"I Am Root"

 All energy and chemical industries are interested in using electrofuels, or fuels made from electricity, water, and carbon or nitrogen, as alternatives to fossil fuels. This study focuses on electrofuels for transportation, some of which can be used with fleets of current cars, ships, and planes as well as existing fuelling facilities. The goal of this study was to evaluate electrofuels related papers and compile the information on costs and environmental performance. A unique situation, referred to as "bio-electrofuels," is adding hydrogen to current biomethane production (such as anaerobic digestion)  in order to produce extra or different fuels. For a variety of electrofuels and bio-electrofuels in the literature. According to the results of the harmonized calculations, bio-electrofuels are often less expensive than electrofuels made via carbon capture. Liquid bio-electro-methane, bio-electro-methanol, and bio-electro-dimenthyl ether have the lowest expenses. The regions ...

 september 20,2022 By: Amanda Sarinana  Bangladesh is know to be one of the poorest countries in South Asia (2015) with the largest river delta. Although surrounded by so much greenery, it is at the highest risk for natural disasters. Because of climate change, Bangladesh is most vulnerable to storm surges, floods, earthquakes,landslides, and cyclones. After being hit by cyclone Sidr (2007) and cyclone Alia (2009) the costal district of Barguna and Khulna observed that the frequency of natural disasters increased in their area. It has been discovered that these cyclones in theses districts have left populations with impacted socioeconomic status as well as impact to ones human health. Cycloes left the districts with little to no fieldwork left for the farmers. Most fisherman were left without jobs due to shortage in fish cause not only mental strains but health strains too. Because this country is already considered poor, these natural disasters only make living conditions har...

     Ever wonder how being a tourist affects economic, social, and environmental problems? In this post, we'll learn how to combat the tourism industry using blockchain technology. First, we must acknowledge that the tourism industry is imperative to our world economy. Most travelers consume more foreign resources such as water and food than they would at home, which causes a more significant amount of trash in other countries.       So what is this blockchain technology? It is a sort of information technology that can be used to address these problems and promote sustainable tourism around the world. Each block in the chain is a network participant's confirmation that a transaction occurred and was unaltered. Additionally, each block contains data from the one before, creating a timely series of blocks(Nakamoto,2008). Figure 1. The proposed framework(Erol et al.,2022)     In order to apply blockchain technology, three main objectives h...

 What I found interesting within this article would be the results from burning Hg-gold amalgams. It is unknown how Hg travels across regional landscapes. The mercury was being stored and deposition in a significantly affected area of artisanal gold mining in the Peruvian amazon. The gold mining received extreme high mercury inputs and have increased levels of total mercury and methylmercury in the air canopy vegetation and soils. They noticed a minimal difference between the sites and the low hg flux while the season changed. This difference was found to have come from a higher intensity within mining and dust generation which was found during the dry season. This increased deforestation and the volume of precipitation to be low while the dry season occurs. The Hg inputs that were found in the ASGM in the Peruvian Amazon are primarily deposited to the terrestrial ecosystem. The implications that the article states is that there is a large quantities of Hg that has been stored in t...

                                Figure 1: Sludge and cement stone mixture Around the world, alum sludge waste is being created by the material that is from drinking water from water treatment plants, which is being treated by aluminum salts that is an necessary coagulant that creates a large percentage of water treatment sludge (Mahmood et al., 2021). This can cause major problems in the environment, thus leading scientists to investigate the probability of reusing the alum sludge as a partial replacement of cement filler.  To conduct this experiment, the researchers used two types of mixed sludge, dried sludge that was 110°C and burned sludge that was 700°C. To verify the best amount of sludge that could be potentially used for permanent use, the researchers used different percentages of the alum sludge, from 0% to100% (Mahmood et al.,2021). Can the alum sludge make a...

Figure 1. The process of photo thermal conversion that makes possible the absorption of high viscosity crude oil from the ocean.   Over the years, there have been extremely disastrous and catastrophic oil spills in the ocean. These oil spills are very hard to clean up and cause a great disruption in the environment, considering the high viscosity and low fluidity of oil. Recently, there has been a discovery of an aerogel that has the ability to quickly absorb heavy oil by decreasing its high level of viscosity. This aerogel called SAGZM was made by using sodium alginate, which is a renewable material that has antibacterial properties and is eco friendly to the planet. It has been discovered that it has a better degree of biodegradability compa red to other oil absorbents. SAGZM is highly efficient because of its high porosity, large surface area and the fact that it is highly efficient in the conversion of photothermal energy. This is an advantage because as SAGZM absorbs energy fr...

                                          Fig. 16. Blocks appearance after the efflorescent test.   As the Earth’s population continues to rise, the need for more housing rises with it. This leads to a constantly increasing production of materials and the use of resources to make essential elements for the home’s infrastructure, such as building blocks. The typically used blocks may harm the environment as they are not eco-friendly, are energy exhausting, and are contamination emitters. Researchers have identified a way to have blocks made from waste materials to be more environmentally sustainable. Materials such as palm oil fuel ash, palm oil clinker powder, and quarry dust were used to construct the blocks. This is an effective manner to clean up the environmental contamination caused by palm oil as well as decrease the use of natural resources such as clay and sand. The...

     Energy is needed for every daily task, so why not make sure that the energy used is healthy for the planet that provides a living space to make these tasks possible? There are plenty of energy sources being used today, but are they all environmentally sustainable? The answer is no. A possible new source of energy that stood out was energy from food waste. In the United States, there is an estimated amount of 931 million tons of food that is thrown out to rot that comes from restaurants and food chains (Sridhar et al., 2021). When it comes down to fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat, 1.3 billion tons are thrown out.  There are several ways that food waste can be converted into energy. One way is incineration. Incineration is a technique that takes food waste and converts it into heat energy. This heat energy can be used to fuel heat exchangers or turbines that are used in process industries (Sridhar et al., 2021). Another way that it could be transferred into e...

By: Mia Guerrero Figure 1 Households' challenges in packaging waste management  Solid waste is the most produced trash in the country. With the higher birth rates, we see a greater consumption of world waste each year and very few get recycled. Solid waste disposal is very disorganized, from high income countries to low income countries, we see too much waste getting thrown out illegally. As for the destruction of the waste, household products are mainly thrown out in landfills or incinerated. However, some household commercial products are reused and recycled. In this study, they were able to measure the actual recovery and theoretical rate on a households' recycling and packaging waste to determine the waste generated in Kota Samarahan. Based on the results, we can see that 180.638 kg of record waste in 2019 increased by 10.75% in 2020 (Basil et al., 2022). This shows there was a significant increase in the wasted household produced, it is said to crucially increase each year...

  Figure 1: The location of the New York City Afforestation Project research plots (Oldfield et al., 2013).                Afforestation projects are commonly carried out on areas that have been converted from an urban to industrial land. However, the potential of conducting afforestation on land that has not been previously utilized such as in New York City opens the topic on soil restoration. The question in research is if urban soil quality could be improved through site preparation and management because the soil must be healthy enough to provide the necessary chemical and biological conditions for growing vegetation. The results concluded that the question was found to be probable as it improved infiltration, decomposition, mineralization, and nutrient retention of urban soil (Oldfield et al., 2014). There was a decrease in bulk density (1.4 to 0.72 g cm -3 ), a pH decrease in soil acidity (pH 7.36 to 7.04), and significant increase...

                                                                                                 Figure 1: Increase in water scarcity due to climate change.  Water resources and availability have been affected by climate change over the past years. This is due to climate change and the excess use of energy and environmental resources. In this study, researchers analyzed the effects that climate change has on water availability in Varanasi, India. They were able to find that in a period of 60 years (1941-2000), climate change had a highly negative effect on water resources. Researchers found that crop lands were mainly...

A study conducted in Sichuan Basin, China tested for carbonaceous aerosols in three different sites during the winter. It is already known that carbonaceous aerosols pose a threat to the environment, but what is not known is where they come from or their effect on light absorption. Studying carbonaceous aerosols and finding out what processes and resources are responsible for the release of particulate matter will assist scientists in finding ways to use more environmentally sustainable materials and processes. The findings of the experiments that were conducted showed that across the board, vehicle emissions were the highest contributor of Pm 2.5, or particulate matter. This is an important finding because it shows that vehicle emissions are responsible for the release of a large percentage of environmentally harmful particles. Furthermore, vehicle emissions were also found to be the highest producer of brown carbon, which is one of the primary kinds of pollutants in the area. Brown c...

https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/  👈COPY/PASTE Figure 2. Summa canister (red markers) spread in proximity of facility.  Ethylene Oxide (1,2-Epoxyethane) is a colorless and flammable gas containing two carbons and a catalytic oxygen. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) acknowledged ethylene oxide as a probable human carcinogen back in 1985, bestowing upon it a nice Inhalation Unit Risk (IUR) of 0.0001  μg/m­­ 3 . What this means is the amount of risk you may succumb to if one microgram of this EtO were placed in a cube measuring one meter in all its dimensions. Fast forward today and this intermediate molecule is still used for the manufacturing of major medical sterilization products -only now it has a realistic IUR grade of 0.03  μg/m­­ 3  (Olaguer, Robinson, et. al 2019). A section of this experimental procedure focused on monitoring, in two phases, the largest medical sterilization plant in Michigan for both known and elusive emis...

Fig 1: Schematic drawings of analyzed scenarios. There is a big interest regarding many green energy methods in order to help keep the environment in check. However, not much attention has been brought to a totally interesting and unique method of a green energy alternative. This new method involves recycling ground heat that has been accumulated due to climate change and industrialization and reusing it in order to help keep potential locations have more heat. With this concept, there are three scenarios going to be used in order to see how the recycling of heat would affect us. The first scenario is the status quo in present day. This helps determined how the heat has accumulated based on human activity. The second scenario is assuming the groundwater temperatures are already in unchanged levels, which causes there to be higher heat. The third scenario is to see how the climate change has changed with our recycled scenario, where the surface temperature will be a little different....

September 16, 2022 By: Kaitlyn Soto Spatial distribution of CO2 emissions from East Asian shipping ( Liu, H., Fu, M., Jin, X.  et al).   East Asia holds “8 of the top 10” most successful ports worldwide (2016). However, the success of these ports has significant repercussions for the people living in the area. Emissions of ocean vessels have left residents nearshore and inland with severe health defects such as respiratory diseases and cancer. The emissions also result in 24,000 anual premature deaths in East Asia (2016). The third IMO Greenhouse Gas study of 2012 found that the East Asian ports contribute about 16% of CO2 emissions (2016). That is about 11% more than their first study in 2000 which estimated the CO2 emissions to be 4.5%. The findings of this article advance environmental sustainability by providing accurate research of the emissions produced by vessels in East Asia which was not done before. Therefore, shedding light that East Asia's climate change and air po...

By: Jose D. De Leon    Figure 1 : Leaves of turnips and radishes placed in-between rows of destroyed corn     near Shelby, Nebraska. Image by CropWatch via  https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2017/cover-crop-management-among-nebraska-farm-group  The concept of growing multiple crops within one region is an ancient agricultural technique that dates back to the ancient Mesoamerican cultures, namely the Mayans, who would grow corn, beans, and squash in the same area in a technique known as the Milpa. Today, the modern conception of what crops should look like typically denote wide dearths of space between growing crops, but data shows that the crops growing in rows are typically in a low-quality soil that requires constant human interference and maintenance. However, when cover crops were implemented, the overall soil quality would increase, an increased rate of nutrient cycling, a decrease in soil erosion, and a higher moisture retention in the soil. As a whole, this ...

By: Salvador Villarreal Jr. Five sites found for waste management of rice straw residue (Khater et al., 2022). The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to find the best areas to collect and recycle crop residues to lower transportation costs and increase benefits. The rice straws of Sinbilawin center were the main focus of this study since large quantities of its waste have been burnt causing great economic losses and environmental pollution throughout the center. In this study, GIS was used to create three scenarios to design a model to select the best areas to collect rice straw: modeling of Sinbilawin center, modeling of the center's village, and modeling of the villages' best sites. The first scenario found forty sites where the cost of transfer would be very high, the second scenario found that the total lengths of the roads are not much, meaning the cost of transportation is lower and time and efforts are saved, and the third scenario showed five of the best s...

By: Anthony Vasquez Figure 1: Molecular processes (ie., electrostatic attraction, complexation, reduction, pore filling) that allow for Cr(IV) to be adsorbed by nWRTs (Hamadeen et al., 2022).     In the everchanging world of science, new saviors of natural capita have been examined over the years. Among the many, Hamadeen et al. (2022) found residuals produced from wastewater treatments can be shrunk to make nano-water treatment residuals (nWTRs), capable of chromium (VI) removal. Based on nWTR adsorption,  larger concentrations of Cr (VI) in wastewater and  more acidic conditions promoted greater adsorption (Hamadeen et al., 2022). Specifically, since nWTRs are positively charged at or below a pH of 7.43, this allowed for attraction to negatively charged contaminants with Cr (IV) like dichromate. Further analyses by Hamadeen et al. (2022) suggests that hydroxide, aluminate, and iron hydroxide functional groups may have reinforced adsorption via complexes with nWTRs...