Impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita Le cause e le responsabilita dei cambiamenti climatici sono state trattate sul numero di ottobre della rivista Cda. Approfondiamo l’argomento presentando il documento: “Cambiamenti climatici 2007: impatti, adattamento e vulnerabilita” votato ad aprile 2007 dal secondo gruppo di lavoro del Comitato Intergovernativo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Si tratta del secondo di tre documenti che compongono il quarto rapporto sui cambiamenti climatici.

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Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

Progress and recent trends in biodiesel fuels

Advancements in development and characterization of biodiesel: A review

The state of desalination and brine production: A global outlook.

Environmental performance of construction waste: Comparing three scenarios from a case study in Catalonia, Spain

Environmental assessment of urban wastewater reuse: Treatment alternatives and applications

Biodiesel is a clean renewable fuel with many environmental advantages. One of the most important is its good biodegradability and ability to dissolve crude oil and its derivatives. In this paper, we used the CO2 evolution test to study the biodegradability of biodiesel and its mixtures with fossil diesel fuel and gasoline. The biodegradability of biodiesel was higher than 98% after 28 days, while for diesel fuel and gasoline it was 50% and 56%, respectively. In all the cases, biodegradability increased with the addition of biodiesel. To evaluate the synergic effect, the experimental results for the mixtures were compared with a linear combination of the biodegradability values for the pure compounds. The synergic effect was positive in all the cases, demonstrating that biodiesel enhances the biodegradability of both diesel fuel and gasoline by means of cometabolism. The density and viscosity of the mixtures were also evaluated to determine the possibility of collecting them from an affected area. Although both properties increased with the addition of biodiesel, in all the cases the density was lower than that of water and the viscosity was low enough to allow pumpability.

Synergic effects of biodiesel in the biodegradability of fossil-derived fuels

Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to evaluate the environmental profile of a product or process from its origin to its final destination. In this paper we used LCA to evaluate the current situation of a wastewater treatment plant and identify improvement alternatives. Currently, the highest environmental impacts are caused by the stages of the plant with the highest energy consumption, the use of biogas from anaerobic digestion (95% burned in torch) and the final destination of the sludge (98.6% for agricultural use and 1.4% for compost). We propose four alternatives for biogas applications and five alternatives for sludge applications and compare them to the current situation. The alternatives were incorporated in a decision support system to identify and prioritize the most positive environmental option. Using biogas to produce electricity or a combination of electricity and heat provided the best environmental options since the energy produced would be enough to supply all the stages of t...

Jorgelina Pasqualino

Papers

Environmental performance of construction waste: Comparing three scenarios from a case study in Catalonia, Spain

Environmental assessment of urban wastewater reuse: Treatment alternatives and applications

Synergic effects of biodiesel in the biodegradability of fossil-derived fuels

LCA as a decision support tool for the environmental improvement of the operation of a municipal wastewater treatment plant.

Environmental assessment of urban water cycle on Mediterranean conditions by LCA approach