The fourth Industrial Revolution is stimulating a fast-paced and resilient industrial internet of things (IIoT) ecosystem. Blockchain, a decentralized digital ledger technology, plays a crucial role in improvising, securing, and streamlining traditional biotechnology-related industrial processes with IoT and creates a sustainable nexus between social, economic, and environmental aspects.
The aim of this study was to understand the influence of catalyst in thermal degradation behavior of rice husk (RH) in catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) process. An iso-conversional Kissinger kinetic model was introduced into this study to understand the activation energy (EA), pre-exponential value (A), Enthalpy (ΔH), Entropy (ΔS) and Gibb's energy (ΔG) of non-catalytic fast pyrolysis (NCFP) and CFP of RH. The study revealed that the addition of natural zeolite catalyst enhanced the rate of devolatilization and decomposition of RH associated with lowest EA value (153.10 kJ/mol) compared to other NCFP and CFP using nickel catalyst. Lastly, an uncertainty estimation was applied on the best fit non-linear regression model (MNLR) to identify the explanatory variables. The finding showed that it had the highest probability to obtain 73.8-74.0% mass loss in CFP of rice husk using natural zeolite catalyst.
The aim of this study is to identify the optimum thermal conversion of Chlorella vulgaris with neuro-evolutionary approach. A Progressive Depth Swarm-Evolution (PDSE) neuro-evolutionary approach is proposed to model the Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) data of catalytic thermal degradation of Chlorella vulgaris. Results showed that the proposed method can generate predictions which are more accurate compared to other conventional approaches (>90% lower in Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Bias Error (MBE)). In addition, Simulated Annealing is proposed to determine the optimal operating conditions for microalgae conversion from multiple trained ANN. The predicted optimum conditions were reaction temperature of 900.0 °C, heating rate of 5.0 °C/min with the presence of HZSM-5 zeolite catalyst to obtain 88.3% of Chlorella vulgaris conversion.
The material characteristics and properties of transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDCs) have gained research interest in various fields, such as electronics, catalytic, and energy storage. In particular, many researchers have been focusing on the applications of TMDCs in dealing with environmental pollution. TMDCs provide a unique opportunity to develop higher-value applications related to environmental matters. This work highlights the applications of TMDCs contributing to pollution reduction in (i) gas sensing technology, (ii) gas adsorption and removal, (iii) wastewater treatment, (iv) fuel cleaning, and (v) carbon dioxide valorization and conversion. Overall, the applications of TMDCs have successfully demonstrated the advantages of contributing to environmental conversation due to their special properties. The challenges and bottlenecks of implementing TMDCs in the actual industry are also highlighted. More efforts need to be devoted to overcoming the hurdles to maximize the potential of TMDCs implementation in the industry.
The environmental footprints of H2productionviacatalytic gasification of wheat straw using straw-derived biochar catalysts were examined. The functional unit of 1 kg of H2was adopted in the system boundaries, which includes 5 processes namely biomass collection and pre-treatment units (P1), biochar catalyst preparation using fast pyrolysis unit (P2), two-stage pyrolysis-gasification unit (P3), products separation unit (P4), and H2distribution to downstream plants (P5). Based on the life-cycle assessment, the hot spots in this process were identified, the sequence was as follows: P4 > P2 > P1 > P3 > P5. The end-point impacts score for the process was found to be 93.4017 mPt. From benchmarking analysis, the proposed straw-derived biochar catalyst was capable of offering almost similar catalytic performance with other metal-based catalysts with a lower environmental impact.
The myriad consumption of plastic regularly, environmental impact and health disquietude of humans are at high risk. Along the line, international cooperation on a global scale is epitomized to mitigate the environmental threats from plastic usage, not limited to implementing international cooperation strategies and policies. Here, this study aims to provide explicit insight into possible cooperation strategies between countries on the post-treatment and management of plastic. First, a thorough cradle-to-grave assessment in terms of economic, environmental, and energy requirements is conducted on the entire life cycle across different types of plastic polymers in 6 main countries, namely the United States of America, China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia. Subsequently, P-graph is introduced to identify the integrative plastic waste treatment scheme that minimizes the economic, environmental, and energy criteria (1000 sets of solutions are found). Furthermore, TOPSIS analysis is also being adapted to search for a propitious solution with optimal balance between the dominant configuration of economic, environmental, and energy nexus. The most sustainable configuration (i.e., integrated downcycle and reuse routes in a closed loop system except in South Korea, which proposed another alternative to treat the plastic waste using landfill given the cheaper cost) is reported with 4.08 × 108 USD/yr, 1.76× 108 kg CO2/yr, and 2.73 × 109 MJ/yr respectively. To attain a high precision result, Monte-Carlo simulation is introduced (10,000 attempts) to search for possible uncertainties, and lastly, a potential global plastic waste management scheme is proposed via the PESTLE approach.
Conventional fossil fuels are relied on heavily to meet the ever-increasing demand for energy required by human activities. However, their usage generates significant air pollutant emissions, such as NOx, SOx, and particulate matter. As a result, a complete air pollutant control system is necessary. However, the intensive operation of such systems is expected to cause deterioration and reduce their efficiency. Therefore, this study evaluates the current air pollutant control configuration of a coal-powered plant and proposes an upgraded system. Using a year-long dataset of air pollutants collected at 30-min intervals from the plant's telemonitoring system, untreated flue gas was reconstructed with a variational autoencoder. Subsequently, a superstructure model with various technology options for treating NOx, SOx, and particulate matter was developed. The most sustainable configuration, which included reburning, desulfurization with seawater, and dry electrostatic precipitator, was identified using an artificial intelligence (AI) model to meet economic, environmental, and reliability targets. Finally, the proposed system was evaluated using a Monte Carlo simulation to assess various scenarios with tightened discharge limits. The untreated flue gas was then evaluated using the most sustainable air pollutant control configuration, which demonstrated a total annual cost, environmental quality index, and reliability indices of 44.1 × 106 USD/year, 0.67, and 0.87, respectively.
The rising pressure on both cleaner production and sustainable development have been the main driving force that pushes mankind to seek for alternative greener and sustainable feedstocks for chemical and energy production. The biomass 'waste-to-wealth' concept which convert low value biomass into value-added products which contain high economic potential, have attracted the attentions from both academicians and industry players. With a tropical climate, Malaysia has a rich agricultural sector and dense tropical rainforest, giving rise to abundance of biomass which most of them are underutilized. Hence, the biomass 'waste-to-wealth' conversion through various thermochemical conversion technologies and the prospective challenges towards commercialization in Malaysia are reviewed in this paper. In this paper, a critical review about the maturity status of the four most promising thermochemical conversion routes in Malaysia (i.e. gasification, pyrolysis, liquefaction and hydroprocessing) is given. The current development of thermochemical conversion technologies for biomass conversion in Malaysia is also reviewed and benchmarked against global progress. Besides, the core technical challenges in commercializing these green technologies are highlighted as well. Lastly, the future outlook for successful commercialization of these technologies in Malaysia is included.