Sunday, December 11, 2011
Narcotic effect of Carbon Monoxide (CO)
There was a recent study on these factors and how they affect the human stress. One interesting point is the level of carbon monoxide (1-15 ppm), which act as narcotic for people living in the heart of the cities and reduces their stress. So, we shouldn't surprise if we see CO addicted people in the cities in line of other drugs :)
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Hot climate: good or bad?
Actually it could be true for Sweden and some other parts of the world. However, the global development is serious and scaring. In a recent report from World Meterological Organization, year 2010 showed to be the warmest year, and 2011 as one of the warmest. Actually, the last 13 warmest years have been in the last 15 years. This development is in parity with CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere. As you can see in this figure, the CO2 level has never been in this level (close to 400 ppm) in the last 400,000 years. So, we should expect the consequences and prepare for different disasters, believe it or not!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Biorefining with water hyacinth in China
(Algae blooming in Taihu lake in Chaina)
(Plantation of water hyacinth in the lake)
(Harvesting water hyacinth last week)
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Peak oil debate
(The IEA’s world oil production)
Friday, November 4, 2011
World subsidies for fossil- or biofuels?
(The data from IEA, and the picture has borrowed from here)
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Green cities in the world
Borås is also working in this line since 1980s. The city has a goal to become fossil-free and sustainable city before 2020. The city was a pioneer in Sweden and has had a great development in the past, but still long way to go!
Monday, October 17, 2011
We, other organisms and natural resources!
However, we human, cut this chain and consume the materials and convert it directly to CO2 without thinking of other species. It means the lifetime of the materials we use has much shorter lifetime compared to what other species do in nature. More thinking about this fact can create enough jobs and possibility for everybody in the world, without quick consumption of our natural resources!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Waste Recovery in Brazil
(A child in a fruit market in Fortaleza, whom will hopefully have a better life, when we build a biogas plant in the market)
(Fortaleza, which has one of the best beaches in Brazil)
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Hydropower plants: friend or foe?
There is a recent debate on Brazilian hydropower plants. The dams in this country result in flooding of the forest area. It result in anaerobic digestion of the organic materials (wood, leaves, etc.) in the water and formation of biogas and methane, which is 21 times worse than CO2 for the environment. Some studies show these hydropower plants to threat the environment more than fossil fuels. I believe it is a complicated case and could be true or not, depending on how to consider the factors. However, what is clear is the necessity of considering all the ecological aspects of each project.
Another similar case is the largest lake in Iran with 5,200 km2 called Orumieh, which is drying most likely because of the bad management and the dams of the feeding rivers. Dryness of this lake will result in disaster for the entire region, in terms of the ecological aspects, spreading the salts, and not least the economy of the people in that area. Lets hope for a higher weight facctor fot the environment in considering such projects.
(A hydropower plant in Brazil. The photo taken from SR)
(The large Urmia lake that is drying now)
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Glass recycling in Sweden
The data from 2009 shows that more than 90% of the glasses were recycled in Sweden. This recycling is mainly carried out by a company named "Svenska GlasÅtervinning". It is a good business with 177 million SEK turnover of just this company (data for 2010) as well as good for the environment.
(Recycling center for glasses. Photo from Göteborg Posten)
Monday, September 5, 2011
Making money of hazardous wastes
Hazardous wastes should usually get the first priority in treatment and should not be mixed with other wastes. When talking about the hazardous wastes, we may talk about the hospital wastes, or the wastes containing organics like PCB, heavy metals such as cadmium, acids, bases, corrosive materials, silver, mercury, oils, etc.
One of the big companies in Sweden is SAKAB, that recieves about 500,000 tons/year hazardous wastes from different cities in Sweden. They have different technologies to take care of various hazardous wastes, and produce electricity and heat. It is a double payment for recieving the wastes and also selling the products, with almost nothing left to the environment. I wish them good luck with their work, and hope to see more such companies around the world.
(The plant at SAKAB in Kumla, Sweden that take care of the hazardous wastes)
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Swedish Royal Family visited Waste Recovery
Both the King and the Queen showed great interest to our work and the model that we develop for a more sustainable world, better environment and a better life of the scavengers!
(The king, queen and me, Photo taken by Borås Tidningen)
Monday, August 22, 2011
Waste Recovery: From Indonesian scavengers to Swedish Royal family
Today, there are several organization involved in waste recovery, including our university, City of Borås and its political instrument, the research institute SP, the municipal company Borås Energy and Environment, the local authorities in Sjuhärad (several municipalites) and about 15 companies. Our work started in Indonesia and is now extended to Vietnam, China, Nigeria, Brazil, USA, in addition to several other countries that we are now discussing to start collaboration.
There are almost continuous visitors from other countries to Borås and even the model of collaboration (double triple helix) is now extending to develop into other areas.
We are very happy to see this work is even interesting to our royal family. They will visit us next week and will listen to our rector Björn Brorström about waste recovery.
It is great moment for us, who see one day scavengers, one day polititions, one day company managers and one day his magesty Carl XVI Gustav and the Queen Silvia.
(Walking on top of a hill of closed landfill in Sao Paulo, Brazil)
(An scavenger in a gargage sea in Lagos, Nigeria)
(An scavenger in Pontianak, Indonesia)
Friday, August 19, 2011
District heat: A major advantage of Swedish energy system
District heat (or fjärrvärme in Swedish) is a costly investment, but with many advantages. In many countries in the world there is a network of electricity, but not district heat or chill as we have in Sweden. When you burn coal, oil, nuclear energy, biomass etc. to produce electricity, the efficiency is generally about 40%. It means just 40% of the original energy is recovered in form of electricity, while the rest of the energy (about 60%) will be lost in form of heat. Therefore, we see big cooling towers as part of the power plants.
There is similar problem in industries. When the industries consume energy (electricity, oil etc.) to run their equipment, a major part of this energy is converted to heat, and in many cases, they have to get rid of this energy (heat).
Sweden is a cold country with the average temperature of 4.8 C for the whole country through the year. Many cities in Sweden have district heat system to heat up the houses. The energy companies burn waste, biomass etc. and produce electricity and the rest of the energy is fed to this distric heat system and transported to the households. It creates a good income by:
1) getting paid via collecting the wastes,
2) selling electricity
3) selling district heat
In addition, the companies (such as refineries) with waste heat are connected to this network of district heat. It means an extra income for these companies, while their competitors in other countries have to pay to get rid of this energy.
In Sweden, 69 TWh district heat was produced in 2010, where 9 TWh was lost through the system and 60 TWh was delivered to the households. The energy source was dominated by hosehold wastes and biomass (figure below). The complete report can be found here!
(Distric heat production in Sweden in 2010 from different energy sources)
Monday, August 8, 2011
Energy use in Sweden 2030
The total consumption of transportation fuels in Sweden will reduce from 126 TWh to 125 TWh. However, the development of different fuels will be different. While the consumption of gasoline will be drastically reduced, the consumption of the biofuels and diesel will be increased. As shown in this fugure, the biggest jump will be the biogas. You can read the whole report here (in Swedish)!
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
How was the weather?
We see also on the news that people in African horn are starving to death. These are not the only regions that suffer from the too "good" weather (sunny and no rain). North of Africa, Middle East, Spain, Iran, Pakistan, India, USA, Mexico, Australia, etc. (that are located around 30 degree in latitude) are partly or totally suffered from the dryness. These climate changes are partly affected by global warming and increasing the level of greenhouse gases such as CO2. The capacity of our earth is not enough to absorb our emissions. So, we should continue suffering from these disasters!
(An old bridge in Isfahan over a river that was once full of water)
Friday, June 24, 2011
Should I run my car on ethanol?
Today, we see ethanol production in the world has passed more than 70,000,000,000, which is about 5 times more than its lever in 1998. It is a big business for many people in the world. However, we are still running on the first generation of ethanol, and we have no commercial second generation yet. The fact is that we have no single substitute for oil, and I believe we will have several different alternatives in the fuel market in the future. Now, there are many people believe in e.g. electrical vehicles. It is a good alternative for the cities and reducing CO2 emissions. However, are we allowed to destroy the amazon forests in order to access the lithium in that area for the batteries in electrical cars? It seems this debate will continue as long as we need energy (i.e. for ever).....
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Resource Recovery
Friday, June 17, 2011
Waste Recovery in Vietnam?
(The beautifull view of the beach in Quy Nhon from Seagull hotel)
Thursday, June 9, 2011
1,300,000,000 tons/year food waste!
According to a recent report from FAO, developed country and developing countries throw away 670 and 630 million tons per year, respectively, which is a total of 1.3 billion tons each year.
The full FAO report about "Global food losses and food wastes" is available here!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Interested in MSc or PhD education?
I got a tips from Matt O'Brien about his blog on "Top 50 Must-Read Blogs Before Attending Grad School". It is a good collection for those of the students who are going to apply further education toward MSc or PhD. You may find some interesting points:
http://www.onlinemasters.org/top-50-must-read-blogs-before-attending-grad-school
This is also another intersting collection posted by Brandi Poss:
http://bestonlineuniversities.com/2011/50-awesome-weblogs-every-college-freshman-should-read/
In addition, education in our area on resource recovery has its own website:
http://resourcerecovery.se/
I wish good luck for all of the applicant, who are going to continue their educations!
Monday, May 30, 2011
Recycle and perhaps Reduce and Reuse of waste?
In Sweden, we had continuous growth of the households waste production for at least 20 years. However, this trend is broken since 2008, and the municipal waste production is reducing. The organization Swedish Waste Management (Avfall Sverige) has recently published the data for the total municipal wastes 2010, and their treatment methods, which shows a clear decrease compared to 2009 and 2008.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Nuclear or solar energy in Japan?
Now, Japan has changed their policy and wants to have solar energy for 10 million households in 2020. Let's see if this goal is too ambitious or not!
Friday, May 27, 2011
Better Life Index and hapiness?
There is a better life index which include several factors as housing, income, jobs, community, educations, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safelty and work-life balance. It compares 34 OECD countries here, but I think they forgot to add happiness which is a major factor. Sweden has a good position in this index!
Friday, May 13, 2011
A PhD thesis on textiles wastes to ethanol and biogas
Our PhD candidate Azam Jeihanipour has worked now about 4 years on these wastes and developed processes for conversion of textile wastes to ethanol and biogas. She will defend her thesis in two weeks on 27 May 2011. I wish her success during the defense!
Her thesis can be found here, and her published articles the thesis:
1- Ethanol production from cottonbasedwaste textiles”, Bioresource Technology (2009), 100 (2), 1007-1010
2- Enhancement of ethanol and biogas production from high-crystalline cellulose by different modes of NMMO pretreatment”, Biotechnology and Bioengineering (2010), 105 (3), 469-476.
3- A novel process for ethanol or biogas production from cellulose inblended fibers in waste textiles”, Waste Management (2010), 30 (12), 2504-2509.
4- Enhancement of solubilization rate of cellulose in anaerobic digestion and its drawbacks”, ProcessBiochemistry, in press
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Journal publications by MSc students!
Journal articles (peer reviewed):
1. Modig, T., Lidén, G., and Taherzadeh, M.J. (2002): Inhibition effects of furfural on alcohol dehydrogenase, aldehyde dehydrogenase and pyruvate dehydrogenase. Biochemical J., 363(3): 769-776
2. Taherzadeh, M.J., Fox, M., Hjorth, H., Edebo, L., (2003). Cultivation of Rhizopus oryzae in synthetic medium and paper pulp sulfite liquor to produce mycelium biomass, ethanol and lactic acid. Bioresource Technol., 88(3): 167-177
3. Sues A., Millati R., Edebo L., Taherzadeh M.J. (2005): Ethanol Production from Hexoses, Pentoses, and Dilute-acid Hydrolyzates by Mucor indicus, FEMS Yeast Res., 5(6-7): 669-676
4. Arabi, R., Bemanian, S., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2007): Rapid Biodegradation of Methyl tert–Butyl Ether (MTBE) by Pure Bacterial cultures, Iran. J. Chem. Chem. Eng., 26(1): 1-7
5. Jeihanipour A., Karimi K., Taherzadeh M.J. (2007): Antimicrobial properties of fungal chitosan, Res J Biol Sci, 2(3): 239-243
6. Ebrahimi, F., Khanahmadi, M., Roodpeyma, Sh., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2008): Ethanol production from bread residues, Biomass Bioenergy, 32: 333-337
7. Sharifia, M., Karimi K., Taherzadeh M.J. (2008): Production of ethanol by filamentous and yeast-like forms of Mucor indicus from fructose, glucose, sucrose, and molasses, J. Ind. Microb. Biotechnol., 35(11): 1253-1259
8. Dehkhoda, A., Brandberg, T, Taherzadeh, M.J. (2009): Comparison of vacuum and high pressure evaporated wood hydrolyzate for ethanol production by repeated fed-batch using flocculating Saccharomyces cerevisiae, BioResources, 4(1): 309-320
9. Abedinifar, S., Karimi, K., Khanahmadi, M., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2009): Ethanol production by Mucor indicus and Rhizopus oryzae from rice straw by separate hydrolysis and fermentation, Biomass Bioenergy, 33(5): 828-833
10. Shafiei, M., Karimi, K., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2010): Pretreatment of spruce and oak by N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide (NMMO) for efficient conversion of their cellulose to ethanol, Bioresource Technol, 101(13): 4914-4918
11. Majdejabbari, S., Barghi, H., Taherzadeh. M.J. (2010): Synthesis and characterization of biosuperabsorbent based on ovalbumin protein, J. Macromol. Sci. Part A: Pure Appl. Chem., 47(7): 708-715
12. Mirahmadi, K, Kabir M.M., Jeihanipour, A., Karimi, K., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2010): Alkaline pretreatment of spruce and birch to improve bioethanol and biogas production, BioResources, 5(2): 928-938
13. Lohrasbi, M., Pourbafrani, M., Niklasson C., Taherzadeh M.J. (2010): Process design and economic analysis of a citrus waste biorefinery with biofuels and limonene as products, Bioresource Technol, 101(19): 7382-7388
14. López, Y., García, A., Karimi, K., Taherzadeh, M. J., and Martín, C. (2010): Chemical characterisation and dilute-acid hydrolysis of rice hulls from an artisan mill, BioResources 5(4), 2268-2277.
15. Bidgoli, H., Zamani, A.; Taherzadeh, M.J. (2010): Effect of carboxymethylation conditions on water binding capacity of chitosan-based superabsorbents, Carbohydrate Res., 345: 2683-2689
16. Hosseinpour, H., Karimi, K., Zilouei, H., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2010): Simultaneous pretreatment of lignocellulose and hydrolysis of starch in mixtures to sugars, BioResources, 5(4): 2457-2469
17. Shafiei, M., Karimi, K., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2010): Palm Date Fibers: Analysis and Enzymatic Hydrolysis, Int. J. Mol. Sci. 11(11), 4285-4296
18. Soudham, P.R.; Rodríguez D., Rocha G.J.M.; Taherzadeh M.J.; Martín C. (2011): Acetosolv delignification of marabou (Dichrostachys cinerea) wood with and without acid prehydrolysis, Forestry Studies in China, 13(1): 64-70
19. Akbari, H., Karimi, K., Lundin, M., Taherzadeh, M. J. (2011): Optimization of baker's yeast drying in industrial continuous fluidized-bed dryer, Food and Bioproducts Processing, in press
20. Millati, R., Wikandari, R., Trihandayani, E.T., Cahyanto, M.N., Taherzadeh M.J., and Niklasson, C. (2011): Ethanol from Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch via Dilute-Acid Hydrolysis and Fermentation by Mucor indicus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Agricultural J., 6(2): 54-59
21. Dehnavi, G.Z., Laucerica, J.L., Rodríguez, D., Beatón, M., Taherzadeh, M.J., Martin, C. (2011): Fractionation of the main components of barley spent grains from a microbrewery, Cellulose Chem. Technol, in press
22. Abtahi, Z., Millati, R., Niklasson, C., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2011): Ethanol production by Mucor indicus at high glucose and ethanol concentrations, Minerva Biotechnologica, in press
23. Jafari, V., Labafzadeh, S.R., Jeihanipour, A., Karimi, K., Taherzadeh, M.J. (2011): Construction and demolition lignocellulosic wastes to bioethanol, Renewable Energy, in press