Browse

Nowadays, emulsions have been increasingly studied due to their application in different fields such us cosmetic, agriculture, pharmaceutical, paint and oil industries. Essential oils were widely used in the cosmetic industry as antimicrobial and antioxidant agents. This study investigated essential oil entrapment in beeswax in order to prolong its biological activities as oil in water (O/W) emulsion. Moreover, one of this work aim was to achieve stable beeswax-essential oil (extracted from Rosmarinus Officinalis,...

The paper deals with the chlorine in sintering process overview. Chlorine penetrates to iron making process from raw charge already in the coke making from coal and sintering process. Beside it can causes corrosion problems in blast furnace facilities, it causes environmental problems too. It is know that sintering of iron ores is a industrial source of polychlorinated dibenzo ? p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs). The paper gives overview of how the municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) fly ash effects on t...

This paper is an overview of the main devices for wave and wind energy extraction and how they can be combined to extract as much green energy as possible. This idea can be done by upgrading existing wind turbines with wave energy systems as well as by creating a new system that will cover the wind energy and also the wave and even solar energy. The hybrid systems are presented as a combination of existing systems. The study continues with the evaluation of the renewable resources in the Western Black Sea and to s...

In the European context, storage and recycling of sludge from sewage treatment plants is a highly discussed and sometime a controversial subject. On the other hand, sludge production at the European level it can not to be neglected, being around 13.25 Mt/year. Even if for sewage sludge management there are many alternatives (including incineration or landfilling), its use in agriculture remains a preferred option in many countries due to the results obtained by farmers in terms of productivity levels achieved for ...

The paper aims to assess the macrobenthic diversity and habitats distribution in front of the Danube mouth along a depth gradient on the Romanian Black Sea shelf. During the reference 60 - 70?s period the benthic community diversity accounted for 75 species. In the 80?s (starting of eutrophication period) this has sharply decreased to 45 species as result of the ecological collapse due to economic development of the riverine Black Sea countries?. However, the area is naturally under the influence of the riverine i...

The Best Available Techniques (BAT) concept first emerged in the 1960s. It primarily serves as a tool for preventing industrial pollution and setting conditions for Integrated Environmental Permits for larger industrial installations. BAT include technological, technical and managerial solutions aimed to prevent or control pollution and provide for high resource and energy efficiency (EE) of production processes and minimisation of waste. Lessons learnt by various countries prove that the BAT concept has potential...

Two well-known regulatory constructions ? technological regulation based on Best Available Techniques (BAT) and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions regulation ? aim at cleaning and greening industrial production. BAT-related legislation and practices have been applied in the UK and Sweden for over 30 years, while European Parliament passed the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive in 1996. In Russia, the ?BAT Law? was issued in 2014, and in 2019 first IPPC installations will receive Integrated ...

Neurodegenerative diseases are a group of pathologies that mainly affect neurons of the human brain. Particularly, Alzheimer disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder, being manifested by neuronal and synaptic loss. One of the main pathological aspects of AD is aggregation of amyloid-? (A?) peptide. However, there are some neuropeptides that play an important role in immunity and neuroprotection. In addition, the presence of metal ions and their abnormal accumulation play a key role in this pathology. The inter...

To improve the fuel characteristics, bio-oil is preceded to modernization which mainly includes hydrotreatment. This work is devoted to the study of the conversion of anisole, as one of the lignin monomers, in the presence of catalysts synthesized by the hydrothermal method. Platinum and palladium catalyst deposited on the polymer matrix of hypercrosslinked polystyrene allowed achieving about 90% of anisole conversion. It was shown that during the conversion of anisole, cyclohexane, methylcyclohexane, and phenol a...

The ultimate goal of this study is to obtain antimicrobial textiles, useful in various skin infections with different bacterial strains, due to the unique properties of contained essential oils, such as: antimicrobial and antiinflamatory effects. Four different matrices of biologic active systems in forms of stable emulsions were used in this study, namely: bee wax ? essential oil, chitosan ? agar ? essential oil, xanthan gum ? essential oil, xanthan gum ? gelatin ? essential oil and four different types of essent...

Chicken manure is one of the massively produced wastes in the agriculture, and pyrolysis may be a good way of its treatment. Biochar obtained in the process of pyrolysis may be used as soil fertilizer since it improves soil water and air balance, stabilizes pH, provides plants and soil microbiota with nutrients. In the present study, chicken manure with sawdust was pyrolyzed at 400 ?C (residence time 2 h), and biochar obtained was added to soil in a dose of 30 t ha-1 in a field experiment. Wheat was planted in the...

The use of environmentally friendly and biodegradable fertilizers is an area of great interest throughout the world. One such fertilizer is biochar, obtained by the method of biomass pyrolysis (manures, green mass, and mushrooms). Biochar obtained from chicken manure is discussed relatively rarely in the literature; however, it seems to be a good fertilizer because of its significant nutrient content. Moreover, preparation of biochar from chicken manure solves another serious environmental problem: its utilization...

The waste resulted from tanning industry represent more than 55% from raw material (raw hide or skin), (Stefan D.S. et all, 2018). The new concept of European Union (EU) referring to ?circular economy? aims to maintain the value of products, materials and resources for as long as possible by returning them into the product cycle at the end of their use, while minimising the generation of waste. The circular model proposes closing the loop of products lifecycles by increasing recycling and reuse, the target for was...

In view of increasing demand for more efficient use of water resources, technological processes are innovated in textile industry and result in lower environmental impact. One possible option is to clean textile waste water containing industrial dye residues by microbial consortia and biodegradation process. This method of removing potentially toxic substances by microbial biomass is appropriate because other chemicals are not brought into the environment and residual biomass can be easily removed when the biodegr...

Diversification of rural resources in Poland has the potential to create great opportunities for innovation, development and of renewable energy sources and the development of non-agricultural activities. Over 90% of the territory of Poland is a rural area characterized by specific conditions. The potential of biomass that is usefoul for energy purposes in Poland is among the highest ones in the European Union. This creates the possibility of the use of biomass for the production of liquid fuels (bioethanol, biodi...

One of the directions of the rational use of the secondary raw materials of meat industry, including collagen-containing, is its modification in order to obtain protein products enriched with micronutrients for the further use in food production. The presence of active carboxyl end groups in the collagen molecule and complex spatial structure cause the complexation of this protein with various minor nutrients, thereby promoting the creation of a biologically active composite for the enrichment of meat products. To...

The Black Sea is referred to as a continental or semi-enclosed sea being connected with the Mediterranean Sea by Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and with the Azov Sea by Kerch Strait. The volume of water exchanged with the Mediterranean Sea is modest; thus the waters under 100 m depth are known as anoxic, and a high concentration of H2S is present. Taking into account its particular situation is a piece of evidence that even small slicks of oil discharged from operational purposes or by accident seriously affect ...

Among different types of hazards associated with underground mining in Polish copper mines, one of the most dangerous is rock burst hazard. Having in mind that the depth of exploitation is getting deeper, this problem will likely get worse in the near future. This kind of hazard is connected inherently with seismic events. Controlled group blasting within a potentially unstable roof stratum is considered as an active method of rock burst prevention. A number of recorded seismic events can be clearly and directly e...

The key objective of modern vision systems is the problem of a signal class determining since the signal features are completely determined by the type of underlying surface relative to which the observation is made. In spite of the fact that at present there are a huge number of analytic methods for the solving the indicated problem, in the vast majority of tasks based on natural images, capacities of solving it are characterized by the probabilities of erroneous and proper decisions. The exact analytic probabili...

In general, the impact of the construction material base on the cost of construction is questionable. Wooden houses are becoming more common because of meeting the sustainable construction aspects and thanks to shorter construction time compared to brick houses. In the Czech Republic, it is still questionable whether wooden houses also bring lower investment costs, as the wooden house market hasn?t fully developed yet. The aim of the article is to define the impact of the material base of the houses on the market ...

The research regarding some technological links took place in the Oravita Depression, located in south-western Romania, between 2016 and 2018. The records from the Oravita Meteorological Station show that the average annual rainfall in the area is 736 mm, and the average annual temperature is 10°C. The climate of this area falls within the climatic formula c.f.b.x. according to Koppen, namely in the moderate continental temperate climate. The soil type on which the experiments were performed was stagno-gleyic prel...

Potato is the world's fourth largest food crop, being cropped in 140 countries on an area of 19 million hectares, with a total annual production of 322 million tons and an average production of 40 tons per hectare. Perennial dicotyledonous weeds represent a real danger to potato culture because they cannot be controlled after the potato has emerged. Such weeds are: Canadian thistle (Cirsium arvense), field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis ) and hoary cress (Cardaria draba). Herbicides that are applied upon the soil ...

Since the 1990s Green Public Procurement (GPP) is a voluntary environmental policy promoting in EU low-impact goods and service markets; according to these more general objectives, contracting authorities should ?buy green? i. e. environmentally friendly products and services. This has been translated into a short-term objective: to reach over than 70% of recycled materials from C&D waste by 2020 (CCE No 397 of 16 June 2008). Within this European framework, each Member State has proposed its own vision/strategy, a...

Nowadays, it is important to pay attention to soil contamination with heavy metals, especially in agricultural soils, because heavy metals taken up by crop plants can affect human health. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of substrate contamination on cadmium and lead accumulation in field bean (Vicia faba L.) and to specify changes in root anatomical structures. The vegetation experiment was carried out under controlled conditions. Changes to the above mentioned parameters were investigated at 0...

The calcareous nannoplankton represents a group of major components of the oceanic phytoplankton, situated at the base of the trophic chain. The evolution pattern of these organisms is relevant in the past geological record and nowadays, for several research fields, such as: marine biology, marine geology, biogeochemistry, micropaleontology, biostratigraphy as well as paleogeographic and paleoclimatic reconstructions, including the paleoenvironmental ones. Taking into account that the calcareous nannoplankton spec...

A nationwide project is under taken since a few years with the purpose to upgrade the geodetic infrastructure by setting up a wide real-time GNSS/CORS (Global Navigation Satellite System/Continuously Operating Reference Stations) network. In this perspective, a study is achieved in the setting of this assignment with the purpose to select eligible sites of the network infrastructure. The technical selection criteria were based essentially on the assessment of GNSS data received by permanent sites under experiment....

The problem of intersection capacity is a constantly discussed topic in the field of traffic engineering. Uncontrolled intersections have the lowest capacity, roundabouts and controlled intersections follow, and grade-separated interchanges have the highest capacity. However, in many cases, a grade-separated interchange cannot be built (mainly for spatial or financial reasons). In these cases, it is necessary to look for solutions to increase the capacity of other types of intersections. The paper deals with capac...

In the paper has been analyzed the state of the tropical forests in Central African Region. The trends and causes of deforestation are revealed, and the associated decrease in the ecosystem function of tropical forests CO2 sequestration by atmosphere. Model calculations based on the Spatial Model of the Global Carbon Cycles in Atmosphere - Plants ? Soil System (APS) represent the response of vegetation to an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air and quantitatively determine the parameters of t...

The article deals with issues related to the use of a universal multi-subject mapping method belonging to the technology of visualization of educational information in the preparation of bachelors. The cartographic method of teaching is characteristic in that it allows you to visualize both the geographic proper and any simulated space, to investigate, first of all, its spatial structural patterns of the structure (the form often determines the content). In the process of learning, the use of the cartographic meth...

In today?s world, with high demanding of energy, heavy oil and bitumen are important hydrocarbon resources that play progressively significant roles in the worldwide economy. Due to the diminishing of conventional oil resources, getting energy from unconventional resources becomes a tremendously outstanding process. Recently, metal oxide catalysts have shown promising applications and effects in different thermal enhanced oil recovery processes. These metal oxide catalysts have been chosen due to their exclusive p...

The recovery of heavy, extra heavy oils and bitumens has been challenging for the world oil industry. In-situ combustion (ISC) has been proved to be effective method for the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) of these heavy crudes. However, the wide application of ISC is still limited due to the difficulty in ignition and unstable combustion front, etc. In order to address these difficulties, catalysts have been proposed for improving the combustion behavior of crude oils in ISC process. This study is aimed to identify t...

Ratei Cave, with its 7,224 m length, provides a good opportunity to investigate the geology and tectonics of Leaota Mountains, the eastern end of the South Carpathians. The geological observations reveal that Ratei Cave is mainly developed in Upper Jurassic limestones, but siliciclastic and metamorphic rocks are encountered in different locations along the cave passages. The stratigraphic succession on the 69 m elevation range, which represents the positive vertical extent between the entrance and the cave end, co...

The positive effect of mineral additions in cementitious materials (concrete, mortars, composite materials), proven by several studies along time, encouraged a complex research at NIRD ?URBAN-INCERC? Cluj-Napoca Branch regarding the potential valorisation of mineral wastes or by-products, generated by Romanian local industry, in new innovative cementitious materials for the construction industry. The central focus of the research was targeted towards fly ash and its potential use in reliable, high performance ceme...

This article describes the research aimed at analyses of the present state of indoor environment in historical building of State Theatre in Kosice. The representative building of the State Theatre was built in a Neo-baroque style according to projects of Adolf Lang during the years 1879-1899. The goal of research is to take measure the level of indoor air quality, improve the energy performance of building and its HVAC systems. The one of many partial tasks is also the analyses of air temperature stratification in...

In Poland there exist legal regulations concerning the protection of agricultural and forest land. The paper aims to investigate the changes in the area of agricultural and forest land in Poland since the accession to the European Union in the year 2004. The study was based on statistical data for the years 2004-2017 provided by Statistics Poland. Paper presents: (i) changes in the land area by land type, (ii) changes in the fallow land area, (iii) changes of agricultural land area resulting from land designation ...

The Kupa River, located in the west-central part of Croatia, is a 294 km long tributary of the Sava River, belonging to the Danube watershed. An extreme barium anomaly in sediments of Kupica and Kupa rivers was discovered during 2003 by Franciskovic-Bilinski. It originates from an abundant barite mine in Homer-Lokve area, from where it penetrated to Kupica River source. From there the Ba-anomaly in sediments was followed more than 120 km downstream along both rivers. This discovery has a big potential to be used i...

Landscape structure is the result of a process that continually taking place in the landscape during of historical development. The city of Kezmarok has held a very significant position in terms of settlement structure of the Poprad basin or the greater region beneath the High Tatras from the very beginnings of its development. The area demarcated by the current cadaster limits was witness to many changes to the landscape structure conditioned by a wide range of factors and conditions, out of which human involveme...

In millions of years, nature has created huge energy reserves in the form of fossil fuels, consumption of which is constantly increasing. The depletion of energy reserves stored in fossil fuels is becoming real. For this reason, as well as for the protection of the environment, it is necessary to look for and utilize the renewable energy sources that we encounter in everyday life. Such a source of energy is, for example, biomass, which has been used as a fuel by many generations before us. The combustion of biomas...

On 18/19 June 2016, the manifestation of two severe supercell thunderstorms in the northern half of Moldavia caused unexpected losses exceeding 14 mil. EUR. Radar estimated hail sizes over 10 cm were recorded over large areas. On the ground level there was recorded hailstones with a diameter greater than 5 cm in some areas. This day?s situation was exceptional due to the synoptic context. There was a strong link between the low-pressure area centered over Southeastern Europe and the formation of a trough (a fusion...

During the experimental and theoretical studies of the sea surface in the infrared range, it was proved that the microbubble air layer of the sea surface discovered earlier can be used as an indicator of the magnitude of the heat flux on the border of the sea-atmosphere. The result was obtained by developing a method for the simultaneous determination of the reflection coefficients, temperature and wave state of the sea surface measuring the radiation of the sea surface and atmosphere in the infrared range in a wi...

Cut-off low altitude cyclones (COLs) are characterized by the presence of small cold air masses detached from the polar vortex as a consequence of Rossby waves development. Their displacement at a lower latitude is capable to induce higher atmospheric instability and they have a great influence on the amount of precipitation over Romania between April and September. This paper is based on the analysis from a synoptic point of view of the days when the precipitation amount was greater than 10 mm between 1961 and 20...

The health resort Duszniki-Zdroj is located in the south-western part of Poland in the Sudety Mountains. The southern part of the city ? the Spa area ? contains medicinal waters intakes. What is interesting, all of them are flowing wells. The spa part of Duszniki Zdroj is located at the northern edge of the Orlica-Bystrzyca Metamorphic Complex. At present, there are nine boreholes with medicinal waters, three of which are exploited. The total discharge from these intakes is 31.96 m3/year. The mean discharge over m...

Magnesium-based materials are very attractive as hydrogen storage media, due to their high hydrogen absorption capacity (theoretically, 7.6 wt.% H2) and low price. Some drawbacks of these materials, like slow hydrogen sorption kinetics and high absorption-desorption temperatures, can be overcome using different additives and high energy ball milling. In this study, the hydrogen sorption characteristics of the Mg-Ni-C composites, prepared by ball milling under Ar atmosphere, are investigated. Polyolefin wax (POW, a...

Thermal analysis is the sum of investigation methods in which the physical or chemical properties of a substance or mixture of substances are measured as a function of temperature or time. In order to perform these determinations, the temperature of the product is changed after a well-established and controlled program. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FT-IR) is a non-destructive technique that involves low analytical costs and fast responses. Thus, some physical phenomena such as melting, boiling, sublima...

Mushroom production generates a considerable amount of spent mushroom substrate, difficult to utilize at the site of production. The high amount of organic matter and nutrients in the waste justifies its environmental use. However, waste entering the environment undergoes transformations, the direction and intensity of which depend on, among other things, environmental conditions. Extreme environmental conditions (such as very low or high pH) can significantly change the properties of introduced material and, as a...

Static electricity as a result of friction and induction loading mechanisms is a phenomenon that occurs frequently in the industry, most of the time accidentally and unwanted. The electrostatic charges accumulated by workers during various activities may lead to electrostatic discharges, which, in the presence of an explosive atmosphere, cause explosion and / or fire risk. Theoretical and practical studies regarding the occurrence, formation and accumulation of electrostatic charges in the charging process with el...

In 2017, on the order of the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection in Katowice, the study entitled "Identification of pollution sources affecting the chemical composition of water in the area of Natura 2000 The Cieszyn Tufa Springs PLH240001" was prepared. The unique karst area "The Cieszyn Tufa Springs" is located in the Western Carpathians, in the watershed of the Vistula and the Oder. The studied subslope, descending springs, with the discharge of 0.001-2.5 dm3/s (2017), drain the first aquifer, ass...

The compositions of polymer biodegradable films based on polyhydroxybutyrate and chitosan, cross-linked with calcium chloride, have been developed. New materials, which are promising for use in the field of medicine as wound coverings, suture materials and tissue engineering, have been obtained by casting method. The effect of prescription parameters such as the content of plasticizer and calcium chloride on the physic-chemical properties of polymer compositions has been studied. It is shown that by varying the co...

A promising source of Rare-Earth Metals (REM) is the mine refuses of Obukhov deposit?s zircon concentrate, which contain 3.53% of the sum of REM oxides. Chlorination is an effective method for transferring metals from crude ore to chlorides convenient for subsequent separation, purification and production of marketable products. The advantage of such method is absence of sewage and discharge of harmful substances into the atmosphere, which is an effective measure for environmental protection. The paper performs a ...

Forest value depends on multiple factors, as well as on prevailing market conditions. It is measured in natural units. The most popular approach in calculating the economic value of a forest is the discounted cash flow method. The most influential factor is an discount rate, since the value determination is based on the assumption that a forest life cycle is 120 years. Therefore, the overall aim of the present research is to evaluate an optimal discount rate for long-term forest management. The research showed tha...