.08 Mt SO2 and 1.97 Mt NOx emissions annually. Our findings recommend policymakers accelerate exploiting complementary wind and solar power as the dominant source of energy.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Online-learning-aided optimization and interpretation of sugar production from oil palm mesocarp fibers with analytics for industrial applications

    Li, JieWang, XiaonanYang, Kun-LinLee, Song Han...
    13页
    查看更多>>摘要：Conversion of oil palm mesocarp fibers (MF) into fermentable sugar through catalytic pretreatment coupled with enzymatic hydrolysis is a promising solution for biomass valorization. However, lack of understanding of the complicated conversion process and optimization of critical reaction conditions limits the efficacy of the sugar production (SP). In this study, we aim to develop an online framework incorporating orthogonal experimental design and machine learning (ML) algorithm to optimize important conditions and identify their interaction impacts on overall sugar yield from MF. The results show that both solid reduction (SR) and sugar conversion (SC) increase to 73.85% and 51.91% from ML-based optimization with relative errors of 20.58%+/- 0.70% and 7.50%+/- 3.68% from experimental validation, respectively, after two rounds of online learning. Model-based interpretation suggests that substrate and catalyst concentrations are two negatively related conditions with both SR and SC, while the solid concentration has a piecewise linear folded relationship. Moreover, potential implications on environments and economy of the presented efficiency (51.91%) of overall sugar yield were evaluated based on the amount of MF generated in Malaysia. The ML-optimized conversion strategy can save about 70 million tons of sugar cane and achieve a profit of US$ 1,450 million annually with a low operation cost (40 US$/ton MF conversion). It provides insights that help us to identify important conditions for improving conversion efficiency and promoting future industrialization.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Assessing the transition to low-carbon urban transport: A global comparison

    Li, WenxiangBao, LeiLi, YeSi, Hongyun...
    13页
    查看更多>>摘要：The transition toward low-carbon urban transport is essential for achieving the global goal of "carbon neutrality ". However, a global comparison of urban transport CO2 emissions is still insufficient due to the lack of comprehensive, comparable, and consistent data on transport at the city level. To assess the transition to low carbon urban transport globally, this study measures the total CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions per capita, and CO2 emissions per GDP of urban transport in 180 global cities using a unified method based on extensive data collected in 44 countries across 6 continents from 1960 to 2012. Then, the regional disparity and historical trend of the three indicators are analyzed to characterize the transition to low-carbon urban transport. Finally, the transition progress of low-carbon urban transport in the 180 cities is assessed with a multiphase framework that consists of pre-development phase, take-off phase, acceleration phase, and stabilization phase. The results show that the changing patterns of urban transport CO2 emissions vary across continents. There is a common trend that the peak times of CO2 emissions per GDP, CO2 emissions per capita, and total CO2 emissions usually occur in sequence. Historically, cities in North America began the low-carbon transition earliest, followed by cities in Oceania, Europe, and Asia. Currently, the transition progresses in most developing cities are relatively slow and are still at the take-off phase of transition. Overall, this study can help cities better manage the transition to low carbon urban transport for the goal of "carbon neutrality ".
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Environmental impacts of plastic packaging of food products

    Kan, MengqingMiller, Shelie A.
    11页
    查看更多>>摘要：Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used widely to compare the relative impacts of different packaging materials for a specific food product, but few studies evaluate how a single packaging material contributes to a variety of food items. Plastic is a common material used for food packaging. This study conducts an analysis of 28 studies that conduct an LCA of food products to quantify the impact of plastic packaging relative to the total life cycle impact of food products. For most of the 13 environmental indicators reported, plastic packaging is responsible for less than 10% of total life cycle emissions of 23 out of the 30 foods studied. Relative packaging emissions tend to be higher for liquids and food products packaged in small quantities, although the absolute values of energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are small. To make LCA results more accessible to non-scientific audiences, this study compares the results to a reference value of the emissions of vehicle travel. The environmental impact caused by the packaging from per capita annual food consumption is less than the environmental impact of per capita daily vehicle travel for most food products analyzed, although annual beverage consumption can be responsible for the equivalent impact of 76 miles of driving.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Material demand, and environmental and climate implications of Australia's building stock: Current status and outlook to 2060

    Soonsawad, NatthanijMartinez, Raymundo MarcosSchandl, Heinz
    12页
    查看更多>>摘要：The construction and maintenance of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings are associated with a significant environmental footprint. Resource efficiency and innovation in the built infrastructure sector are essential for achieving sustainable development goals, and timely information is required to support sustain ability policies in cities and towns. Therefore, we estimated the material and environmental footprint of Australian residential, commercial, and industrial buildings in 2016. Our analysis combines spatially explicit gross floor area (GFA) data, building materials per GFA for eleven building types in two construction periods, and estimates of key building materials' emissions, energy, and water footprint. We estimated the material footprint of 8.8 million buildings at 3.8 billion tonnes with associated emissions of 1,804 million tonnes of CO(2)e and consumption of 24,218 terajoules (TJ) of energy and 31.5 billion litres of water. Concrete accounts for 59% of the material footprint, followed by sand and stone, ceramics, and timber with 23%, 8%, and 4%, respectively. Most materials, 70.7%, are in residential buildings, while commercial and industrial buildings account for 24.7% and 4.6%, respectively. By 2060, the projected material demand for new buildings and replacing ageing buildings ranges from 4.3 to 7.5 billion tonnes for alternative population growth scenarios. The upper range of the demand signals a two-fold increase in building materials and associated environmental impacts by 2060. Considering this, if Australia does not change the way construction materials are produced and buildings are designed towards sustainable outcomes, the country may not be able to achieve its net-zero emissions target by 2050.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Simulation of dual systems of greywater reuse in high-rise buildings for energy recovery and potential use in irrigation

    Fershtman, ErezGal, ZoharHadad, EdenSilberman, Ido...
    10页
    查看更多>>摘要：As the demand for new and green energy sources continues to increase, freshwater resources are under increasing pressure, prompting the use of nonconventional production alternatives. Greywater can be used for human, agricultural and green purposes; however, it can also be used for environmentally friendly energy generation. Greywater disposed from high-rise buildings (over 100 m in height) is an additional alternative that can be utilized for energy generation and subsequently also for agricultural and/or ornamental irrigation. This manuscript demonstrates options among the many available possibilities for producing energy from free falling greywater in high-rise buildings (HRBs'). The idea is to install turbines on different levels of the building to generate energy and use it immediately in the building itself. Although the amount of energy produced is limited according to preliminary assessments, extra work is required to improve the recovery systems. The results demonstrated many existing alternatives for turbines locations, referencing to a countless number of storage places and turbine types. The special purpose WaterGEMS simulation software was chosen for the analysis.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Material flow, economic and environmental life cycle performances of informal electronic waste recycling in a Thai community

    Neitzel, Richard L.Nambunmee, KowitHischier, RolandJindaphong, Siripond...
    12页
    查看更多>>摘要：The informal e-waste recycling sector has potential for both harmful environmental releases and environmental benefits associated with avoided emissions from recovered materials. Four household appliances (washing machine, refrigerator, Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) television, fan) were selected for a combined Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis of their end-of-life treatment. Data collection took place in an informal e-waste recycling community in Thailand, recording the weight of materials recovered for each appliance, along with the number of each appliance recycled for one entire village. The LCA determined the avoided emissions and damages (human health, ecosystem quality, climate change, and resource use) per kg material recovered, per product, and for an entire recycling community, with a benefit of 2.7 to 25.4 kg CO2 eq avoided per product piece. Informal e-waste recycling appears relatively efficient in material recovery and economically beneficial. Recyclers recovered 93% or more of the original mass of the products. Just over 460,000 kg of waste devices were processed each year, with a net value added of 2.1 million Thai Baht. Each year, the normalized environmental net benefits amount to 0.2 DALYs for human health, 60,000 kg CO2 eq in climate change impacts, and nearly 400,000 MJ in avoided resource damages each month. Informal e-waste recycling was found to have net benefits in terms of avoided emissions, in particular due to recovery of PCBs, copper, steel and plastic with the exception of improper disposal of hazardous materials of lead in landfilled CRT screens and burned cables.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Sustainable phosphorus supply by phosphorus recovery from steelmaking slag: a critical review

    Yu, HuafangMiki, TakahiroMatsubae, KazuyoSasaki, Yasushi...
    12页
    查看更多>>摘要：Phosphorus is essential for agriculture and industry and is a non-renewable resource. In spite of such importance of the resource, high-grade phosphate rock deposits are rapidly being depleted and claim that economically available deposits may be exhausted entirely within a century. Therefore, finding alternative phosphorus re-sources is urgent for sustainable phosphorus supply. Steelmaking slag is an attractive secondary phosphorus resource from both quantity and quality viewpoints. Its advantages as alternative phosphorus include relatively high phosphorus content, sufficient supply, fairly fixed composition with slight contamination, and similar thermochemical properties as primary phosphate rock. To promote the understanding of phosphorus recovery from steelmaking slags, (1) the thermodynamic properties of phosphorus in steelmaking slags, (2) the enrichment of phosphorus-rich part from steelmaking slags, and (3) the extraction of phosphorus by pyro-and hydro-metallurgical processes are reviewed. Moreover, the economic aspects of phosphorus recovery from steel-making slag are discussed, the approaches to promote the resource efficiency of phosphorus recovery are proposed.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Environmental costs of abiotic resource demand for the EU's low-carbon development

    Arendt, RosalieBach, VanessaFinkbeiner, Matthias
    10页
    查看更多>>摘要：Low-carbon development is one of the main goals of the European Green New Deal, but the European Union relies on many raw materials to realize it. This study quantifies the environmental impact of projected abiotic resource demands for the low-carbon development of the EU in 2050 based on lifecycle assessment coupled with environmental costs. We account for damages caused by greenhouse gasses, land use, non-renewable resource depletion, and freshwater consumption. The total environmental costs of the materials needed for low-carbon development in 2050 range from euro13.1 billion to euro74.8 billion, with euro38.9 billion as the medium estimate. These costs seem substantial, but represent only 3.7% of the costs that the EU generates due to its current ter-ritorial carbon emission level. Based on our findings, materials for EV batteries cause 45.8% of the costs. The analysis showed that the damages are dominated by associated carbon emissions in mining and processing (47.5%) and abiotic resource depletion (45.1%), mainly induced by increased demand for nickel, iron, copper, and aluminum. Additionally, we were able to trace the geographical distribution of the impacts. Our model assigns the highest absolute environmental costs of the EU's low-carbon development to China, the U.S.A., India, and Saudi Arabia. The highest relative costs compared to GDP are paid by Guinea and Gabon. We conclude that responsible consumption strategies for the assessed materials should be established to enable low-carbon development with minimum environmental costs. This will be facilitated by the approach developed here.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier

    Country-specific carbon footprint and cumulative energy demand of metallurgical grade silicon production for silicon photovoltaics

    Heidari, Seyed M.Anctil, Annick
    11页
    查看更多>>摘要：The photovoltaic (PV) industry requires high-quality silica sand to produce metallurgical-grade silicon (MG-Si) for silicon PV (Si PV). However, high-quality deposits are scarce, and using lower-quality resources may increase the carbon footprint and cumulative energy demand (CED) of Si PV modules. The environmental impact of quartz mining and silica sand extraction for PV has not been updated in over 15 years. It's not representative of current methods used for low-quality sand and is not country-specific. As a result, PV production's environmental impact might be underestimated. We used life-cycle assessment to evaluate the carbon footprint and CED of quartz mining, silica sand extraction, and MG-Si production for high-quality (> 98% silica), industrial-grade (95% silica), and low-quality (65% silica) quartz deposits, which are necessary to calculate Si PV's energy and carbon payback time. The carbon footprint per metric ton of silica sand extraction increased from 22.7 kg CO2eq for high-quality quartz to 47.9 for industrial-grade and 86.7 for low-quality. China currently uses foreign industrial-grade quartz but plans to use low-quality domestic resources, which could increase the carbon footprint of producing one kg MG-Si from 12.1 to 16.5 kg CO2eq. The CED could increase from 188 to 286 MJ. We also investigated illegal mining's environmental impact. The carbon footprint and CED of MG-Si production decreased by 26 to 60% for illegal mines compared to legal mines. Illegal MG-Si production can be cheaper and have a lower carbon footprint, and therefore, third-party-supply-chain verifications are essential to ensure that PV doesn't contribute to the problem.
      原文链接:
    • NSTL
    • Elsevier