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- All Subjects: Leachate
- Creators: Allenby, Braden
- Creators: Cadillo – Quiroz, Hinsby
Description
Currently conventional Subtitle D landfills are the primary means of disposing of our waste in the United States. While this method of waste disposal aims at protecting the environment, it does so through the use of liners and caps that effectively freeze the breakdown of waste. Because this method can keep landfills active, and thus a potential groundwater threat for over a hundred years, I take an in depth look at the ability of bioreactor landfills to quickly stabilize waste. In the thesis I detail the current state of bioreactor landfill technologies, assessing the pros and cons of anaerobic and aerobic bioreactor technologies. Finally, with an industrial perspective, I conclude that moving on to bioreactor landfills as an alternative isn't as simple as it may first appear, and that it is a contextually specific solution that must be further refined before replacing current landfills.
ContributorsWhitten, George Avery (Author) / Kavazanjian, Edward (Thesis director) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Houston, Sandra (Committee member) / Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Zero-Valent Metals (ZVM) are highly reactive materials and have been proved to be effective in contaminant reduction in soils and groundwater remediation. In fact, zero-Valent Iron (ZVI) has proven to be very effective in removing, particularly chlorinated organics, heavy metals, and odorous sulfides. Addition of ZVI has also been proved in enhancing the methane gas generation in anaerobic digestion of activated sludge. However, no studies have been conducted regarding the effect of ZVM stimulation to Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) degradation. Therefore, a collaborative study was developed to manipulate microbial activity in the landfill bioreactors to favor methane production by adding ZVMs. This study focuses on evaluating the effects of added ZVM on the leachate generated from replicated lab scale landfill bioreactors. The specific objective was to investigate the effects of ZVMs addition on the organic and inorganic pollutants in leachate. The hypothesis here evaluated was that adding ZVM including ZVI and Zero Valent Manganese (ZVMn) will enhance the removal rates of the organic pollutants present in the leachate, likely by a putative higher rate of microbial metabolism. Test with six (4.23 gallons) bioreactors assembled with MSW collected from the Salt River Landfill and Southwest Regional Landfill showed that under 5 grams /liter of ZVI and 0.625 grams/liter of ZVMn additions, no significant difference was observed in the pH and temperature data of the leachate generated from these reactors. The conductivity data suggested the steady rise across all reactors over the period of time. The removal efficiency of sCOD was highest (27.112 mg/lit/day) for the reactors added with ZVMn at the end of 150 days for bottom layer, however the removal rate was highest (16.955 mg/lit/day) for ZVI after the end of 150 days of the middle layer. Similar trends in the results was observed in TC analysis. HPLC study indicated the dominance of the concentration of heptanoate and isovalerate were leachate generated from the bottom layer across all reactors. Heptanoate continued to dominate in the ZVMn added leachate even after middle layer injection. IC analysis concluded the chloride was dominant in the leachate generated from all the reactors and there was a steady increase in the chloride content over the period of time. Along with chloride, fluoride, bromide, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate and sulfate were also detected in considerable concentrations. In the summary, the addition of the zero valent metals has proved to be efficient in removal of the organics present in the leachate.
ContributorsPandit, Gandhar Abhay (Author) / Cadillo – Quiroz, Hinsby (Thesis advisor) / Olson, Larry (Thesis advisor) / Boyer, Treavor (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Army Futures Command (AFC) has the implicit mission of ensuring that the Army does not get locked into a technology that might be ineffective in a future of competition and conflict. In this dissertation I develop insights and tools that can help assess and inform AFC’s efforts to understand and avoid undesirable technological lock-in. I started with three historical case studies of the interactions between technology and military strategy. The first examined the German Army’s strategic commitment to using railroads before World War I, forcing them into a military answer to rapidly increased diplomatic tensions in 1914. The second explored how the US Army Air Corps became locked into a doctrine of strategic bombing before World War II, affecting their ability to support ground troops during the Cold War. The third studied why the US Army was able to avoid becoming locked into a tactical nuclear doctrine in the 1950s, despite initial efforts to change Army structure and tactics to accommodate the nuclear battlefield. I identified three factors: 1) rapid changes in the strategic environment; 2) lack of civilian analogues to nuclear weapons; 3) the novelty of tactical nuclear technology, and availability of operational alternatives. The second part of my research sought to identify applicable theories from the fields of science, technology and society studies (STS). I identified five theories (technological systems, co-production, technological lock-in, path dependence, and economic growth theory), each with a brief case study. I sent my initial analysis to eighteen professionals at AFC and used their feedback to determine the utility of these theories for military planning. Finally, I analyzed AFC's current initiatives via semi-structured interviews, gaining insight into AFC's operations to identify three classes of issues that they face: complicated, exterior, and complex. Complicated issues are manageable through organizational methods. Exterior issues require planning to accommodate irreducible uncertainties (such as budgeting processes). Complex issues involved unpredictable interactions among technology and military strategy. I focused on three AFC programs, (artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems) demonstrating how STS theories can offer additional tools to help guide technological and strategic planning for an uncertain future.
ContributorsMcCafferty, Sean (Author) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Kubiak, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Existing models of military innovation assume general resistance to change within militaries that necessitates an outside influence to induce military innovation. Within these approaches, the complex relationship between technology and innovation is normally addressed by either minimizing the importance of technology or separating it from the social process of innovation. Yet these approaches struggle to reflect emerging dynamics between technology and military innovation, and as a result, potentially contribute to wasted national resources and unnecessarily bloody wars. Reframing the relationship between technology and military innovation can provide novel insights into the apparent inability of militaries to align technology with strategic goals and inform more effective future alignment. This dissertation leverages the insights of constructivist science and technology studies concepts to develop a novel model of military innovation: referred to here as the technology triad. The technology triad describes military sociotechnical systems in a way that highlights change and innovation within militaries. The model describes how doctrine, materiel, and “martial knowledge,” a new concept that relates to socially constructed truths about the conduct of war, interact to produce change and innovation within militaries. After constructing the model and exploring an in-depth application to the development of armored warfare in the United States Army prior to World War II, the case from which the model was developed, the dissertation explores the logical extension of the technology triad to establish a deductive framework against which to test the generalizability of the model. Nuclear weapons innovation in the United States military through the end of the Vietnam War provides a test of the model at the strategic level, and the development and employment of armed drones in the United States, Russia, Israel, and Azerbaijan provide a test of a contemporary innovation for the technology triad. Together, these three cases demonstrate that framing the relationship between technology and military innovation in terms of the technology triad can inform concrete actions that military leaders can take related to the types of technologies that are most likely to be useful in future conflicts and ways to manage military innovations to increase opportunities to achieve strategic objectives.
ContributorsSickler, Robert (Author) / Maynard, Andrew (Thesis advisor) / Kubiak, Jeff (Committee member) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Jalbert, Kirk (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021