Environmental Engineering / Çevre Mühendisliği
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Article Citation - WoS: 6Citation - Scopus: 6A New Electro-Biomembrane Integrated Renewable-Based System To Produce Power, Fresh Water and Hydrogen for Sustainable Communities(Elsevier, 2025) Goren, A. Yagmur; Dincer, Ibrahim; Khalvati, AliAs the consequences of global warming become more severe, it is more crucial than ever to capitalize on all locally accessible potential renewable energy sources and produce sufficient useable energy outputs to meet community demands while causing the least damage to the ecosystem. Therefore, this paper focuses on a unique parabolic trough collector solar system-powered electro-biomembrane unit that combines a heat and power system with fresh water, electricity and hydrogen production. The proposed integrated system contains the following subsystems: a combining parabolic trough collector solar system, an organic Rankine cycle, a steam Rankine cycle, a multi-stage flash desalination system, and an electro-biomembrane H2 and freshwater production system. A thorough analysis and parametric research are performed on the multigeneration system to determine how important characteristics affect system performance and evaluate the energy and exergy efficiencies, and exergy destruction levels for particular system elements. The study results show that solar irradiation is the most critical parameter for improving system performance. The highest freshwater production of 1,303,333.3 L/day is observed at the solar irradiation of 935,768 kWh/day. Furthermore, the combined output of three electricity production technologies exceeds 2,000,000 kWh/day, highlighting the ability of the system to harness solar thermal energy effectively. The study findings indicate that using solar power and biomass as renewable energy sources, the proposed integrated system provided 328.56 kg of biohydrogen per day. Overall, the energy and exergy efficiencies of the integrated system are obtained as 34.3 and 29.5 %, respectively.Article Citation - WoS: 6Citation - Scopus: 6A Novel Land Surface Temperature Reconstruction Method and Its Application for Downscaling Surface Soil Moisture With Machine Learning(Elsevier, 2024) Güngör, Şahin; Gündüz, OrhanDownscaling of soil moisture data is important for high resolution hydrological modeling. Most downscaling studies in the literature have used spatially discontinuous land surface temperature (LST) maps as the main auxiliary parameter, which limits the creation of continuous soil moisture maps. The number of studies on soil moisture downscaling with machine learning that use gapless LST maps is limited. With this motivation, a hybrid reconstruction method has been proposed in this study to practically obtain continuous LST maps, which are then used to produce high resolution surface soil moisture (SSM) datasets. The proposed method is shown to have high mean performance with R2 and RMSE values of 0.94 and 1.84°K, respectively, for the period between 2019 and 2022. The developed reconstructed LST maps were then used to downscale original 9 km spatial resolution soil moisture datasets of SMAP L3 and SMAP L4 with Random Forest (RF) machine learning algorithm. The RF model were run with four different rainfall datasets, and the MSWEP rainfall dataset was found to produce the best results. The use of antecedent rainfall values as input variables in machine learning models has been shown to improve the performance of the models R2 0.76 to 0.93. The accuracy of the downscaled data was later evaluated for Western Anatolia Basins (WAB) in Türkiye with 31 in-situ stations. The downscaled SMAP L4 had good average statistical indicators R (0.815 ± 0.1), RMSE (0.09 ± 0.047 cm3/cm3), and ubRMSE (0.058 ± 0.025 cm3/cm3). Downscaled SMAP L3 was also validated with in-situ observations with satisfactory R (0.79 ± 0.074), RMSE (0.09 ± 0.043 cm3/cm3), and ubRMSE (0.06 ± 0.026 cm3/cm3) statistics. Furthermore, the performance of the downscaled SMAP L3 was also cross validated with SMAP + Sentinel 1 (L2) dataset between 2019 and 2022. The mean statistics of R (0.761 ± 0.11) and Root Mean Squared Difference (RMSD) (0.05 ± 0.014 cm3/cm3) between downscaled SMAP L3 and L2 data revealed that the new reconstruction method of LST used in the RF model for downscaling of soil moisture performed well to obtain high resolution soil moisture datasets. The proposed technique also overcame the difficulties associated with coastal regions where data was masked for quality considerations, by not only enhancing overall spatial resolution but also filling these data gaps and giving a complete SSM coverage. © 2024 Elsevier B.V.Article Citation - WoS: 20Citation - Scopus: 24Lime-Activated One-Part Geopolymer Mortars From Construction, Demolition and Industrial Wastes(Elsevier, 2024) Kogbara, Reginald B.; Al-Zubi, Abdelrahman; Mortada, Youssef; Hammoud, Ahmad; Masad, Eyad A.; Khraisheh, Marwan K.This work focused on the production of one-part geopolymer mortars from construction and demolition wastes (CDW) blended with steel slag. Previous related studies on geopolymer production from CDW utilized conventional two-part geopolymers comprised of highly alkaline activator solutions and CDW materials. Thus, the study's significance consists in producing high-strength (≥35 MPa) ambient-cured mortars from CDW with predominantly concrete waste by replacing conventional highly alkaline activator solutions with an environmentally-friendly alkaline activator, Ca(OH)2 powder. Four mortar mixtures were produced with CDW contents ranging from 50 to 65 % dry weight, varying the brick waste content from 3 to 18 %. The effect of elevated temperature (40 °C) curing was also considered. The results showed that 55 % CDW content had optimum performance across all parameters studied such as compressive and flexural strengths, setting time, as well as changes in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-determined pore structure (porosity and mean pore size) and x-ray diffraction (XRD)-determined degree of crystallinity over time. It had 28-day compressive and flexural strengths of 42 and 5.8 MPa, respectively, and initial and final setting times of 25 and 50 min. The importance of sufficient brick waste content in the geopolymer mixtures for effective mechanical performance is highlighted. The inclusion of concrete waste in powder form reduced compressive strength under ambient curing but improved performance at 40 °C curing. It is concluded that sustainable structural mortars can be produced by ‘just adding water’ to an optimized CDW mixture with predominantly concrete waste blended with brick waste and slag and activated by powdered Ca(OH)2. © 2023 The AuthorsArticle Citation - WoS: 14Citation - Scopus: 17Cleaner Production of Biohydrogen Using Poplar Leaves: Experimental and Optimization Studies(Elsevier Sci Ltd, 2024) Goren, A. Yagmur; Kenez, Muratcan; Dincer, Ibrahim; Khalvati, AliBiohydrogen (bioH2) is recognized as a potential carbon-neutral energy vector, and developing novel methods has received increasing attention with a prime goal of producing H2 more efficient and cost effective manner. This study aimed to develop a unique reactor to investigate dark fermentative H2 production from poplar biomass using commercially available and inexpensive microorganism cultures. Therefore, six factors of the Box-Behnken design (BBD) were performed to evaluate the individual and combined effects of operational param-eters: acid concentration (2-10%), biomass concentration (2-10 g), initial pH (5-8), temperature (30-40 degrees C), mixing ratio (150-350 rpm), and microorganism concentration (2-6 g) on bioH2 production. Among the oper-ational parameters, the acid concentration was the most effective parameter on bioH2 production. The bioH2 production increased from 11.33 to 18.15 mg/g biomass with increasing acid concentration from 6 to 10%. Moreover, the optimum levels of operational variables were as follows: acid concentration of 9.9%, biomass amount of 2 g, pH of 6.56, temperature of 35 degrees C, mixing ratio of 345 rpm, and microorganism amount of 4.5 g for the highest bioH2 production of 20 mg/g-biomass according to the experimental design. Consequently, the bioH2 production performance of the dark fermentation process showed that bioH2 production from poplar biomass using commercially available microorganisms had a competitive advantage.Review Citation - WoS: 88Citation - Scopus: 102Comprehensive Review and Assessment of Carbon Capturing Methods and Technologies: an Environmental Research(Academic Press inc Elsevier Science, 2024) Goren, Aysegul Yagmur; Erdemir, Dogan; Dincer, IbrahimA majority of the primary contributors of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the environment have really been out of human-made activities. The levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased substantially since the time of the industrial revolution. This has been linked to the use of fossil fuels for energy production, as well as the widespread production of some industrial components like cement and the encroaching destruction of forests. An extreme approach is now necessary to develop the right policies and address the local and global environmental issues in the right way. In this regard, CO2 capturing, utilization, and storage are reliable options that industrial facilities can initiate to overcome this problem. Therefore, we have evaluated the two leading technologies that are used for carbon capture: direct (pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxy-combustion) and indirect carbon (reforestation, enhanced weathering, bioenergy with carbon capture, and agricultural practices) capturing to provide their current status and progresses. Among the considered processes, the post-combustion techniques are widely utilized on a commercial scale, especially in industrial applications. Technology readiness level (TRL) results have showed that amine solvents, pressure-vacuum swing adsorption, and gas separation membranes have the highest TRL value of 9. In addition, the environmental impact assessment methods have been ranked to evaluate their sustainability levels. The highest global warming potential of 219.53 kgCO(2) eq./MWh has been obtained for the post-combustion process. Overall, through this comprehensive review, we have identified some critical research gaps in the open literature in the field of CO2-capturing methods where there are strong needs for future research and technology development studies, for instance, developing stable and cost-effective liquid solvents and improving the adsorption capacity of commercialized sorbents. Furthermore, some research areas, like novel process design, environmental and economic impact assessment of capturing methods with different chemicals and modeling and simulation studies, will require further effort to demonstrate the developed technologies for pilot and commercial-scale applications.Review Citation - WoS: 60Citation - Scopus: 66A Comprehensive Review on Environmental and Economic Impacts of Hydrogen Production From Traditional and Cleaner Resources(Elsevier Sci Ltd, 2023) Goren, A. Yagmur; Dincer, Ibrahim; Khalvati, Ali; Gören, Ayşegül Yağmur; Dinçer, İbrahimThis review paper considered the potential hydrogen (H2) production methods using conventional fossil fuels and in a cleaner manner with biomass and water resources and evaluated them for economic sustainability, environmental impact, and energy efficiency. The study results revealed that the methods of biomass-based hydrogen production (e.g., photo-fermentation (PF), dark fermentation (DF), and microbial electrolysis cell (MEC)), by energy source, appear to more environmentally friendly than the other evaluated methods in terms of emissions since they offer the potential to significantly reduce CO2 releases when their substrates are derived from renewable resources or wastes. Among the biomass-based processes, the PF is the most environmentally friendly H2 production process, presenting a low global warming potential (GWP) value of 1.88 kgCO2 eq./kgH2 and acidification potential (AP) of 0.003 gSO2/kgH2, it is followed by DF and MEC processes. On the other hand, the highest GWP of 19.85 kgCO2 eq./kgH2 and AP 0.139 kgSO2/kg H2 were obtained for the fossil fuel-based gasification process related to coal mining and transportation operations. Although hydrogen production processes seem to consume high amounts of water sources, such as about 9 kg of water consumed for 1 kg of hydrogen produced during conventional electrolysis, the reality is that in the hydrogen ecosystem the water footprint of the process is reduced drastically where hydrogen is employed as fuel in fuel cell systems and converted back to water while generating electricity. So, the hydrogen ecosystem may diligently be recognized as the water conserving cycle. On the other hand, the study results showed that commercially available fossil fuel based (e.g., coal) gasification and steam-methane reforming processes are more advantageous over other lab scale technologies in terms of cost and process efficiency. Nevertheless, rising carbon costs may reduce the reasonable price of fossil-based H2 and promote the cost-competitiveness of biomass-based renewable H2. Overall ranking results also proved that biomass-based H2 production processes are primarily promising options for H2 production in an environmentally friendly and moderately cost-effective way.Review Citation - WoS: 22Citation - Scopus: 30Comparative Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Biohydrogen Production Methods(Elsevier, 2023) Goren, A. Yagmur; Dincer, Ibrahim; Khalvati, Ali; Gören, Ayşegül Yağmur; Dinçer, İbrahimAs energy crisis is recognized as an increasingly serious concern, the topic on biohydrogen (bioH(2)) production, which is renewable and eco-friendly, appears to be a highly-demanding subject. Although bioH(2) production technologies are still at the developmental stage, there are many reported works available on lab- and pilot-scale systems with a promising future. This paper presents various potential methods of bioH(2) production using biomass resources and comparatively assesses them for environmental impacts with a special emphasis on the specific biological processes. The environmental impact factors are then normalized with the feature scaling and normalization methods to evaluate the environmental sustainability dimensions of each bioH(2) production method. The results reveals that the photofermentation (PF) process is more environmentally sustainable than the other investigated biological and thermochemical processes, in terms of emissions, water-fossil-mineral uses, and health issues. The global warming potential (GWP) and acidification potential (AP) for the PF process are then found to be 1.88 kg-CO2 eq. and 3.61 g-SO2 eq., which become the lowest among all processes, including renewable energy-based H-2 production processes. However, the dark fermentation-microbial electrolysis cell (DF-MEC) hybrid process is considered the most environmentally harmful technique, with the highest GWP value of 14.6 kg-CO2 eq. due to their superior electricity and heat requirements. The water conception potential (WCP) of 84.5 m(3) and water scarcity footprint (WSF) of 3632.9 m(3) for the DF-MEC process is also the highest compared to all other processes due to the huge amount of wastewater formation potential of the system. Finally, the overall rankings confirm that biological processes are primarily promising candidates to produce bioH(2) from an environmentally friendly point of view.Article Citation - WoS: 6Citation - Scopus: 6Microbial Desalination Cell Treated Spent Geothermal Brine as a Nutrient Medium in Hydroponic Lettuce Cultivation: Health Risk Assessment(Elsevier, 2024) Goren, A. Y.; Eskisoy, D. N.; Genisoglu, S.; Okten, H. E.The scarcity and contamination of freshwater resources are extremely critical issues today, and the expansion of water reuse has been considered as an option to decrease its impact. Therefore, the reuse of microbial desalination (MDC)-treated spent geothermal brine for agricultural purposes arises as a good solution to prevent water contamination and provide sustainable water usage. In this study, the potential of treated spent geothermal water from MDC system as a nutrient solution for the hydroponic cultivation of lettuce was evaluated. The effects of different water samples (Hoagland solution (R1) as a control, MDC-treated water (R2), 1:1, v/v mixture of MDCtreated water and Hoagland solution (R3), 4:1, v/v mixture of MDC-treated water and Hoagland solution (R4), and tap water (R5)) on lettuce growth were considered. The application of R3 and R4 samples for hydroponic lettuce cultivation was promising since the lettuce plants uptake sufficient nutrients for their growth and productivity with low toxic metal concentrations. In addition, the chlorophyll-a, chlorophyll-b, and carotene contents of lettuce were in the range of 1.045-2.391 mg/g, 0.761-1.986 mg/g, and 0.296-0.423 mg/g in different water samples, respectively. The content of chlorophyll-a was highest in R1 (2.391 mg/g), followed by R3 (2.371 mg/g). Furthermore, the health risk assessment of heavy metal accumulations in the lettuce plants cultivated in the various water samples was determined. Results showed that heavy metal exposure via lettuce consumption is unlikely to suffer noticeable adverse health problems with values below the permissible limit value.Article Citation - WoS: 17Citation - Scopus: 19Development of Ca(oh)2-Based Geopolymer for Additive Manufacturing Using Construction Wastes and Nanomaterials(Elsevier, 2023) Mortada, Youssef; Masad, Eyad; Kogbara, Reginald B.; Mansoor, Bilal; Seers, Thomas; Hammoud, Ahmad; Karaki, AymanRecent growth in additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing in the construction field has motivated the development of various materials that vary in its composition and properties. This paper introduces, characterizes, and evaluates the performance of a sustainable and environmentally friendly geopolymer mixture composed of construction wastes. The geopolymer mixture has calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) as the main alkaline activator and incorporates nanomaterials such as nano-silica and nano-clay to enhance its suitability for AM. The combined use of Ca(OH)2 for alkali activation, and nanomaterials for tailoring the behavior of construction wastes for 3D printing, is novel and addresses the shortcomings of conventional alkaline activators. The paper includes the outcomes of the analysis of the mechanical properties, printability, and microstructure of the geopolymer mixture. The 28-day compressive strength of the mixture reached 42 MPa with ambient temperature curing, which is comparable to traditional geopolymers. The inclusion of 1 wt % of nano-silica accelerated the geopolymerization process and led to the largest (35 %) reduction in the setting time. Similarly, incorporating 1 wt % of nano-clay led to reduction of the thermal conductivity from 0.709 W/mK to 0.505 W/mK, due to the introduction of thermal barriers. The printability of the studied waste-based geopolymer mixture was validated through the successful fabrication of a 3D-printed model. © 2023 The AuthorsArticle Citation - WoS: 6Citation - Scopus: 9The Effect of Military Conflict Zone in the Middle East on Atmospheric Persistent Organic Pollutant Contamination in Its North(Elsevier, 2023) Ayrı, İlknur; Genişoğlu, Mesut; Sofuoğlu, Aysun; Kurt Karakuş, Perihan B.; Birgül, Askın; Sofuoğlu, Sait CemilThis study aimed to investigate long-range atmospheric transport of selected POPs released due to the effects of mili-tary conflicts in regions to the south of Turkey's borders. Ten locations were selected to deploy passive air samplers at varying distances to the border on a southeast-west transect of the country, proximity-grouped as close, middle, and far. Sampling campaign included winter and transition months when desert dust transport events occur. Hypothesis of the study was that a decreasing trend would be observed with increasing distance to the border. Group comparisons based on statistical testing showed that PBDE-183, E45PCB, and dieldrin in winter; PBDE-28, PBDE-99, PBDE-154, p,p '-DDE, E14PBDE, and E25OCP in the transition period; and PBDE-28, PBDE-85, PBDE-99, PBDE-154, PBDE-190, PCB-52, E45PCB, p,p '-DDE, and E25OCP over the whole campaign had a decreasing trend on the transect. An analysis of concen-tration ratio to the background showed that long-range atmospheric transport impacted the study sites, especially those of close group in comparison to the local sources. Back-trajectory analyses indicated that there was transport from the conflict areas to sites in the close-proximity group, while farther sampling locations mostly received air masses from Europe, Russia, and former Soviet Union countries, followed by North Africa, rather than the military con-flict areas. In consequence, decrease in concentrations with distance and its relation to molecular weight through pro-portions, diagnostic ratios, analysis of concentration ratio to the background, and back-trajectory analyses support the effect of transport from the military-conflict area to its north.