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- All Subjects: Environmental engineering
- Genre: Academic theses
Description
An eco-industrial park (EIP) is an industrial ecosystem in which a group of co-located firms are involved in collective resource optimization with each other and with the local community through physical exchanges of energy, water, materials, byproducts and services - referenced in the industrial ecology literature as "industrial symbiosis". EIPs, when compared with standard industrial resource sharing networks, prove to be of greater public advantage as they offer improved environmental and economic benefits, and higher operational efficiencies both upstream and downstream in their supply chain.
Although there have been many attempts to adapt EIP methodology to existing industrial sharing networks, most of them have failed for various factors: geographic restrictions by governmental organizations on use of technology, cost of technology, the inability of industries to effectively communicate their upstream and downstream resource usage, and to diminishing natural resources such as water, land and non-renewable energy (NRE) sources for energy production.
This paper presents a feasibility study conducted to evaluate the comparative environmental, economic, and geographic impacts arising from the use of renewable energy (RE) and NRE to power EIPs. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which is used in a variety of sectors to evaluate the environmental merits and demerits of different kinds of products and processes, was employed for comparison between these two energy production methods based on factors such as greenhouse gas emission, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, human toxicity potential, fresh water usage and land usage. To complement the environmental LCA analysis, levelized cost of electricity was used to evaluate the economic impact. This model was analyzed for two different geographic locations; United States and Europe, for 12 different energy production technologies.
The outcome of this study points out the environmental, economic and geographic superiority of one energy source over the other, including the total carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, which can then be related to the total number of carbon credits that can be earned or used to mitigate the overall carbon emission and move closer towards a net zero carbon footprint goal thus making the EIPs truly sustainable.
Although there have been many attempts to adapt EIP methodology to existing industrial sharing networks, most of them have failed for various factors: geographic restrictions by governmental organizations on use of technology, cost of technology, the inability of industries to effectively communicate their upstream and downstream resource usage, and to diminishing natural resources such as water, land and non-renewable energy (NRE) sources for energy production.
This paper presents a feasibility study conducted to evaluate the comparative environmental, economic, and geographic impacts arising from the use of renewable energy (RE) and NRE to power EIPs. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which is used in a variety of sectors to evaluate the environmental merits and demerits of different kinds of products and processes, was employed for comparison between these two energy production methods based on factors such as greenhouse gas emission, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, human toxicity potential, fresh water usage and land usage. To complement the environmental LCA analysis, levelized cost of electricity was used to evaluate the economic impact. This model was analyzed for two different geographic locations; United States and Europe, for 12 different energy production technologies.
The outcome of this study points out the environmental, economic and geographic superiority of one energy source over the other, including the total carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, which can then be related to the total number of carbon credits that can be earned or used to mitigate the overall carbon emission and move closer towards a net zero carbon footprint goal thus making the EIPs truly sustainable.
ContributorsGupta, Vaibhav (Author) / Calhoun, Ronald J (Thesis advisor) / Dooley, Kevin (Committee member) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
As the demand for power increases in populated areas, so will the demand for water. Current power plant technology relies heavily on the Rankine cycle in coal, nuclear and solar thermal power systems which ultimately use condensers to cool the steam in the system. In dry climates, the amount of water to cool off the condenser can be extremely large. Current wet cooling technologies such as cooling towers lose water from evaporation. One alternative to prevent this would be to implement a radiative cooling system. More specifically, a system that utilizes the volumetric radiation emission from water to the night sky could be implemented. This thesis analyzes the validity of a radiative cooling system that uses direct radiant emission to cool water. A brief study on potential infrared transparent cover materials such as polyethylene (PE) and polyvinyl carbonate (PVC) was performed. Also, two different experiments to determine the cooling power from radiation were developed and run. The results showed a minimum cooling power of 33.7 W/m2 for a vacuum insulated glass system and 37.57 W/m2 for a tray system with a maximum of 98.61 Wm-2 at a point when conduction and convection heat fluxes were considered to be zero. The results also showed that PE proved to be the best cover material. The minimum numerical results compared well with other studies performed in the field using similar techniques and materials. The results show that a radiative cooling system for a power plant could be feasible given that the cover material selection is narrowed down, an ample amount of land is available and an economic analysis is performed proving it to be cost competitive with conventional systems.
ContributorsOvermann, William (Author) / Phelan, Patrick (Thesis advisor) / Trimble, Steve (Committee member) / Taylor, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Understanding and predicting climate changes at the urban scale have been an important yet challenging problem in environmental engineering. The lack of reliable long-term observations at the urban scale makes it difficult to even assess past climate changes. Numerical modeling plays an important role in filling the gap of observation and predicting future changes. Numerical studies on the climatic effect of desert urbanization have focused on basic meteorological fields such as temperature and wind. For desert cities, urban expansion can lead to substantial changes in the local production of wind-blown dust, which have implications for air quality and public health. This study expands the existing framework of numerical simulation for desert urbanization to include the computation of dust generation related to urban land-use changes. This is accomplished by connecting a suite of numerical models, including a meso-scale meteorological model, a land-surface model, an urban canopy model, and a turbulence model, to produce the key parameters that control the surface fluxes of wind-blown dust. Those models generate the near-surface turbulence intensity, soil moisture, and land-surface properties, which are used to determine the dust fluxes from a set of laboratory-based empirical formulas. This framework is applied to a series of simulations for the desert city of Erbil across a period of rapid urbanization. The changes in surface dust fluxes associated with urbanization are quantified. An analysis of the model output further reveals the dependence of surface dust fluxes on local meteorological conditions. Future applications of the models to environmental prediction are discussed.
ContributorsTahir, Sherzad Tahseen (Author) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Thesis advisor) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Chen, Kangping (Committee member) / Clarke, Amanda (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Light-driven reactions can replace chemical and material consumption of advanced water treatment technologies. A barrier to light-driven water treatment is optical obstructions in aquafers (i.e. granular media) or built infrastructures (i.e. tubing) that limits light propagation from a single source such as the sun, or lamps. Side emitting optical fibers (SEOFs) can increase light distribution by > 1000 X from one-point source, but absorbance of UV light by conventional optical fibers limits their application to visible light only.
This dissertation assessed how SEOFs can enable visible through ultraviolet light-driven processes to purify water. I first used an existing visible light polymer SEOF and phototrophic organisms to increase the dissolved oxygen level of a granular sand reactor to > 15 mg DO/L. The results indicated that SEOFs successfully guide light past optical obstructions for environmental remediation which encouraged the fabrication of UV-C SEOFs for microbial inactivation.
I was the first to obtain consecutive UV-C side emission from optical fibers by placing nanoparticles on the surface of a UV transmitting glass core. The nanoparticles induced side-emission via Mie scattering and interactions with the evanescent wave. The side emission intensity was modulated by tuning the separation distance between the nanoparticle and fiber surface. Coating the fiber with a UV-C transparent polymer offered the optical fiber flexibility and prevented nanoparticle release into solution. One SEOF coupled to a 265 nm LED achieved 3-log inactivation of E. coli. Finally, a method was developed to quantify the zone of inhibition obtained by a low flux output source. By placing a SEOF connected to a UV-C LED over a nutrient-rich LB agar plate, I illustrated that one SEOF inhibited the growth of P. aeruginosa and E. coli within 2.8 cm along the fiber’s length. Ultimately this research informed that side-emitting optical fibers can enable light-driven water purification by guiding and distributing specific wavelengths of light directly to the microbial communities of interest.
This dissertation assessed how SEOFs can enable visible through ultraviolet light-driven processes to purify water. I first used an existing visible light polymer SEOF and phototrophic organisms to increase the dissolved oxygen level of a granular sand reactor to > 15 mg DO/L. The results indicated that SEOFs successfully guide light past optical obstructions for environmental remediation which encouraged the fabrication of UV-C SEOFs for microbial inactivation.
I was the first to obtain consecutive UV-C side emission from optical fibers by placing nanoparticles on the surface of a UV transmitting glass core. The nanoparticles induced side-emission via Mie scattering and interactions with the evanescent wave. The side emission intensity was modulated by tuning the separation distance between the nanoparticle and fiber surface. Coating the fiber with a UV-C transparent polymer offered the optical fiber flexibility and prevented nanoparticle release into solution. One SEOF coupled to a 265 nm LED achieved 3-log inactivation of E. coli. Finally, a method was developed to quantify the zone of inhibition obtained by a low flux output source. By placing a SEOF connected to a UV-C LED over a nutrient-rich LB agar plate, I illustrated that one SEOF inhibited the growth of P. aeruginosa and E. coli within 2.8 cm along the fiber’s length. Ultimately this research informed that side-emitting optical fibers can enable light-driven water purification by guiding and distributing specific wavelengths of light directly to the microbial communities of interest.
ContributorsLanzarini-Lopes, Mariana (Author) / Westerhoff, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Alvarez, Pedro J (Committee member) / Garcia-Segura, Sergi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020