In most cases, direct X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis of solutions entails technical difficulties due to a high X-ray scattering background resulting in a spectrum with a poor signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Key factors that determine the sensitivity of the method are the energy resolution of the detector and the amount of scattered radiation in the energy range of interest. Limiting the width of the primary spectrum by the use of secondary targets, or filters, can greatly improve the sensitivity for specific portions of the spectrum. This paper demonstrates a potential method for SNR optimization in direct XRF analysis of chromium (Cr) contamination. The suggested method requires minimal sample preparation and achieves higher sensitivity compared to existing direct XRF analysis. Two states of samples, fly ash and leachate from municipal solid waste incineration, were investigated. The effects of filter material, its absorption edge and filter thickness were analyzed using the combination of Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) code and energy-dispersive XRF spectrometry. The applied filter removes primary photons with energies interfering with fluorescence photons from the element of interest, thus results in lower background scattering in the spectrum. The SNR of Cr peak increases with filter thickness and reaches a saturation value when further increased thickness only increases the measurement time. Measurements and simulations show that a Cu filter with a thickness between 100 μm and 140 μm is optimal for detecting Cr by taking into account both the SNR and the exposure time. With direct XRF analysis for solutions, the limit of quantitation (LOQ) of the achieved system was 0.32 mg/L for Cr, which is well below the allowed standard limitation for landfills in Sweden. This work shows that XRF can gain enough sensitivity for direct monitoring to certify that the Cr content in leachate is below environmental limits.
Chelating agents, molecules that very strongly coordinates certain metal ions, are used industrially as well as in consumer products to minimize disturbances and increase performance of reactions and applications. The widely used sequestering agents, nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA), ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) belong to this branch of readily water-soluble compounds. When these chemical structures also have hydrophobic parts, they are prone to adsorb at air-water interfaces and to self-assemble. Such bifunctional molecules can be called chelating surfactants and will have more extended utilization prospects than common chelating agents or ordinary ionic surfactants. The present review attempts to highlight the fundamental behavior of chelating surfactants in solution and at interfaces, and their very specific interactions with metal ions. Methods to recover chelating surfactants from metal chelates are also described. Moreover, utilization of chelating surfactants in applications for metal removal in environmental engineering and mineral processing, as well as for metal control in the fields of biology, chemistry and physics, is exemplified and discussed.
With increasing demand for forest biofuels the pressures on ecosystem services from forestry practices willincrease. This calls for identification and assessment of tradeoffs between different uses of provisioning and otherecosystem services and establish management practices considering such tradeoffs.
Syftet med denna rapport är att belysa processen att föra över det internationella Paris-klimatavtalet från 2015 till först nationell nivå och sedan vidare till regional (Jämtlands län) och slutligen till kommunal nivå (Ragunda). Avsikten med rapporten är inte att med precision analysera situationen, utan vår ambition är snarare att lyfta fram olika frågeställningar som kan utgöra en grund för fortsatt reflektion och diskussion. Svårigheterna att möta kraven på kontinuerlig reduktion av klimatrelaterade utsläpp är omfattande och lösningsvägarna ännu delvis okända, vilket i sig gör att man måste uppvisa stor uthållighet med ett mycket långsiktigt arbete.
Vi har inom ramen för Interreg-projekt SMICE[1] deltagit i arbetet med framtagandet av Region Jämtland Härjedalens Energi- och klimatstrategi för 2020-2030, vid lanseringen av densamma samt i närmare dialog med representanter för en av åtta kommuner i regionen, Ragunda kommun. Vad gäller Ragunda kommun kan studien inte påvisa någon förändring i kommunens styrning och påverkan i den ekonomiska styrningen, detta gäller för kommunens budget för 2020 samt det pågående budgetarbetet för 2021. Intentionerna i energi- och klimatstrategin visar sig ännu inte i någon större utsträckning i kommunens verksamhet, trots en vilja bland politiker och tjänstemän att bidra till måluppfyllelse. De förändringar som beslutsfattare önskar ske i vårt samhälle bromsas i den kommunala kontexten av en rad hindrande faktorer. En slutsats från rapporten är att det finns en klar prioriteringsproblematik mellan klimatrelaterade mål och rena välfärdsmål. Det som ytterligare förvärrar denna problematik är att förutsättningar för kollektiva samverkanslösningar i glesbygd är sämre jämfört med förutsättningarna för tätbefolkade områden. En annan slutsats är att det är svårt att svara på frågan vilken insats eller aktivitet som är mest klimatoptimal. Ofta beror svaret på hur frågan ställs. Denna problematik gör att det kan vara svårt att på kommunal nivå ta beslut som faktiskt gynnar klimatet och miljön på både kort och lång sikt.
[1][1] Samskapande Mittnordisk Innovationsarena för Cirkulär Ekonomi (SMICE) är ett Interreg projekt med syfte att hitta sätt att accelerera omställningen i Jämtland-Härjedalen och Tröndelag mot “ett grönt skifte”. Projektet har utforskat samskapande och har med en bred ansats sökt sammankoppla näringsliv, medborgare och aktörer i innovationssystemet för att utveckla aktiviteter som stärker cirkulära ekonomi. Projektettid har pågått perioden 2017–2020.
This Green IT case study commissioned by Försäkringskassan (FK), the Swedish National Social Insurance Agency, quantifies the environmental performance of the IT infrastructure (IT-IS) in use during 2010 in a lifecycle perspective. Adopting a system view in Green IT analysis can mitigate risks of problem shifts. IT-IS concerns the equipment that enables office automation and external web application services. The size of the FK IT-IS is in the order of 300 branch offices with 14000 pc’s, 2100 printers and a 1 MW data centre hosting 1200 servers, 5 Petabyte of central data storage and serving about 80 key business applications.
The carbon footprint of the FK IT-IS in 2010 accounts to 6.5 kiloton CO2-equivalents. The total environmental impact is calculated across 18 themes and expressed as a single indicator eco score amounting to 822.000 ReCiPe points.
The contribution of capital goods is large with 44% of the carbon footprint and 47% of the eco score linked to emissions embedded in material equipment. The environmental effects from distributed IT deployed at local office sites, dominate at two thirds of the total FK IT-IS impacts. Important drivers in the local office sites category are the relatively short economic life span of pc equipment and the significant volume of paper consumed in printing activities.
Within the data centre category, operational processes dominate the environmental impacts and are linked to intensive power use. In comparison to industry benchmark scores, the data centre infrastructure energy efficiency (DCiE) is relatively low at 57%, or 59% when credited for waste heat utilisation. Airflow containment measures in computer rooms are identified for efficiency improvement. Enhanced airflow controls also act as a prerequisite to better leverage opportunities for free cooling present at the location in northern Europe. With regards to the data centre hosted IT, environmental impacts linked to storage services dominate and remarkably exceed those of servers.
There are indications of Data Centres being nodes for environmental impacts in IT solutions, but due to reasons connected to protection of business core assets, few open studies on such centres exist. This LCA case-study of the Swedish National Insurance Agency Data Centre in Sundsvall confirms and quantifies the significance of the environmental load posed by the data centre. The centre increases the IT carbon footprint by more than half (54%) relative to the institutes PC equipment fleet. In the operational phase, climate change contributions are more than double to that of PC use. Environmental impact stemming from embedded emissions in data centre capital infrastructure is significant (33%) given the relative short economic lifetime of the IT hardware. Even within the cold climate geographical zone, about a third (32%) of data centre supplied energy is consumed by air-conditioning thus offering opportunities to further leverage free cooling
In this case study we illustrate the interplay of social-ecological factors and uncontrollable processes in an event context. We focus on trail running, the popularity of which is on the rise, and scrutinise the case of a nature-based event – the mountain trail running marathon Fjällmaraton in Sweden. We introduce pedagogical and theoretical perspectives of new materialism and the Anthropocene, building on the ontological stance of hybridity of social-cultural systems. To understand the role of events as active agents of the Anthropocene we focus on infrastructure and feral effects. By looking at the unintended consequences, we discuss the limitations of managerial frameworks, unable toaccount for processes beyond the control of event planners, entangled in the complex social-ecological systems.
Evaluation of sustainable work within real-estate companies is a relativelynew way of working and the number of companies starting towork with this routine increases every day. Chalmersfastigheter is areal-estate company providing faculties for universities. The company ismainly focusing on decision-making and outsourcing.
The aim of this essay is to evaluate decision-making processes andensuring that the right decision is made, with other words, evaluatingthe decision and not the result from the decision. By identifying whatsustainability means for Chalmersfastigheter and in which processesdecisions are made, an evaluation is easily made to see if every decisionis based on the three aspects of sustainability; ecology, economy andsocial. The result from this evaluation will highlight how Chalmersfastigheter prioritize in decisions concerning sustainabledevelopment.
This study is based on the ISO 14001 standard and the definition ofsustainable development presented in the Brundtland report.Akademiska Hus is used as an example to present how another companyin the same business has operationalized sustainability. This study ismade on a request from Chalmersfastigheter and shall hopefully resultin a routine which becomes a part of their environmental managementsystem.
The purpose of this paper is to present a pilot educational project where ecological modelling has been used to integrate advanced level students into the research about regional sustainability. Addressing regional sustainability with an ecological systems model based on carbon and energy balances is a way to understand the basics of sustainability integrating detail and holistic views. Such model has been developed in a case study on the Danish island Samsø and currently a similar model is now being developed for the Jämtland county. Even though Jämtland, located in mid Sweden, is a sparsely populated area with large forests, a lot of hydro power, and only one major city, it is still not obvious how to reach long term sustainability. For educational purposes ecological models are excellent tools, since complex interactions can be studied, analysed and discussed in a structured way. It can be expected future sustainable society development presupposes integration between research and education, thus building a long term strategy for the possibilities to change negative cultural patters of whatever kind these might be. To strengthen the authorisation of the education for sustainability, clarification of the university’s integrative role in society may well be used, to give students self-confidence for continuous development within the field.
According to the ISO14020 standard eco-labeling of products is intended to guide consumers towards the more environmentally friendly segment of products available on the market. To investigate if this is successful for laptop computers, a life cycle assessment (LCA) model of a generic, up to date laptop was created. The constraints imposed by two different eco-labels for laptops were implemented in the LCA model; the eco-labels used for this purpose were EPEAT (based in the US) and TCO (based in Sweden). The analysis of the eco-labels criteria revealed that the labels impose few changes on the design of the laptop as describe in the LCA model and that their influence on the life cycle impact was minimal. The labels do promote energy efficiency, but the marked demand for long battery life is a push so strong that the average lap top on the market well fulfills these criteria. It was notable that the lap top power efficiency together with short product life, resulted in that the use phase environmental impacts was less compared to the production phase environmental impacts (partly opposed to some earlier studies, where the electricity consumption during use was a more important driver). To promote better environmental performance the energy efficiency could be improved further; but useful life of lap tops is an increasingly important issue to be addressed. Criteria for eco-labels must be continuously updated to actually guide toward a more environmentally friendly market segment for fast developing products like electronics.
District heating has the potential to provide consumers with heat using resources that would otherwise be wasted (e.g. surplus heat from industry) or increase overall efficiency by generating both heat and electricity. However, the introduction and utilisation of district heating has to be performed in a responsible way in order to benefit all the different stakeholders involved. A positive outcome depends on local preconditions and the identification of trade-offs involving different environmental, social and economic considerations. In the history of district heating, several illustrative articulations of sustainability can be found, and situations in which different trade-offs have become clear.
This chapter will discuss some articulations of sustainability and the environmental, social and economic trade-offs that can be identified for district heat distribution systems, to help achieve a deeper understanding of sustainability considerations and trade-offs for technical systems in general. Examples from research on district heating, carried out at Chalmers University of Technology from 1991 until today, will be used to illustrate real-world dilemmas.