Environmental Engineering / Çevre Mühendisliği

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11147/4321

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  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 3
    Citation - Scopus: 4
    Enhancing Biogas Production From Chicken Manure Through Vacuum Stripping of Digestate
    (Springer Heidelberg, 2023) Sengur, Ozlem; Akgul, Deniz; Bayrakdar, Alper; Calli, Baris
    The vacuum stripping's combined ammonia removal and disintegration effect on chicken manure digestate was evaluated for the first time at different pH values (8.5, 9.5, and 10.5) and temperatures (30, 50, and 70 degrees C). In this way, the potential increase in biogas production by recirculating the vacuum-stripped digestate to the anaerobic digester was determined. Experimental results showed that increasing pH and temperature significantly increase TAN removal, but pH is more effective. A significant portion of the ammonia was removed in the first 30 min. Therefore, a second set of stripping tests was performed for 30 min and at 70 degrees C and pH 10.5. After 30-min tests, a biomethane potential (BMP) assay was performed using the vacuum-stripped digestate to determine how vacuum stripping affects biomethane production. Despite having the lowest disintegration efficiency, the highest biomethane potential (56.2 +/- 29.7 mL CH4/gVS) was obtained with the digestate, which was subjected to vacuum stripping at 70 celcius without pH adjustment, and 48.7% more methane was produced than the control set. The lower residual biomethane potential in vacuum-stripped digestate at pH 9.5 and 10.5 was attributed to Na+ inhibition resulting from high NaOH consumption for pH adjustment.
  • Review
    Citation - WoS: 60
    Citation - Scopus: 66
    A 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, İbrahim
    This 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: 22
    Citation - Scopus: 30
    Comparative Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Biohydrogen Production Methods
    (Elsevier, 2023) Goren, A. Yagmur; Dincer, Ibrahim; Khalvati, Ali; Gören, Ayşegül Yağmur; Dinçer, İbrahim
    As 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: 2
    Citation - Scopus: 1
    Dynamics of Co2 Consumption, and Biomass and Lipid Carbon Production During Photobioreactor Cultivation of the Diatom Cyclotella
    (TÜBİTAK - Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu, 2023) Ökten, Hatice
    Understanding of CO2 delivery and consumption dynamics in algal photobioreactors are critical to unravel microalgae’s full potential for bioproduct generation and carbon capture from flue gas streams. This study aims to expand our current understanding by cultivating the diatom Cyclotella under controlled process conditions of a bubble column photobioreactor and analyzing CO2 consumption dynamics in real time using results from an online CO2 sensor connected to the reactor exhaust. Two sets of experiments were conducted: they served to contrast the influence of silicon and nitrate (Si&N colimitation) and Si limitation, and the light availability, respectively. CO2 consumption was calculated based on the mass balance around the reactor inlet and outlet gas streams. Biomass samples and lipid extracts were analyzed for carbon (C) content to determine biomass-C and lipid-C concentrations. The outlet CO2 concentrations varied significantly with cultivation time and process conditions. More than 15% to 65% of the CO2 introduced left the reactor in the exhaust at any instance based on the set CO2 transfer rates. The highest average daily capturing efficiency was 60%. Nutrient limitation regimes imposed generated unique CO2 consumption profiles undiscernible by the biomass-C analysis, i.e. unlike Si limitation, N limitation had more immediate detrimental effects on C consumption. Final biomass-C concentration increased with increasing N and light availability, 275 mg/L vs. 336 mg/L, and 270 mg/L vs. 501 mg/L, respectively. Biomass-C based capturing efficiency approximations resulted in 20% to 40% underestimation. Under Si-limited conditions, the higher light intensity increased the final lipid-C to biomass-C ratio by two times (from 20% to 40%) and the final lipid-C concentration and peak productivity by four times (from 56 mg/L to 216 mg/L, from 7 to 30 mg/L-day, respectively). This study demonstrates online exhaust CO2 concentration-based analysis’s unique capabilities for assessing carbon availability and capture, organic-C production, and its diversion to biomass and lipid production.