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Topic Review
Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage
Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a potential greenhouse gas mitigation technology which produces negative carbon dioxide emissions by combining bioenergy (energy from biomass) use with geologic carbon capture and storage. The concept of BECCS is drawn from the integration of trees and crops, which extract carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere as they grow, the use of this biomass in processing industries or power plants, and the application of carbon capture and storage via CO2 injection into geological formations. There are other non-BECCS forms of carbon dioxide removal and storage that include technologies such as biochar, carbon dioxide air capture and biomass burial and enhanced weathering. According to a recent Biorecro report, there is 550 000 tonnes CO2/year in total BECCS capacity currently operating, divided between three different facilities (as of January 2012). In the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), BECCS was indicated as a key technology for reaching low carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration targets. The negative emissions that can be produced by BECCS has been estimated by the Royal Society to be equivalent to a 50 to 150 ppm decrease in global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and according to the International Energy Agency, the BLUE map climate change mitigation scenario calls for more than 2 gigatonnes of negative CO2 emissions per year with BECCS in 2050. According to Stanford University, 10 gigatonnes is achievable by this date. The Imperial College London, the UK Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the Walker Institute for Climate System Research, and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change issued a joint report on carbon dioxide removal technologies as part of the AVOID: Avoiding dangerous climate change research program, stating that "Overall, of the technologies studied in this report, BECCS has the greatest maturity and there are no major practical barriers to its introduction into today’s energy system. The presence of a primary product will support early deployment." According to the OECD, "Achieving lower concentration targets (450 ppm) depends significantly on the use of BECCS".
  • 2.2K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Tougher Plastics Ban Policies in China
After the Chinese government's new plastics ban policies issued in 2020, another set of tougher plastics ban measures were introduced in Shanghai, China in 2021. The tougher plastic ban polices completely forbade the usage of plastic carrier bags and required all supermarkets to sell only cloth or nylon carrier bags priced from RMB 1.0 to 39.0. Tougher plastics ban policies are penalty-oriented. The tougher plastics ban policies produce positive plastics reducing effects by observing significantly decreased usage of charged carrier bags by 46%, and significantly increased usage of old plastic bags and reusable bags by 117% and 36%, respectively. Policy execution loopholes are found in some supermarkets which do not follow the tougher plastics ban measures. Fortunately, the spill-over effects from tougher-measure-executing supermarkets fix this issue to some extent. The tougher 2021 measures fail to be the most powerful impacting factor on people’s usage of each type of bag. To produce better plastics reducing results, other bag-targeted measures are necessary.
  • 2.2K
  • 19 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Plant Growth in Altered Gravity/Microgravity
Understanding how plants respond and adapt to extraterrestrial conditions is essential for space exploration initiatives. Deleterious effects of the space environment on plant development have been reported, such as the unbalance of cell growth and proliferation in the root meristem, or gene expression reprogramming. However, plants are capable of surviving and completing the seed-to-seed life cycle under microgravity. A key research challenge is to identify environmental cues, such as light, which could compensate the negative effects of microgravity.
  • 2.2K
  • 31 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Microplastics in Ecosystems
Plastics are widely used due to their excellent properties, inexpensiveness and versatility leading to an exponential consumption growth during the last decades. However, most plastic does not biodegrade in any meaningful sense; it can exist for hundreds of years. Only a small percentage of plastic waste is recycled, the rest being dumped in landfills, incinerated or simply not collected. Microplastics can be generally divided in two big families: primary microplastics and secondary microplastics. Plastics with microscopic size, ca. 2–5 mm in diameter, are defined as primary microplastics. Secondary microplastics enclose tiny plastic fragments derived from the breakdown of larger plastic debris, both at sea and on land. Waste-water treatment plants can only minimize the problem by trapping plastic particles of larger size and some smaller ones remain within oxidation ponds or sewage sludge, but a large amount of microplastics still contaminate water streams and marine systems. 
  • 2.2K
  • 23 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Food Safety Culture in Nigeria
Food safety culture describes a collection of learned and shared attitudes, values and beliefs that form the foundation of the hygienic behaviors used within a particular food handling environment. Sharman et al. defines food safety culture as a long-term paradigm in a food handling organization deeply rooted in beliefs, behaviors and assumptions which impact the food safety performance within the organization.
  • 2.2K
  • 22 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Carbon Literacy
Carbon Literacy is the awareness of climate change and the climate impacts of mankind's everyday actions. The term has been used in a range of contexts in scientific literature and in casual usage (see Research), but is most associated with The Carbon Literacy Project (CLP).
  • 2.2K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Abundance of Mycoplankton and Its Ecological Role
Mycoplankton are saprophytic organisms in plankton communities in marine and freshwater ecosystems. They consist of filamentous free-living fungi and yeasts associated with planktonic particles or phytoplankton. Similar to planktonic bacteria, these aquatic fungi play important roles in heterotrophic mineralization and nutrient cycling. Planktonic bacteria can be up to 20 mm in diameter and over 50 mm in length
  • 2.2K
  • 23 May 2022
Topic Review
Barriers to Electric Vehicle Adoption in Thailand
Electric vehicles (EVs) are considered to be a solution for sustainable transportation. EVs can reduce fossil fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and the negative impacts of climate change and global warming, as well as help improve air quality.
  • 2.2K
  • 09 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Volatile Fatty Acid recovery
Volatile fatty acids (VFAs) are low-molecular-weight carboxylic acids containing two to six carbon atoms that are produced as the final product of acidogenic fermentation in anaerobic digestion process.
  • 2.2K
  • 28 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Biomethane Production of Distillery Stillage
Distillery stillage has a high energy potential (13.6 MJ/kg TS, 10.4 MJ/kg COD), which indicates that it can be processed via anaerobic digestion and is a suitable substrate for conversion into energy. Distillery stillage consists of compounds that are easily biodegraded during anaerobic digestion, such as proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. Among the carbohydrates, the concentration of cellulose can be on the level of 32.2%, hemicelluloses—20.9%, and lignin—3.2% in the distillery stillage obtained from maize.
  • 2.2K
  • 16 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Driving Cycles for Estimating Vehicle Emission Levels
Standard driving cycles (DCs) and real driving emissions (RDE) legislation developed by the European Commission contains significant gaps with regard to quantifying local area vehicle emission levels and fuel consumption (FC). The aim of this paper was to review local DCs for estimating emission levels and FC under laboratory and real-world conditions. This review article has three sections.
  • 2.2K
  • 12 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Hospital Wastewater Treatment Processes
Hospital wastewater contains a considerably higher concentration of drug residues (antibiotics, β-receptor blockers, analgesics, etc.) than municipal wastewater. Each hospital wastewater treatment process has its own merits, but combinatory processes frequently achieve higher levels of treatment effectiveness.
  • 2.1K
  • 14 Feb 2023
Topic Review
Climate State
Climate state describes a state of climate on Earth and similar terrestrial planets based on a thermal energy budget, such as the greenhouse or icehouse climate state. The main climate state change is between periodical glacial and interglacial cycles in Earth history, studied from climate proxies. The climate system is responding to the current climate forcing and adjusts following climate sensitivity to reach a climate equilibrium, Earth's energy balance. Model simulations suggest that the current interglacial climate state will continue for at least another 100,000 years, due to CO2 emissions - including complete deglaciation of the Northern Hemisphere.
  • 2.1K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Indoor Clean Air: Plants help
Urban civilization has a high impact on the environment and human health. The pollution level of indoor air can be 2–5 times higher than the outdoor air pollution, and sometimes it reaches up to 100 times or more in natural/mechanical ventilated buildings. Even though people spend about 90% of their time indoors, the importance of indoor air quality is less noticed. Cleaning indoor air using plants is an affordable and more environmentally friendly means to purify polluted air. Furthermore, studies show that indoor plants can be used to regulate building temperature, decrease noise levels, and alleviate social stress. Sources of indoor air pollutants and their impact on human health are briefly discussed in our paper. The available literature on phytoremediation, including experimental works for removing volatile organic compound (VOC) and particulate matter from the indoor air and associated challenges and opportunities, are reviewed. The potential role of green walls and potted plants for improving indoor air quality is examined. A list of plant species suitable for indoor air phytoremediation is proposed. Our review paper will help in making informed decisions about integrating plants into the interior building design.
  • 2.1K
  • 11 May 2021
Topic Review
Engineering Microbial Consortia towards Bioremediation
Engineering microbial consortia is an effective way for the removal of heavy metals and organic pollutants. In the study, we discussed the molecular and ecological mechanisms of engineering microbial consortia with a particular focus on metabolic cross-feeding within species and the transfer of metabolites. Besides, the advantages and limitations of top-down and bottom-up approaches of engineering microbial consortia were discussed, together with their applications in bioremediation.
  • 2.1K
  • 29 Oct 2021
Topic Review
Air Pollution Tolerance Index
Air pollution is a global environmental issue, and there is an urgent need for sustainable remediation techniques. Thus, phytoremediation has become a popular approach to air pollution remediation.
  • 2.1K
  • 29 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Eco-safe Rural Roads assessment
Rural roads are important for the communities in the hilly areas of Nepal as they introduce livelihood opportunities at the local level, provide better access to the health care, education and resources. Yet, most of the rural roads in Nepal are unplanned and non-engineered, and these roads are often closed for many months during and after the monsoon. Such roads require huge investments, especially post-monsoon, to clear debris and to keep them operational. In parallel, there is evidence that such roads lead to large number of slope failures and accelerated sedimentation, which degrade the environment and ecosystem services. To remedy such roadside slope failures, eco-engineering practices were tested and demonstrated in partnership with three communities in the Panchase Region of the Nepal’s Central-Western Middle Hills.  Eco-engineering is a hybrid approach, combining civil engineering works for drainage and slope stability, with the plantation of deep-rooted vegetation. It is one activity contributing to Nature based Solutions (NbS) for the sustainable and long-term operation of the rural roads in the Panchase geographic region. This paper describes the inter-disciplinary and community-based research, monitoring and evaluation methods applied, including, the establishment of onsite demonstration plots and Rhizotrons in which Key performance Indicators (KPI) analysis of plant species were performed. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of eco-engineering for reducing risk, while creating ecological co-benefits along rural roads (or eco-safe roads) in hilly areas.  Based on this research, an ‘Eco-safe Rural Road Assessment Framework’ was developed, outlining the systematic process to be followed for the design of eco-safe rural roads for more sustainable road construction and maintenance. The ecological engineering practices which are being promoted by this framework have been accepted by communities and could be further implemented by local government bodies and up-scaled in other similar hilly areas around the country. 
  • 2.1K
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Optical Sensors
Detection systems using optical principles for ion sensing have become widely used. Optical detection typically relies on the color change resulting from the interaction or reaction between the focal object and the detection reagent. Optical sensors offer the advantages of simplicity and low cost. At the same time, there is no direct contact between the sensor and the sample during analysis, thereby minimizing the effects of contamination of the sensing probe. The portable optical sensors highlighted in this section include fluorescent, colorimetric, Raman scattering, surface plasmon resonance (SPR), and localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) sensors.
  • 2.1K
  • 05 May 2023
Topic Review
Probiotics for Freshwater Fish Farming
Probiotics for freshwater fish farming can be administered as single or multiple mixtures. The expected benefits of probiotics include disease prophylaxis, improved growth, and feed conversion parameters, such as the feed conversion rate (FCR) and specific growth rate (SGR).
  • 2.1K
  • 20 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Environmental Applications of TiO2-Based Photocatalytic Nanostructures
Contemporary technological and industrial advancements have led to increased reliance on chemicals for product innovation, leading to heightened contamination of water sources by traditional pollutants (organic dyes, heavy metals) and disease-causing microorganisms. Wastewater treatment processes now reveal “emerging pollutants”, including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, and agricultural chemicals. While some are benign, certain emerging pollutants can harm diverse organisms. Researchers seek cost-effective water purification methods that completely degrade pollutants without generating harmful by-products. Semiconductor-based photocatalytic degradation, particularly using titanium dioxide (TiO2), is popular for addressing water pollution.
  • 2.1K
  • 20 Feb 2024
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