The paper focuses on problems connected with Environmental Corporate Social responsibility in the energy industry. The objective behind this article is to analyse pro-environment activities within Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility (ECSR) that heating operators carry out, using the example of a Poland-based company called Miejska Energetyka Cieplna Spółka z o.o. with headquarters in Koszalin. In particular, this study focuses on pro-environment activities that the company has been involved in from 2017−2020. The data and information found in this study demonstrate that the company systematically devoted its financial resources to pro-environment efforts in terms of both ISO 14001 maintenance as well as educational/promotional activities. According to the findings, the company has been highly committed to Environmental Corporate social Responsibility issues. The implementation of its strategy in this field can lead to ecological innovation and help establish an effective busi... [more]

Power converters in wind turbines exhibit frequent failures, the causes of which have remained unexplained for years. Field-experience based research has revealed that power- and thermal-cycling induced fatigue effects in power electronics do not contribute significantly to the field failures observed. Instead, clear seasonal failure patterns point to environmental influences, in particular to humidity, as a critical stressor and likely driver of converter failure. In addition to the electrical operating conditions, it is therefore important to also identify and characterize the climatic conditions that power converters in wind turbines are exposed to, both as a contribution to root-cause analysis and as a basis for the derivation of suitable test procedures for reliability qualification of components and systems. This paper summarizes the results of field-measurement campaigns in 31 wind turbines of seven different manufacturers spread over three continents. The temperature and humidi... [more]

The European Union is moving towards a sustainable, decarbonized, and circular economy. It has identified seven key value chains in which to intervene, with the battery and vehicle value chain being one of them. Thus, actions and strategies for the sustainability of batteries need to be developed. Since Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a strategic tool for evaluating environmental sustainability, this paper investigates its application to two configurations of a sodium−nickel chloride cell (planar and tubular), focusing on the active material and the anode, with the purpose of identifying the configuration characterized by the lowest environmental impacts. The results, based on a “from cradle to gate” approach, showed that the tubular cell performs better for all environmental impact categories measured except for particulate matter, acidification, and resource depletion. With nickel being the main contributor to these impact categories, future sustainable strategies need to be oriented... [more]

Scientific literature provides evidence that mitigating the effects of a building’s operation does not in itself ensure an overall improvement in its environmental performance. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) plays a key role in gauging the overall environmental performance of a building although several authors argue that the lack of LCA threshold values makes it difficult to compare design options or measure whether reduced impact targets are achieved. This has led the Green Building Rating Systems (GBRS) to include the LCA within their evaluation criteria and, in like Active House (AH), establish threshold values of the main impact categories to quantify the level of performance achieved. Since the reliability of the data sources is a crucial issue for applying the LCA method, the effectiveness of their implementation within the GBRS also strictly depends on the origin of the impact values. To quantify the extent to which the source affects the impacts calculated by the LCA threshold... [more]

We present the results of the displacement flows of different Newtonian and Herschel−Bulkley non-Newtonian fluids in a new-developed eccentric Hele−Shaw cell with dynamic similarly to real field wellbore annulus during primary cementing. The possibility of tracking the interface between the fluids using particles with intermediate or neutral buoyancy is studied. The behaviors and movements of particles with different sizes and densities against the primary vertical flow and strong secondary azimuthal flow in the eccentric Hele−Shaw cell are investigated. The effects of fluid rheology and pumping flow rate on the efficiency of displacement and tracing particles are examined. Moreover, the behavior of pressure gradients in the cell is described and analyzed. Successful results of tracing the interface using particles give us this opportunity to carry out a primary cementing with high quality for the cases that the risk of leakage is high, e.g., primary cementing in wells penetrating a CO... [more]

Using panel data of 30 provinces and regions in Mainland China (excluding Tibet) from 2006 to 2016, the Spatial Durbin Model was employed for the empirical research, and the spatial impact of fiscal decentralization and environmental decentralization on regional carbon emissions were analyzed from the perspective of promotion pressure of officials. The empirical study concludes: ① Fiscal decentralization, both within the region and in its neighborhood, will contribute to carbon emissions in the region; ② Environmental decentralization will help reduce carbon emissions, while environmental decentralization in neighboring regions will increase carbon emissions in the region; ③ The promotion pressure of officials plays a positive role in moderating the impact of fiscal decentralization on carbon emissions, and at the same time weakens the suppression of carbon emissions by environmental decentralization; ④ From a regional point of view, there is a positive relationship between fiscal dece... [more]

This article considers the ideal storage conditions for multiple vaccine brands, such as Pfizer, Moderna, CoronaVac, Oxford−AstraZeneca, Janssen COVID-19 and Sputnik V. Refrigerant fluid options for each storage condition, thermal load to cool each type of vaccine and environmental impacts of refrigerants are compared. An energy simulation using the EUED (energy usage effectiveness design) index was developed. The Oxford−AstraZeneca, Janssen COVID-19 and CoronaVac vaccines show 9.34-times higher energy efficiency than Pfizer. In addition, a TEWI (total equivalent warming impact) simulation was developed that prioritizes direct environmental impacts and indirect in refrigeration. From this analysis, it is concluded that the cold storage of Oxford−AstraZeneca, Janssen COVID-19 and CoronaVac vaccines in Brazil generates 35-times less environmental impact than the Pfizer vaccine.

As a result of compounds’ transformation in the waste biostabilization phases, there is an increase in odor nuisance and health problems among people exposed to odorants. Linking the odor concentration to the degree of waste biostabilization may be an important tool for the assessment of individual technological variants of biostabilization. The study aimed to link the odor emissions to the biostabilization degree in individual process variants that differed in the inoculum. The tests were carried out on inoculated windrows on the waste mechanical-bological treatment open site. Odor concentrations were measured during the entire seven-week process of biostabilization (weeks 1−7) and compared with kinetics parameters of organic compounds’ decomposition. The olfactometric tests showed the necessity of using the preparation to reduce the value of odor concentration. Research proved that the decrease of odor concentration values could be useful to indicate the particular phases of biostabi... [more]

The constant increase in the amount of food waste accumulating in landfills and discharged into the water reservoirs causes environment pollution and threatens human health. Solid and liquid food wastes include fruit, vegetable, and meat residues, alcohol bard, and sewage from various food enterprises. These products contain high concentrations of biodegradable organic compounds and represent an inexpensive and renewable substrate for the hydrogen fermentation. The goal of the work was to study the efficiency of hydrogen obtaining and decomposition of solid and liquid food waste via fermentation by granular microbial preparation (GMP). The application of GMP improved the efficiency of the dark fermentation of food waste. Hydrogen yields reached 102 L/kg of solid waste and 2.3 L/L of liquid waste. The fermentation resulted in the 91-fold reduction in the weight of the solid waste, while the concentration of organics in the liquid waste decreased 3-fold. Our results demonstrated the pote... [more]

Solar radiation homogenizers are multi-mirror devices that try to reshape the solar radiation distribution coming from a concentrator, so that, after passing through the homogenizer, the light flux becomes as much evenly distributed as possible. The optical behavior of these multi-reflective devices is complex and still ill-understood. The geometry of the concentrator defines the features of the concentrated flux and then the characteristics of a particular homogenizer must be chosen according to the envisaged use. In this work, we developed and used optical ray-tracing software to investigate how the homogenizer’s optical output is affected by the following homogenizer’s characteristics: (i) Number of reflecting surfaces; (ii) total length; (iii) position (relative to focal plane); and (iv) tilt angle (inclination) of reflecting surfaces. The obtained results provide valuable information for the use of these optical devices and may contribute to the development of more efficient strat... [more]

This study proposes the time-varying nonlinear panel unit root test to investigate the convergence of ecological foot prints between the EU and candidate countries. Sixteen European countries (such as Albania, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey) and analysis periods are selected according to data availability. This study proposes a cross-sectional Panel KSS with Fourier to test the convergence of the ecological footprints. Then, we combine this methodology with the rolling window method to take into account the time-varying stationarity of series. This study evaluated sub-components of ecological footprints separately and provided more comprehensive findings for the ecological footprint. According to empirical findings, this study proves that convergence or divergence does not show continuity over time. On the other side, this study points out the presence of divergence draws attention... [more]

Municipal waste management system modeling based on the mass balance of individual waste streams allows us to answer the question of how the system will react to organizational changes, e.g., to the expected reduction in the amount of plastics or the introduction of a deposit for glass and/or plastic packaging. Based on the data on Polish municipal solid waste and the forecast of changes in its quantity and composition, as well as demographic data, a balance model was prepared to assess the impact of introducing higher and higher levels of recycling, in accordance with the circular economy assumptions on the waste management system. It has been shown that, for the Polish composition of municipal waste, even if the assumed recycling levels of individual streams are achieved, achieving the general target level of 65% recycling in 2025/30 may not be feasible. The possibility of achieving a higher level of recycling will be possible due the introduction of selective ash collection from ind... [more]

At present, the issue of carbon emissions from buildings has become a hot topic, and carbon emission reduction is also becoming a political and economic contest for countries. As a result, the government and researchers have gradually begun to attach great importance to the industrialization of low-carbon and energy-saving buildings. The rise of prefabricated buildings has promoted a major transformation of the construction methods in the construction industry, which is conducive to reducing the consumption of resources and energy, and of great significance in promoting the low-carbon emission reduction of industrial buildings. This article mainly studies the calculation model for carbon emissions of the three-stage life cycle of component production, logistics transportation, and on-site installation in the whole construction process of composite beams for prefabricated buildings. The construction of CG-2 composite beams in Fujian province, China, was taken as the example. Based on th... [more]

This paper assesses the potential environmental effects of the optimization of the kitchen waste management in Opole. The separate collection of kitchen waste is improved by distribution of separate collection kits consisting of an in-home bin and 10 L biodegradable bags. The surplus of collected kitchen waste is diverted from treatment in a mechanical-biological pretreatment (MBP) along with the residual waste to anaerobic digestion (AD) with the biowaste. This has positive effects on European and Polish goals, ambitions, and targets, such as (i) increasing the level of renewables in the primary energy supply, (ii) decreasing the level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, (iii) increasing the level of preparation for reuse and recycling of municipal waste. The environmental effects of 1 ton additionally separately collected and treated kitchen waste are determined by using life cycle assessment. It was shown that in all selected impact categories (global warming potential, marine eutrop... [more]

The research presented in this manuscript is focused on the pyrolysis of waste pharmaceutical blisters, which are a large and neglected group of waste, that could be possibly recovered. The studies were focused on the analysis of the chemical composition, as well as fuel properties of the char generated during the process and its possible applications. The process temperatures (400, 425, and 450 °C) were determined based on the thermogravimetric study that was performed prior to the pyrolysis tests. The selected materials included the pre- and post-consumer waste pharmaceutical blisters in order to determine the possible influence of impurities on the final products. The tests were performed on a laboratory scale fixed bed reactor. The obtained solid fractions (metal and char) were separated. Char was subjected to elemental analysis (C, H, N, Cl, S), as well as the heat of combustion and fuel-related properties (content of flammable, non-flammable, and volatile components) were determi... [more]

In these research studies, fly ash (SW-FA) resulting from the incineration of sunflower (20%) and wood (80%) waste employing the circulating fluidized bed combustion (CFBC) technology was used to analyze the possibility of removing Pb(II) and Cu(II) ions in adsorption processes. Currently, great emphasis is placed on circular economy, zero waste or climate neutrality strategies. The use of low-cost SW-FA waste seems to fit well with pro-ecological, economic and energy-saving trends. Hence, this material was characterized by various techniques, such as granulation analysis, bulk density, SEM-EDX, XRD and XRF analysis, BET, BJH, thermogravimetry, zeta potential, SEM morphology and FT-IR spectrometry. As a result of the conducted research, the factors influencing the effectiveness of the adsorption process, such as adsorbent dosage, initial and equilibrium pH, initial metal concentration and contact time, were analyzed. The maximum removal efficiency were achieved at the level of 99.8% fo... [more]

The concept of sustainable development integrates activities in the economic, environmental and social areas. Energy policy, which is very closely linked to climate protection, is of key importance for achieving the goals of the concept in question. All these elements are connected by the European Green Deal strategy and Agenda 2030. Their implementation requires the evaluation of previous actions undertaken within the framework of sustainable development and the diagnosis of the current state. Therefore, this article presents the results of such research in relation to the key industry connected with this process, which is the energy sector. The research methodology was based on the analysis of 14 indicators that characterize four basic areas (dimensions) related to energy and climate sustainability. These indicators concern energy and climate as well as social and economic issues. This approach makes it possible to comprehensively assess the actions taken so far in the implementation... [more]

The economic sustainability of agricultural production is a crucial concern for most farmers, especially for pig producers who face dynamic changes in the market. Approaches for economic sustainability assessment found in the literature are mainly focused on the short-term economic viability of the farm and rarely take a long-term perspective. In this paper, we propose and test a new, innovative assessment and aggregation method, which brings about a broader view on more long-term aspects of economic sustainability. This wider view on economic sustainability, in addition to classical concepts such as technical efficiency, labor productivity, and farm profitability, incorporates the assessment of the levels of entrepreneurship, risk management, and the resilience of the invested resources. All indicators were scaled and aggregated using scaling and weighting procedures proposed by experts into subthemes and themes. The methodology was tested on a sample of 131 pig farms located in 6 EU... [more]

Recently, sustainable economic growth has taken the front line of the global development agenda. The common dependency on fossil fuel energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the continuous rising demands for energy have posed challenges that put the world in a climate change trap. This work empirically analyzes the effect of innovation, oil price, oil price volatility and economic growth on GHG emissions over the period of 1991−2015. The study compares the emission level between European Union countries (EU) (26), oil-producing countries (22), China and the United States of America (USA) using the Driscoll−Kraay model. The main empirical finding points to a positive effect of innovation on GHG emission reduction initiatives in oil-importing economies. Particularly, EU countries significantly minimized emissions due to innovation, followed by China and the USA. Contrarily, the effect of innovation increases GHG emission in oil-exporting economies. The results also indicate broader si... [more]

The scientific and technical issues related to energy harvesting and conversion are inseparably bound to the issues of environmental protection. Energy conversion systems and devices that are applied for converting the chemical energy contained in different fuels into heat, electricity, and cold in industry and housing are sources of different gases and solid particle emissions. Thus, the development of different technologies for energy conversion and environmental protection that can be jointly applied to cover growing energy needs has become a crucial challenge for scientists and engineers around the world. Progress in the precise description, modeling, and optimization of physical and chemical phenomena related to these energy conversion systems is a key research and development field for the economy. Legal and social issues that are affecting key aspects and problems related to the energy conversion and power sector are also significant and worth investigating. The aim of Energy Pr... [more]

This paper investigates the sensitivity (resistance) of a quadcopter on-board gyroscope system for the observation and tracking of a moving ground target to changing parameters of its regulator under interference conditions. It was shown that the gain in matrix elements is most sensitive, and even their slightest deviation from optimal values can lead to reduced target tracking efficiency and even loss of control system stability. Furthermore, the authors studied the energy expenditure at various gyroscope system control parameter values, while homing a quadcopter onto a ground target. A Matlab/Simulink environment was used to conduct simulations of the controlled gyroscope system dynamics. Selected test results are shown in graphic form.

Windows, which have a U-value that is governed by an insulating glass unit (IGU) U-value, must be a building’s only enclosure element, which has no design value concept. The declared U-value, which is calculated or measured with 0 °C of external ambient temperature, is used instead of the design value. For most of a building’s elements, its thermal transmittance with a decrease in the external temperature diminishes a little, i.e., improves. However, for modern window IGUs with Low-E coatings, it is the opposite: the thermal transmittance with a lowering external temperature increases. Therefore, for calculating the peak power for the heating of buildings it is necessary to pay attention to this phenomenon and, therefore, it would be wise to introduce the concept of design U-value for windows, recalculation rules, or affix their declared U-values. This is especially the case in modern times with the prevailing architectural tendencies for enlargement of transparent building elements. F... [more]

Our industrialized world highly depends on fossil fuels to cover its energy needs. Although fossil fuels have been linked with economic growth, their use has also been found to have severe impacts on the environment. The linkages among carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption and economic growth have been extensively examined in the current literature. The present study focuses on electricity production from fossil fuels, as well as from renewable sources and examines their linkages with CO2 emissions and economic growth in 119 world countries of different income levels, by assessing Granger causality. In addition, the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is tested, in order to evaluate whether economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions are linked with an inverse U-shaped relationship and with an N-shape relationship in higher income levels. The EKC hypothesis is confirmed for high income and upper-middle income countries, but not for lower-middle and low income levels an... [more]

Efficiency of circular economies is one of the most important areas of the improvement of economic growth in a circular way, that is, improving worldwide GDP. The issue of circular economies, namely their efficiency, is a current topic of evidence of many literary sources in the literature. This issue is solved in the conditions of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The goal of the study is to compare the circular efficiency within the Visegrád Group and efficiency of Visegrád Group countries to the European Union 28 average. Data envelopment analysis slack-based models are implemented to evaluate the output efficiencies of the selected subjects. Truncated regression is used to measure the impact of selected indicators on circular efficiency. The Visegrád Group countries are not among the most advanced in terms of recycling and the use of the circular economy, which was confirmed by this research. However, developments suggest significant improvements. The significance o... [more]

The manuscript discusses the investigation of vehicle flow in a predesignated junction by an appropriate traffic flow management with an effort to minimize fuel consumption, the production of CO2, an essential greenhouse gas (hereinafter referred to as GHG), and related transport costs. The particular research study was undertaken in a frequented junction in the city of Celje, located in the eastern part of Slovenia. The results obtained summarize data on consumed fuel and produced CO2 amounts depending on the type of vehicle, traffic flow mixture, traffic light signal plan, and actual vehicle velocity. These values were calculated separately for three different conditions of traffic flow management. Amounts of fuel consumed were experimentally investigated in real traffic situations, whereas CO2 production was calculated by applying the actual European standard entitled EN 16258:2012 associated with a guideline for measuring emission values, as well as by examining specific traffic fl... [more]