Using coal to produce transportation fuels could improve the energy security of the United States by replacing some of the demand for imported petroleum. Because of concerns regarding climate change and the high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with conventional coal use, policies to encourage pathways that utilize coal for transportation should seek to reduce GHGs compared to petroleu...

The world energy paradigm is changing from one based on petroleum to one based on a mixture of energy platforms. This change is precipitated by a finite petroleum supply, an expanding global demand, and political instability in areas with major petroleum reserves. The mixed energy platform will include an array of renewable energy sources. The agricultural and forestry sectors have the potentia...

Anaerobic treatment has many advantages over other biological method particularly when used to treat complex wastewater such as petroleum refinery wastewater. In this study two Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactors were operated in parallel to treat six volumetric organic loads (0.58, 1.21, 0.89, 2.34, 1.47 and 4.14 kg COD/m·d) to evaluate the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal eff...

Growing dependence on imported oil has been a source of concern in the United States, despite potential consumer benefits from low cost imports. Much attention has focused on exposure to the instability of the world petroleum markets. Disadvantages that are associated with an embargo include incomplete adjustment with asset-fixity and unemployment (Tolly and Wilman, Broadman and Bruce). Offsett...

Characterization and evaluation of a biological submerged filter was carried out on a full-scale pilot plant performing removal of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and total nitrogen (TN) from pre-treated urban wastewater. The average influent values of BOD5, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and TN were 370, 1,015 and 60 mg/L, respectively. The pilot plant produced good discharge quality during stea...

External challenges to health systems, such as those caused by global economic, social and environmental changes, have received little attention in recent debates on health systems' performance in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). One such challenge in coming years will be increasing prices for petroleum-based products as production from conventional petroleum reserves peaks and demand s...

BACKGROUND To reduce the environmental impacts of the aviation sector as air traffic grows steadily, the aviation industry has paid increasing attention to bio-based alternative jet fuels (AJFs), which may provide lower life-cycle petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than petroleum jet fuel. This study presents well-to-wake (WTWa) results for four emerging AJFs: ethanol-to-j...

A biotechnological method for metalworking fluids (MWF) wastewater treatment was developed. The research, conducted in a lab-scale bioreactor, proved that the process of eliminating pollutants from MWF wastewater proceeds effectively when the following are applied: multiple reinoculating of biomass by adding active microorganisms into the bioreactor, immobilizing microorganisms on the PVC foam ...

This study uses a vector autoregression (VAR) model to analyze changes in pollutants among different mining industries and related policy in China from 2001 to 2014. The results show that: (1) because the pertinence of standards for mining waste water and waste gas emissions are not strong and because the maximum permissible discharge pollutant concentrations in these standards are too high, am...

In recent years, a number of mergers have occurred in the petroleum industry involving upstream firms that are imperfectly integrated into retail markets. In order to empirically evaluate the competitive effects of such mergers, this paper proposes a structural model of supply and demand that reflects divisions between upstream producers and downstream retailers. Neither downstream costs includ...