United States Environmental Protection Agency

About: United States Environmental Protection Agency is a government organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Environmental exposure. The organization has 13873 authors who have published 26902 publications receiving 1191729 citations. The organization is also known as: EPA & Environmental Protection Agency.

Daily mortality and PM10 pollution in Utah Valley.

Abstract: The association between daily mortality and respirable particulate pollution (PM10) in Utah County was assessed from April 1985 through December 1989. Poisson regression analysis was used to regress daily death counts on PM10 pollution levels, controlling for variability in the weather. A significant positive association between nonaccidental mortality and PM10 pollution was observed. The strongest association was with 5-d moving average PM10 levels, including the concurrent day and the preceding 4 d. An increase in 5-d moving average PM10 levels, equal to 100 micrograms/m3, was associated with an estimated increase in deaths per day equal to 16%. The association with mortality and PM10 was largest for respiratory disease deaths, next largest for cardiovascular deaths, and smallest for all other deaths. Mean PM10 concentrations during the study period equaled 47 micrograms/m3. The maximum 24-h and 5-d moving average PM10 levels equaled 365 and 297 micrograms/m3, respectively. Relatively low levels of sulfur dioxide, aerosol acidity, and ozone suggested an independent association between mortality and PM10. The relative risk of death increased monotonically with PM10, and the relationship was observed at PM10 levels that were well below the current National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 150 micrograms/m3.

A review of pervaporation for product recovery from biomass fermentation processes

Abstract: Although several separation technologies are technically capable of removing volatile products from fermentation broths, distillation remains the dominant technology. This is especially true for the recovery of biofuels such as ethanol. In this paper, the status of an emerging membrane-based technology, called pervaporation, for this application is reviewed. Several issues and research priorities which will impact the ability of pervaporation to be competitive for biofuel recovery from fermentation systems are identified and discussed. They include: increased energy efficiency; reduction of capital cost for pervaporation systems; longer term trials with actual fermentation broths; optimized integration of pervaporation with fermentor; synergy of performing both alcohol recovery and solvent dehydration by pervaporation with dephlegmation fractional condensation technology; and updated economic analyses of pervaporation at various biofuel production scales. Pervaporation is currently viable for biofuel recovery in a number of situations, but more widespread application will be possible when progress has been made on these issues. Published in 2005 for SCI by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.