Towards cleaner technologies minimising the environmental impact

Jir Klemes 0 1 Igor Bulatov 0 1 0 I. Bulatov Centre for Process Integration , CEAS, The University of Manchester , PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK 1 J. Klemes (&) EC Marie Curie Chair (EXC) INEMAGLOW, FIT, University of Pannonia , Egyetem u. 10, 8200 Veszprem, Hungary This editorial introduces and provides an overview of a special issue dedicated to the ninth conference on Process integration, modelling and optimisation for energy saving and pollution reductionPRES 2006. It contains ten selected papers covering various fields of Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, namely, catalytic and thermal cracking with natural zeolite catalyst, recovery and reutilisation of copper from sludge, aerosols monitoring by satellite observations, utilisation of high throughput technologies, CFD modelling solid biomass combustion, fluorides removal and recovery for resources saving, siloxane removal from biogas by bio filtration, software tools for water reuse evaluation, pollutants emission abatement and integrated pollution prevention and control in the surface treatment industries. - Issues of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions together with other pollution and effluents are becoming one of the major technological and also important societal and political challenges. The increasing urgency of these problems requires proactive approach on part of the scientific community, which needs closer collaboration between its members, the industry, policymakers and the general public. Various conferences which are being held around the world encourage closer collaboration among people of many nations in tackling the problems, and progress in meeting these challenges. The series of conferences on Process integration, modelling and optimisation for energy saving and pollution reduction (PRES) is one such opportunity for cross-fertilisation. It was established originally to address issues relevant to process energy integration in connection with the thermal efficiency. However, it has now been expanded to focus on the wider field of energy, water, pollution and waste-related issues. The organisers of the PRES conferences are proud to continuously attract delegates from many countries world-wide, providing a friendly platform for the fast and efficient spreading of novel ideas, processes, procedures and policies. This is now the first special issue of Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy. The PRES conference is also collaborating with several other known journals (Klemes and Pierucci 2007; Klemes and Stehlk 2007; Klemes et al. 2007; Klemes and Huisingh 2008). The collaboration with Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy is a fresh extension and has been mutually greatly appreciated. The PRES conference is traditionally held every second year in the heart of Europe, and 2006 was no exception, the PRES2006 conference being held in Prague, the Czech Republic, between 27 and 31 August 2006. This Central European capital, known as a city of thousand spires, welcomed delegates from more than 50 countries. Besides traditional European countries, they represented Asia, Africa, Australia and North and South America. Overview of the papers included in this special issue: main thematic groups For this special issue of Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, ten documents representing various aspects of this field and related inputs are included. The internationality of PRES is reflected by the fact that competitively selected researchers from eight countries from Europe and AsiaAustria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Italy, Malaysia, Slovakia, Spain and the UK. The first group of papers of this special issue deals with various aspects of the minimising the pollution and waste mainly by taking a proactive approach of recovery and transformation into valuable products. The second group of papers covers similar aspects related to biomass and biogas. It also includes wastewater minimisation and reuse. The last group of two papers is related to monitoring and prevention of pollution. Minimising the pollution by recovery and transformation This group presents a selection of five papers covering various recently developed directions. The first paper Catalytic and thermal cracking of selected polyolefins authored by Jozef Mikulec, Miriam Vrbova from Slovnaft VURUP, Bratislava, Slovakia, presents an important step for the development of feedstock recycling as a promising alternative for the management of plastic wastes. This may allow these residues to be transformed into valuable products for refinery and/or petrochemical industry. Catalytic degradation of polyolefin was carried out in a pilotscale reactor Blowdec operating in the temperature range from 340 to 470 C. The catalysts used in this study were natural zeolite clinoptilolite, ZSM-5, HZSM-5 and their mixture in various volume ratios. Both thermal and catalytic cracking of low-density polyethylene (LDPE), highdensity polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP) and their mixture have been investigated. Liquid products were checked in selected refinery and petrochemical processes as feedstock on the model pyrolysis pilot and with the help of microactivity tests. The second contribution to this thematic group, Recovery and reutilisation of copper from metal hydroxide sludges, was presented by a joint team from School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and Chemical Engineering Department, The University of MalayaS. Vasanthi, A. R. Aziz, and M. K. Aroua. Sludges generated from electroplating wastewaters contain high concentrations of metals. The natural copper ore contains less than 1% of copper, whereas copper precipitate sludges from the electroplating industry may have an average of 510% of copper. In Malaysia, most of these metal-bearing sludges are disposed in specially engineering landfills. An experimental study was carried out to develop and optimise a method of copper recovery. Sludge samples containing high concentrations of copper were obtained from a local electroplating plant. This study introduces a sustainable method of utilising an electroplating sludge. A Spanish team from Departamento de Ingeniera Qumica y Qumica Inorganica, Universidad de Cantabri aR. Aldaco, A. Garea; I. Fernandez and A. Irabien, presented the paper, Resources reduction in the fluoride industry: fluoride removal and recovery in a fluidised bed crystalliser. Crystallisation process in a fluidised bed reactor appears as an alternative clean technology to the conventional chemical precipitation process. It contributes to an environmental friendly production reducing the waste production and improving the recovery of materials. The aim of this work was to scale up the crystallisation process in a FBR for the treatment of industrial fluoride wastewater. The technical viability of the process was concluded in agreement with the obtained results in laboratory scale, with fluoride recovery efficienc (...truncated)