| 1. |
- Munthe, Christian, 1962
(författare)
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Precaution and Ethics: Handling risks, uncertainties and knowledge gaps in the regulation of new biotechnologies
- 2017
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This volume outlines and analyses ethical issues actualized by applying a precautionary approach to the regulation of new biotechnologies. It presents a novel way of categorizing and comparing biotechnologies from a precautionary standpoint. Based on this, it addresses underlying philosophical problems regarding the ethical assessment of decision-making under uncertainty and ignorance, and discusses how risks and possible benefits of such technologies should be balanced from an ethical standpoint. It argues on conceptual and ethical grounds for a technology neutral regulation as well as for a regulation that not only checks new technologies but also requires old, inferior ones to be phased out. It demonstrates how difficult ethical issues regarding the extent and ambition of precautionary policies need to be handled by such a regulation, and presents an overarching framework for doing so.
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| 2. |
- Eivazihollagh, Alireza, et al.
(författare)
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On chelating surfactants : Molecular perspectives and application prospects
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Molecular Liquids. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-7322 .- 1873-3166. ; 278, s. 688-705
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 3. |
- Munthe, Christian, 1962
(författare)
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The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk
- 2011
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since a couple of decades, the notion of a precautionary principle plays a central and increasingly influential role in international as well as national policy and regulation regarding the environment and the use of technology. Urging society to take action in the face of potential risks of human activities in these areas, the recent focus on climate change has further sharpened the importance of this idea. However, the idea of a precautionary principle has also been problematised and criticised by scientists, scholars and policy activists, and been accused of almost every intellectual sin imaginable: unclarity, impracticality, arbitrariness and moral as well as political unsoundness. In that light, the very idea of precaution as an ideal for policy making rather comes out as a dead end. On the basis of these contrasting starting points, Christian Munthe undertakes an innovative, in-depth philosophical analysis of what the idea of a precautionary principle is and should be about. A novel theory of the ethics of imposing risks is developed and used as a foundation for defending the idea of precaution in environmental and technological policy making against its critics, while at the same time avoiding a number of identified flaws. The theory is shown to have far-reaching consequences for areas such as bio-, information- and nuclear technology, and global environmental policy in areas such as climate change. The author argues that, while the price we pay for precaution must not be too high, we have to be prepared to pay it in order to act ethically defensible. A number of practical suggestions for precautionary regulation and policy making are made on the basis of this, and some challenges to basic ethical theory as well as consumerist societies, the global political order and liberal democracy are identified
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| 4. |
- Petersson, Jesper, 1974
(författare)
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Blurring the shoreline: De- and re-infrastructuring and the changing colors of European flood policy
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. - : SAGE Publications. - 2514-8494 .- 2514-8494 .- 2514-8486. ; 4:2, s. 623-644
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper provides a genealogy of the emergence of a common EU flood policy, including the scope and direction of this policy. Noticing how EU policy proposes green infrastructure (associated with using nature as a buffer zone in managing floods) as an alternative to grey infrastructure (implying fixed installations of concrete and cement), this paper adopts the theoretical lens of the so-called infrastructural turn, which advocates a relational investigation of infrastructure. By engaging this approach, the paper shows how flood infrastructure can contain very different compositions of (unruly) water and (settled) land. A narrative of a historically strong focus on guarding society from the powerful forces of nature through a fixed line of defense is increasingly giving way to more muddy states—quite literally—where society is expected to learn to live with flooding and show ecological consideration. To capture the EU’s, and especially the European Commission’s efforts to establish a pan-European flood infrastructure that accommodates this turn, the concepts of de- and re-infrastructuring are developed. These concepts act as heuristic devices to capture how policy performs some combinations between water and land as constituting an attractive and functional flood infrastructure, but constitutes other infrastructural relations of the aquatic and the terrestrial as undesirable and, hence, as malfunctioning. This performative act of distinguishing between what constitutes “good and proper” versus “bad and undesirable” infrastructure is referred to as a politics of infrastructure.
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| 5. |
- Ekener, Elisabeth, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Developing Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment methodology by applying values-based sustainability weighting - Tested on biomass based and fossil transportation fuels
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526 .- 1879-1786. ; 181, s. 337-351
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The production and use of transportation fuels can lead to sustainability impacts. Assessing them simultaneously in a holistic way is a challenge. This paper examines methodology for assessing the sustainability performance of products in a more integrated way, including a broad range of social impacts. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) methodology is applied for this assessment. LSCA often constitutes of the integration of results from social LCA (S-LCA), environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC). In this study, an S-LCA from an earlier project is extended with a positive social aspect, as well as refined and detailed. E-LCA and LCC results are built from LCA database and literature. Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodology is applied to integrate the results from the three different assessments into an LCSA. The weighting of key sustainability dimensions in the MCDA is performed in different ways, where the sustainability dimensions are prioritized differently priority based on the assumed values of different stakeholder profiles (Egalitarian, Hierarchist, and Individualist). The developed methodology is tested on selected biomass based and fossil transportation fuels - ethanol produced from Brazilian sugarcane and US corn/maize, and petrol produced from Russian and Nigerian crude oils, where it delineates differences in sustainability performance between products assessed. The outcome in terms of relative ranking of the transportation fuel chains based on sustain ability performance differs when applying different decision-maker profiles. This result highlights and supports views that there is no one single answer regarding which of the alternatives that is most sustainable. Rather, it depends strongly upon the worldview and values held by the decision maker. A key conclusion is that sustainability assessments should pay more attention to potential differences in underlying values held by key stakeholders in relevant societal contexts. The LCSA methodology still faces challenges regarding results integration but MCDA in combination with stakeholder profiles appears to be a useful approach to build on further.
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| 6. |
- Rämö, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Sediment Remediation Using Activated Carbon: Effects of Sorbent Particle Size and Resuspension on Sequestration of Metals and Organic Contaminants.
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental toxicology and chemistry. - : Wiley. - 1552-8618 .- 0730-7268. ; 41:4, s. 1096-1110
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Thin-layer capping using activated carbon (AC) has been described as a cost-effective in situ sediment remediation method for organic contaminants. In this study, we compare the capping efficiency of powdered AC (PAC) against granular AC (GAC) using contaminated sediment from Oskarshamn harbor, Sweden. The effects of resuspension on contaminant retention and cap integrity were also studied. Intact sediment cores were collected from the outer harbor and brought to the laboratory. Three thin-layer caps, consisting of PAC or GAC mixed with clay, or clay only, were added to the sediment surface. Resuspension was created using a motor-driven paddle to simulate propeller wash from ship traffic. Passive samplers were placed in the sediment and in the water column to measure the sediment-to-water release of PAHs, PCBs, and metals. Our results show that a thin-layer cap with PAC reduced sediment-to-water fluxes of PCBs by 57 % under static conditions and 91 % under resuspension. Thin-layer capping with GAC was less effective than PAC, but reduced fluxes of high-molecular weight PAHs. Thin-layer capping with AC was less effective in retaining metals, except for Cd, which release was significantly reduced by PAC. Resuspension generally decreased water concentrations of dissolved cationic metals, perhaps due to sorption to suspended sediment particles. Sediment resuspension in treatments without capping increased fluxes of PCBs with log Kow > 7 and PAHs with log Kow 5 6, but resuspension reduced PCB and PAH fluxes through the PAC thin-layer cap. Overall, PAC performed better than GAC, but adverse effects on the benthic community and transport of PAC to non-target areas are drawbacks that favor the use of GAC. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.© 2022 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.
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| 7. |
- Andersson, Viktor, 1983
(författare)
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Excess heat utilisation in oil refineries - CCS and algae-based biofuels
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main objective of this thesis is to investigate two different concepts for CO2 mitigation, from a system perspective, in relation to the oil refining industry: CO2 capture and storage; and algae-based biofuels. For all these processes, process integration with an oil refinery is assumed. The oil refinery sector is a major emitter of CO2 and is responsible for 9% of the industrial emissions of CO2 worldwide. Oil refineries have large amounts of unused excess heat, which can be used to satisfy the heat demands of a CO2 capture plant, a land-based algal cultivation facility, or an algae-based biofuel process. The use of this excess heat significantly reduces the cost for CO2 capture, while an economic evaluation for algae-based biofuels has not been made.Since the amount of heat available from the oil refinery´s processes increase with decreasing temperature in the stripper reboiler, it was investigated how much heat was available at different temperatures. It was also investigated how the decreased temperature would affect the heat demand of CO2 capture processes that use MEA or ammonia as the absorbent. The findings show that it is possible to capture more CO2 using excess heat when the temperature in the stripper reboiler is decreased. For the MEA process, the lower limit of the temperature interval investigated showed the maximum CO2 capture rate, while the ammonia process benefitted from a lower temperature than the standard temperature but showed maximal CO2 capture rate above the lower limit. These results are valid only when using excess heat to satisfy the entire heat demand. At the case study refinery, the available excess heat could satisfy between 28% and 50% of the heat demand of the MEA process when treating the flue gases from all chimneys, depending on the temperature in the stripper reboiler. This utilisation of excess heat represents a way to reduce significantly the costs for CCS in an oil refinery. Land-based cultivation of algae proved to be unsuitable for the utilisation of excess heat. Since the cultivation pond is exposed to wind, rain, and cold, the heat demand fluctuates strongly over the year, making the pond an unstable recipient of the excess heat.Three types of biofuel processes based on microalgae and macroalgae were investigated with respect to integration with the oil refinery. For the algae-based biofuel processes, heat integration and material integration combined to increase the efficiency of the system. When two different build margin technologies (with different CO2 emission factors) are employed for electricity production, macroalgae-based biofuel production appears to be the more robust process from the perspective of CO2 due to the lower electricity demands of the algal cultivation and harvesting phases.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Cossio Grageda, Claudia, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Wastewater management in small towns - understanding the failure of small treatment plants in Bolivia
- 2018
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Ingår i: Environmental Technology (United Kingdom). - : Informa UK Limited. - 1479-487X .- 0959-3330. ; 39:11, s. 1393-1403
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wastewater management in developing countries is a challenge, especially in small towns with rapid population growth. This study aims at assessing the performance and management of five treatment plants (TPs) in rural areas of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Pollutants’ concentrations, wastewater flows, hydraulic and organic loads and hydraulic retention times were determined in three small treatment plants (2000–10,000 population equivalent [p.e.]; flow > 432 m3/d) and two very small treatment plants (<2000 p.e.; flow < 432 m3/d). The performance assessment was based on operational parameters, treatment efficiency and effluent quality. Management data were collected through semi-structured interviews with managers of local water associations. The results support that the poor performance of the TPs is due to lack of operational expertise and financial resources for adequate operation and maintenance (O&M). Additionally, effective treatment was affected by the type of technology used and whether the plant design included plans for O&M with available resources. This study contributes to a better understanding of actual operating conditions of wastewater TPs in small towns, thus providing needed information regarding technology selection, design, implementation and operation.
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