This study investigated the effect, on reactor performance and biomass retention inside the bed, of the material used to make the supports of anaerobic fixed-bed reactors. Three inert supports of similar shape but made of three different materials polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene, high-density polyethylene were manufactured and used. All three supports had the same specific surface area but di...

The main aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of a modified sequencing batch reactor (MSBR) using fixed Kaldnes carriers fed with acclimated sludge for ammonium removal via simultaneous nitrification-denitrification (SND) in synthetic wastewater. The results exhibited a SND of 82.3% within a 450-minute cycle time which was higher than that of a SBR without carrier (69.83%). Nitrite...

The characteristics of plant assemblages influence ecosystem processes such as biomass accumulation and modulate terrestrial responses to global change factors such as elevated atmospheric CO(2) and N deposition, but covariation between species richness (S) and functional group richness (F) among assemblages obscures the specific role of each in these ecosystem responses. In a 4-year study of g...

1. The mechanisms controlling soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) accumulation are crucial for explaining why soils are major terrestrial C sinks. Such mechanisms have been mainly addressed by imposing short-term, step-changes in CO 2 , temperature and N fertilization rates on either monocultures or low-diversity plant assemblages. No studies have addressed the long-term effects of plant functiona...

Phytoextraction is an in situ decontamination technique using metal accumulating plants and appropriate soil amendments to transport and concentrate metals from the soil into the aboveground parts of plants, which are harvested with conventional agriculture methods. Since most of the metal hyperaccumulating plants only produce very low biomass, and most of plants producing high biomass accumula...

Drought is a major abiotic stress that is threatening the production and the survival of many crops such as cereals. The response of three Aegilops crassa accessions (C1, C2 and C3) that inhabit areas with different rates of rainfall and durum wheat to controlled drought (with soil moisture of 50% field capacity) was tested in terms of changes in: relative water content, chlorophyll content, ch...

Production increases in intensively managed forests have been obtained by improving resource availability through water and nutrient amendments. Increased stem production has been attributed to shifts in growth from roots to shoot, and such shifts would have important implications for belowground carbon sequestration. We examined above and belowground growth and biomass accumulation and distrib...

Intercropping often results in increasing production than sole per unit land area, but theunderlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Plants showed different physiologicalcharacteristics in intercropping and sole. However, less information was shown the relationshipsbetween plant aboveground biomass (AB), phosphorus accumulation (PB) and remobilizationand the yield advantage. Here, field exper...

Conversion of nongrain biomass into liquid fuel is a sustainable approach to energy demands as global population increases. Previously, we showed that iron can act as a catalyst to enhance the degradation of lignocellulosic biomass for biofuel production. However, direct addition of iron catalysts to biomass pretreatment is diffusion-limited, would increase the cost and complexity of biorefiner...