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Pollution: Point Sources
Published in Brian D. Fath, Sven E. Jørgensen, Megan Cole, Managing Global Resources and Universal Processes, 2020
Ravendra Naidu, Mallavarapu Megharaj, Peter Dillon, Rai Kookana, Ray Correll, W.W. Wenzel
Environmental pollution is one of the foremost ecological challenges. Pollution is an offshoot of technological advancement and overexploitation of natural resources. From the standpoint of pollution, the term environment primarily includes air, land, and water components including landscapes, rivers, parks, and oceans. Pollution can be generally defined as an undesirable change in the natural quality of the environment that may adversely affect the well being of humans, other living organisms, or entire ecosystems either directly or indirectly. Although pollution is often the result of human activities (anthropogenic), it could also be due to natural sources such as volcanic eruptions emitting noxious gases, pedogenic processes, or natural change in the climate. Where pollution is localized it is described as point source (PS). Thus, PS pollution is a source of pollution with a clearly identifiable point of discharge that can be traced back to the specific source such as leakage of underground petroleum storage tanks or an industrial site.
Green Manufacturing
Published in Matthew N. O. Sadiku, Emerging Green Technologies, 2020
The rapid technological advancements have led to a growing concern for environmental degradation caused by the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing is well known as the largest sector of the American economy. It is closely connected with all other sectors like mining, trading, supply chain, and financial services. It contributes to the economy by providing many job opportunities, creating wealth, eradicating poverty, providing better life standards, healthcare, and education [1]. However, the manufacturing sector accounts for a significant portion of the world's consumption of resources and generation of waste. It has negatively impacted the environment through the overexploitation of natural resources and pollution. The manufacturing industry's energy demand is one-third of the total energy consumption in the United States [2]. To minimize the environmental damage due to manufacturing requires a new manufacturing process.
Removal of carbon and nitrogen in wastewater from a poultry processing plant in a photobioreactor cultivated with the microalga Chlorella vulgaris
Published in Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part A, 2022
Nayeli Gutiérrez-Casiano, Eduardo Hernández-Aguilar, Alejandro Alvarado-Lassman, Juan M. Méndez-Contreras
The overexploitation of natural resources has increased global concerns about anthropogenic climate change and the supply of energy, food and water.[1] It is expected that by 2050, the world population will face a crisis due to water and energy shortages,[2] as consumption of the latter is estimated to increase by 57%.[3] Poultry industries produce wastewater in significant quantities. The average water consumption is between 8 and 15 L bird−1 slaughtered.[4] This wastewater contains nutrients and is an economical source of water with respect to synthetic media for the cultivation of microalgae.[5] The purpose of wastewater treatment is the removal of organic matter and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.[6] A combination of wastewater treatment with renewable energy production, using biomass obtained from microalgae as raw material, has been highlighted for its removal and production of oxygen and biomass.[7]
Community-of-interests across source-to-sea systems: an international law perspective
Published in Water International, 2021
Flavia Tavares da Rocha Loures
Poorly planned development, population growth and urbanization, for example, have led to resource overexploitation that threaten water availability; and thus, make it harder to allocate it across borders and between farms and cities, industries and services, people and nature. As a threat multiplier, climate change aggravates the difficulties posed by water’s uneven distribution in space and time, by accelerating the hydrological cycle, disrupting precipitation patterns, and increasing the frequency and potency of extreme events. Development itself may also lead to, and is impacted by, climate change, with our waters absorbing much of the CO2 emitted by various anthropogenic sources. Water pollution worldwide is a major threat to health, with rivers serving ‘as conveyors of large quantities of plastic litter’ (Mathews et al., 2018, p. 3) and other pollutants that end up in the ocean. In fact, the 10 watercourses that together contribute 90% of this plastic waste include six that are transboundary (Stockholm International Water Institute [SIWI], 2018a, p. 1). Moreover, 70% of the world’s largest cities are on the coast, and their large populations are at once victims of, and contributors to, enormous volumes of wastewater discharges, 80% of which flow untreated into natural outlets along the S2S system (Mathews et al., 2018, p. 1). Also, excessive nutrient loading into coastal and marine waters from both unmanaged agricultural runoff and untreated wastewater inflows causes eutrophication of water bodies, with an estimated 245,000 km2 of marine ecosystems impacted (Mathews et al., 2018, pp. 1–2; SIWI, 2018a).5