The discovery of electrotrophs, microorganisms that can directly accept electrons from electrodes for the reduction of terminal electron acceptors, has spurred the investigation of a wide range of potential applications. To date, only a handful of pure cultures have been shown to be capable of electrotrophy, but this process has also been inferred in many studies with undefined consortia. Poten...

The understanding of the gaseous adsorption process and the parameters of volatile organic compounds such as organic solvents or fuels onto soils is very important in the analysis of the transport or fate of these chemicals in soils. Batch adsorption experiments with six different treatments were conducted to determine the adsorption of isohexane, a gaseous aliphatic, onto volcanic ash soil (Ta...

The management of municipal and industrial organic solid wastes has become one the most critical environmental problems in modern societies. Nowadays, commonly used techniques are incineration, composting, landfilling, with former being common for hazardous wastes. An alternative eco-friendly method that offers a sustainable economically viable solution is fast pyrolysis, important thermochemic...

To clarify the impact of fossil fuel combustion particles' composition on their capacity to take up water, we apply a laboratory approach in which the method of deposition of compounds, identified in the particulate coverage of diesel and aircraft engine soot particles, is developed. It is found that near-monolayer organic/inorganic coverage of the soot particles may be represented by three gro...

Foul condensates from the digesters and evaporators contain reduced sulfur gas and organic compounds, such as methanol (MeOH) and turpentine, which contribute greatly to pulp mill water pollution in the form of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and toxicity, and air pollution in the form of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), and odor. For this reason, foul condensates are collected and treated by ...

New photovoltaic (PV) energy technologies can contribute to environmentally friendly, renewable energy production, and the reduction of the carbon dioxide emission associated with fossil fuels and biomass. One new PV technology, plastic solar cell technology, is based on conjugated polymers and molecules. Polymer solar cells have attracted considerable attention in the past few years owing to t...

Atmospheric particles collected during the ICARTT 2004 field experiment at ground based sites at Appledore Island (AI), New Hampshire, Chebogue Point (CP), Nova Scotia, and aboard the R/V Ronald Brown (RB) were analyzed using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to quantify organic mass (OM) and organic functional groups. Several of these spectra contain a unique absorbance peak at 35...

To convert wastes into sustainable liquid fuels and chemicals, new resource recovery technologies are required. Chain elongation is a carboxylate-platform bioprocess that converts short-chain carboxylates (SCCs) (e.g., acetate [C2] and n-butyrate [C4]) into medium-chain carboxylates (MCCs) (e.g., n-caprylate [C8] and n-caproate [C6]) with hydrogen gas as a side product. Ethanol or another elect...

16 Journal of Forestry • September 2004 organics, and water repellency. The loss or transformation of surface litter and soil organic matter depends on local burn temperatures, which are controlled by such factors as fuel loads, types, and moisture contents, and fire weather. At higher temperatures, much of the mass of organic matter can be transformed into carbon dioxide and water vapor, with ...