In spite of the advent of new materials, clay bricks remain, arguably, the most popular construction materials today. Nevertheless the low cost and versatility of clay bricks cannot always be associated with high environmental and sustainable values, especially in terms of raw material sources and manufacturing processes. At the same time, the worldwide agricultural footprint is fast growing, w...

BACKGROUND Animal wastes are of particular environmental concern due to greenhouse gases emissions, odor problem, and potential water contamination. Anaerobic digestion (AD) is an effective and widely used technology to treat them for bioenergy production. However, the sustainability of AD is compromised by two by-products of the nutrient-rich liquid digestate and the fiber-rich solid digestate...

plug-flow digesters with periodic loading mechanism are more enthusiastic than fully mechanized digestion plants for the majority of small or medium scale farms according to the costs and operational complexities. a dual-compartment plug-flow reactor equipped with a passive heating system was designed and experimentally operated by purpose of demonstrating a simple and low cost technology for h...

(SSF) is an economical alternative technique to submerged fermentation (SmF) for large scale production of industrial enzymes, where raw materials and processing is cheap with reduced chemical cost and less processing risk. It is defined as ‘the growth of microorganisms (mainly fungi) on moist solid materials in the absence of free flowing water’ [1]. This technique uses agricultural substrates...

Xylitol is a pentahydroxy sugar-alcohol which exists in a very low quantity in fruits and vegetables (plums, strawberries, cauliflower, and pumpkin). On commercial scale, xylitol can be produced by chemical and biotechnological processes. Chemical production is costly and extensive in purification steps. However, biotechnological method utilizes agricultural and forestry wastes which offer the ...

The main objective of this study was production of ethanol from three lignocellulosic biomasses like sugarcane bagasse, rice straw and wheat straw by Sacchromyces cervisae. All the three substrates were ground to powder form (2 mm) and pretreated with 3%H2O2 + 2% NaOH followed by steaming at 130 °C for 60 min. These substrates were hydrolyzed by commercial cellulase enzyme. The whole fermentati...