Geology (wastology): Mountains of garbage

It seems our colleagues in geology should add garbage as a new material for the montains and hills! This picture shows one of these mountains that is just 20 years old and is still growning with 70-80 tons/day. Let's see where it ends!


(The landfill site in Tan An city in Vietnam)

Energy generation from waste in Nigeria?

I was recently invited to Nigeria as guest speaker at the yearly meeting of Nigerian Academy of Engineering, which is a well respected organization in the country. The topic of my presentation was about energy generation from wastes. This country with 150 million people is the most poplulated and relatively rich country in Africa. However, they suffer from shortage of electricity production with a total production of about 4000 MW as I heard. However, a rough calculation shows that if they put effort to convert their waste to electricity via landfill gas, biogas and/or incineration, they can produce about 1,000-5,000 MW electricity from their wastes, depending on the technology used.

(Landfill site in Lagos, a megacity with more than 15 millon inhabitant)

Creation of life, a lovely or dangerous development?

The recent circulation of the news on building a whole genom of a simple microorganism and introduce it into a cell to get a newly designed microorganism is a fascinating scientific development. In theory, it removes all limitation of working with wild or even mutant organisms. I congradulate our colleagues for such success. On the other hand, in order to get more financing for such research, these works are connected to some industrial applications for e.g. production of biofuels. It is a dangerous game, which need strong debates and starting parallel research on the consequences of leaking these new living organims to the nature and the new balances in the world that will occur. You can read more on this topic on e.g. Nature or Wikipedia or see this film (in Swedish)!

Biohydrogen

Hydrogen (H2) is an interesting source of energy. It contain about 3 KWh/m3 energy (lower latent heat), and produces just water while burning. However, H2 is produced today from oil by reforming fossil fuels. There has been many research and development on production of hydrogen by a sustainable methods in the last decades. Biological hydrogen production is of great interest. An interesting recent review compares the three methods of biohydrogen production, i.e. by oxygenic photosynthesis by purple bacteria, dark fermentation by anaerobic bacteria, and microbial enectolysis cells by anode-respiring bacteria. The first method works well in theory, but it has many problems in practice. Dark fermentation works well in practice, but has a low yield (about 17% of the theoretical yield), and the last method needs electricity and has a low kinetic. Although these challenges, it seems a combination of these methods might lead to a promising method for BioH2 production in the future!

Effects of biofuels on greenhouse gases

Ethanol has the largest share in the biofuel market. Its market grew very fast in connection to the more concern on global environment and crisis in energy market. It resulted in many debates if ethanol reduces greenhouse gases or not. Some people were/are optimistic and some pessimistic. There is also similar debates about other biofuels, including biodiesel (RME) and biogas which are avialable in Swedish market. A recent life cycle analysis from Lund University show that all these biofuels results in reducing greenhousue gases by different degrees from 68% up to 148%!

(Reduction of greenhouse gases by using different biofuels. Ref. here)

Bioenergy bigger than oil in Sweden

While EU has a goal to have 20% renewable energy in 2020, Sweden has the highest goal among these 27 countries with 49% renewable energy in 2020. However, if the current trend keeps going, we might be able to even pass this goal. The recent statistics shows that the share of renewable energy in Sweden in 2009 was 46.3%. The data also shows a share of bioenergy as 31.8%, compares to the share of oil that was 30.9%, according to SVEBIOS.

(Trend in Energy sources in Sweden, Ref. Swedish Energy Agency)

Citrus wastes to energy and materials!

Citrus wastes are among the wastes that are difficult to handle. They content peel oil which consist of a chemical substance named Limonene as the main materials. This peel oil is toxic to microorganisms (probably the natural weapon to protect the fruits against bacterial attacks). So, it is difficult to digest or compost the citrus waste by bacteria. On the other hand, it containts a lot of water, so it is not economically valuable to burn and produce electricity or heat. The research work of several PhD and MSc students in our group resulted to many different products, energy or materials. Let's hope to see these products soon in commercial scales!

The research publications can be found here!

Biosuperabsorbents from waste proteins

Proteins are the major materials used in the body of animals and microorganisms. We are recommended to eat proteins every day. However, there are many proteins that we don't eat such as dead bodies, hair, or old egg! In a recent work that is now being published at Journal of Macromolecular Science, we have conveted egg proteins to a superabsorbent that one gram can absorb a glass of water. It can be good idea covert our waste proteins into superabsorbents for e.g. diapers, and substitute the current oil-based polyacrylates!

(An acetylated and crosslinked protein that is a backbone of a superabsorbent. Read more about it at "Synthesis and Characterization of Biosuperabsorbent Based on Ovalbumin Protein", Journal of Macromolecular Science, Part A: Pure and Applied Chemistry, 2010, volume 47)

Science vs. media

The recent debates in media on global warming and possible cheating in the reports of the United Nation is an example on how the scientific questions are reflected in the media. In science, there is no right and wrong. Scientists alway try to improve their understanding of a subject and disucss about the evidences and make some conclusions. Some conclusions which are right today, might be wrong tomorrow and vice versa. There is no black and white, but just grey zones. However, media in the world still see most of the subjects as black and white, or there is a hero and an evil on every subjects. So, we see sometimes some heros become devil. Since scientific questions are coming more and more into the media, our media need also to look more realistic into such questions!

Sleeping society!

In European Union, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark have been pretty successfull in waste treatment, in which less than 5% of the wastes are landfilled. However, the other countries in the union as well as most of the other countries in the world still "wasting" their "waste" and not converting to energy and materials. Landfill capacities are being full as e.g. in Sydney, or it becomes a political issue as e.g. in Italy. I visited this week Nigeria in Africa with 150 million people, where the streets all around the country is full of waste, and people suffer from frequent power failures, while this waste can become electricity for them. Let's hope our initiation in collaboration with Nigerian universities wake up this sleeping society!


(sleeping next to a dumping area in Lagos, Nigeria)