Ecology and Industry of Russia
Latest Publications

Existing (production of urea, dimethyl carbonate, polypropylene carbonate) and promising (production of methanol, synthesis gas, monomers dedicated to synthesis of polyurethanes and polycarbonate) chemical technologies which any, time soon, may become CO2 based economy for producing motor fuels and basic chemicals have been overviewed. Based on estimates of CO2 removals in these processes, it has been concluded that there is a potential for developing technologies to produce methanol from CO2 to a competitive cost of the target product. It is expected that interest in this process will decrease if stable carbon dioxide conversion catalysts for methane are introduced into the market.

The installation of an additional stage of the "wet" waste gas purification unit at the alumina sintering furnaces ensured the achievement of a high degree of purification of gas emissions from fine impurities up to 96 % and the standards of maximum permissible emissions of solid pollutants into the atmosphere established for an industrial enterprise. The formed slude after gas cleaning is proposed to be sent for further processing to the hydrochemistry workshop, thereby ensuring its disposal without contamination of the natural environment. The analysis of air pollution indicators confirmed a decrease in emissions of solid pollutants in the atmospheric air of Achinsk.

To solve the problem of increasing the efficiency of cleaning the exhaust air of painting chambers from fine particles, a separation device with elements of a square and rectangular shape has been developed and described by the principles of its operation. A method for calculating the design dimensions of the developed separation device is presented. Different versions of the height of the separation zone are considered, depending on the size of dispersed particles. It is shown that the device is able to capture particles smaller than 10 microns with an efficiency close to 100 %, provided they adhere to the walls. The peculiarity of the design of the separation device is that a set of small-diameter vortices is created, in which the flow regime is close to laminar, and to achieve large values of centrifugal force, it is not necessary to create high speeds in the crevices.

The utilization of waste resulting from the pulp and paper industry as soil for technical and biological recultivation of disturbed lands, industrial waste discharges and other applications in line with their intended purpose use have been explored. Analysis of soil resulting from the frozen sediments of lignin settled sludge of JSC "BPPM" with the WAS resulting from the sewage treatment facilities have been carried out, chemical and agrochemical composition as well as toxicological properties have been studied. It is established that the resulting soil can intensify the recultivation succession of disturbed lands and contribute to plants growth and biomass increase, and their reproduction ability.

The TPH-in-soil of three functional zones (industrial, residential, agro-residential) of Khabarovsk have been studied. Areas of acceptable, low, moderately hazardous, moderate, high and very high pollution levels have been identified. It has been found that the TPH-in-soil of different urban functional areas differs significantly. For statistical processing of experimental data, the Boxplots method ("box-and-whiskers diagram") has been used. It has been proposed to switch to the median value of the aggregate sample of the TPH-in-soil in residential and agro-residential areas as the baseline data.

Data demonstrate the possibility of manufacturing adsorbents by using inorganic industrial waste and provide raw material list for this purpose. Inorganic waste coming from water treatment, mining and construction industries, solid fuel combustion products, spent inorganic sorbents, catalysts and chemical absorbers, chemical, metallurgical and metal finishing industries waste are used as raw materials. Adsorbents production methods by using inorganic industrial waste have been analysed, and parameters of porous structure and adsorbents sorption activity in terms of organic compounds and cations of non-ferrous metals resulting from aqueous medium are listed.

The results of the life cycle assessment (LCA) of oil waste (OW) management and disposal of refineries are presented, which include environmental impacts beyond the implementation of the techniques themselves, but also the production of the necessary material (reagents, materials) and energy (electricity, fuel, steam). LCA demonstrated that the most significant impacts of oil-containing waste treatment and disposal methods are in the categories Ecotoxicity (for freshwater)" and "Human toxicity" (cancer and non-cancer diseases)" resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and the emission of heavy metals (zinc, copper, vanadium, cobalt, chromium, nickel and lead).

Improving forest ecosystems protection management based on a long-term fire hazard forecasting has been studied. Fires long-term dynamics in terms of quantity in various forests has been investigated. Fire risk patterns in forest ecosystems have been established conditional to regional characteristics due to solar period. Fire dynamics and solar periods analytics over multi-year period of time have brought to light that conditions contributing to a high fire frequency in Leningrad and Tver regional forest ecosystems arise in years with maximum and minimum solar activity. A long-term forecast of high forest fire danger periods for the next solar cycle has been performed through parameters of solar activity – Wolf numbers.

Analysis of a large scale of monitoring data, basis for developping new approaches to environmental regulation and control strengthening subject to natural water bodies regional status have been performed. Existing rating system assessments (MAD, LOC) of biogenic elements in wastewater which desuetude doen not meet modern requirements of multifactorial situational analysis have been stated. Methodological aspects of eutrophication factors management and ways of their minimization have been considered.

A retrospective analysis of the emergency risk management theory is presented. A brief history of the origin of the main emergency risk management theory terms and concepts is presented in the article. The events that required theoretical comprehension of emergency situations, their legislative regulation and the need to search for new solutions are investigated. Special attention is paid to the evolution of the Seveso Directive of the European Union. The author analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the "absolute security" concept, justifies the inevitability of the transition to the "acceptable risk" concept. The quantitative measure of taking 10-6 per year as the maximum acceptable (or maximum permissible) individual risk and 10-8 per year as a negligible risk is justified.