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In recent years, the EU Member States experience a significant increase in resource efficiency; however, the environmental resource efficiency indicators in the Baltic States, including Latvia, are significantly lower than the EU average indicators and an improvement in figures is too slow. Environmental taxes serve as an essential fiscal instrument for the increase of resource efficiency. Therefore, the research aim is to assess the application of environmental taxes as a fiscal instrument to increase the resourc...

This article presents the results, obtained from testing an equipment used to obtain biogas and biochar from biomass, developed and manufactured based on a patent developed on a research and development project by the IHP staff. A modern way in order to produce ecological and cheap thermal energy is to utilize biomass through micro-gasification process called TLUD (Top-Lit UpDraft) with high conversion efficiencies and emissions of CO and low PM2,5. A new way for producing energy from biomass is the CHAB concept (...

The development of the small and poor deposits of rare-earth elements can be useful when creating effective, waste-free technology, requiring the solution of actual tasks on the modern stage of development of this kind of industry. The paper presents the possibility of the removal of the Er+3 from dilute aqueous solutions by adsorption-bubble method-Solvent Sublation (SS) using sodium dodecyl sulfate (NaDS). A theoretical and experimental investigation of SS in solutions of the nitrates of Er+3 with NaDS, used as ...

Gas field redevelopments or rehabilitation projects have become an alternative approach to develop incremental production and additional reserves using new fit-for-purpose technology and concepts. The integrated reservoir study begins with geological characterization and modeling followed by evaluation of the geological gas resources and reserves considering the actual production profile. The redevelopment plan continues with a well by well review and nodal production system analysis to evaluate well performance a...

Road infrastructure is a vital system that has a direct influence on economy of states. In this regard, there is a direct relationship between the coating conditions of automobile roads and the countryпїЅs industrial development. This dynamic increases intensity and traffic congestion constantly. Thereby, it is necessary to eliminate the damages and increase the exploitation time of road coatings. This concerns mostly asphalt - concrete pavements which form the basis of automobile road networks in countries. Based...

The air pollution in Polish cities causes the formation of the phenomenon of smog. The reason for this phenomenon is mainly low society awareness of environmental protection and the methods of preventing the use of low-quality fuels in the home fireplaces. At the same time the development of the automotive industry contributes to this negative phenomenon. The air pollution in large and small Polish cities was analysed. The examples of cities fighting against the smog were also given. The research of the air qualit...

Many informatics tools have been developed based on extensive databases related to terrain modeling and technical objects of the existing hydropower developments. Among them, VAPIDRO-ASTE can be distinguished as a powerful and demonstrated tool, which can be used either for the evaluation of the hydropower potential and the optimization of the complex hydropower development of a river sector, or for the evaluation of an existing hydropower development in order to establish the need of the refurbishment and/or reha...

The article presents a novel approach to the evaluation of the economic potential of grasslands. The economic potential of grasslands is evaluated by assessing the heat energy potential of grass (both in energy and monetary terms), based on two products пїЅ methane (biogas) and grass pellets. This approach provides an alternative to the assessment of the economic potential of grasslands, and it is specially intended for situations when grasslands are unmanaged due to low demand for grass biomass as a fodder. The e...

Economic development of the world is closely linked to the consumption of electricity. Energy is central to improved social and economic well-being, and is indispensable for industrial and commercial wealth generation. But however essential it may be for development, energy is only a means to an end. The end is a sustainable economy and a clean environment, high living standards, prosperity and good health. Energy indicators for sustainable development represent an important component in the national analysis and ...

Asphalt-resin-paraffin deposits (ARPD), are formed in processes of oil recovery on a surface and represent a serious problem for the oil production enterprises from the technical, economic, and ecological points of view. The ARPD quality indicators are an important factor defining effectiveness of removal procedures and searching of ways to its further use. At a late stage of fields exploitation the production processes are complicated by loss of asphaltenes and paraffin immediately in a layer pore space. It is co...

The development of gully erosion is an urgent problem in many parts of the world. The southern part of Western Siberia belongs to the Russian regions with an extensive development of gully erosion. The occurrence of erodible loess deposits on the earth's surface, the rugged topography, the climate characteristics (a considerable reserve of water in the snow, intensive spring snowmelt, and heavy rains) in combination with a high plough-disturbance of territories create favorable conditions for the formation and dev...

Thermal recovery methods within catalytic aquathermolysis is a new promising exploitation approach in extracting heavy oil and natural bitumen. In this technology, the catalyst is added in a stage of injecting high-temperature steam. At the pay zone, three types of reactions takes place: thermolysis, reaction of high temperature steam and catalysis. As a result, the injected steam changes to water transferring its heat to rocks across the interface. Thus, the interfaces of catalyst solutions and hot rocks are cruc...

The activities of mining and chemical enterprises in Ukraine have reserved a number of environmental issues that affects all elements of the environment and requires immediate solution. Nowadays, in Ukraine, there are still relevant soil subsidence in areas of mining and chemical enterprises, the accumulation of large-tonnage industrial wastes, accumulation and migration of heavy metals in soils. Equally, important is the issue of water pollution in the area of mining and chemical enterprises. The purpose of this ...

Waste storing and managing is one of the most challenging problems of the modern economy. Previously, drilling waste did not represent a subject of the so-called waste recoverable and utilizable, for instance applicable to land reclamation. Research works on transforming properties of drilling waste and improving the recovery method aimed at reclamation are presently developed. According to the current regulations, the drilling waste can be applied to recovery processes based on utilizing the waste in question who...

The thermal conductivity of a geological structure is a paramount parameter in performing calculations for the proper design and installation of underground heat energy extraction or storage systems. Complex geological investigation must be performed to evaluate the thermal conductivity of a geological structure. It is a process that demands time and money. An assessment of the mutual influence between the thermal conductivity of the borehole heat exchanger and the geological structure allows us to predict the the...

The dynamics of economic development in Timi? County is due to an accumulation of macroeconomic factors where the variation of administrative units and population plays an important role. These two important components, highlights developmental trajectories that can be influenced by formulate territorial policies to meet the actual needs. The paper will trace the evolution, over a 5 years period of (2009-2014) of administratively territorial units and the budgets allocated to education, health, culture, and enviro...

In Romania, agricultural farms represent not only the place where agricultural production is made, as it happens in many European countries, but also the place where live and work almost half of the population of the country (45%); it is also meant to solve the social issues of rural inhabitants. The paper presents the analysis of agricultural farms of Romania as contributors to the development and consolidation of rural farms.The research methodology relies on the analysis, synthesis, representation and interpret...

The economic crisis triggered in 2008 in US, affected all countries, with consequences in many fields, construction buildings domain facing a drastic decrease compared to the period 2006-2007. This situation led to the inability of people to do real estate acquisitions, which led clearly to changes in market demands. Experts and real estate developers from all over the world have tried to find different recovery solutions, given that its effects affected a huge number of people and companies. It is known that the ...

One of the main environmental problems nowadays is related to contaminated soils. Soils can be contaminated with different compounds among which, the most widespread being the petroleum hydrocarbons (PH). The contamination of soil with petroleum hydrocarbons (PH) could take place during oil exploration. In this context, contaminated soil remediation is highly necessary. Over the years, different treatment methods for contaminated soil remediation have been applied. The present research illustrates the thermochemic...

Oil and gas complex is one of the key branches of the Russian economy and at the same time its activity is one of the largest sources of environmental damages. Safety of the environment, occupational safety as well as minimization of the technogenic risk are the sphere of regulation of a new management direction пїЅ HSE-management (from Engl. health, safety and environment). It allows us to coordinate the activities in protection of the environment, in safety of the staff and security of the technical objects. Imp...

In 2008, a new polymer substance FIRESORBпїЅ, used both as a fire extinguishing agent as well as a fire retardant, especially at wildland fires, was placed on the Slovak market. FIRESORBпїЅ gel, in general, due to its high density affects burning materials by even uniform cooling effect, reducing the rate of evaporation. This cooling effect is a dominant one at fires with origin of very high temperatures, where applying water streams would be ineffective due to near immediately water evaporation. The paper is deal...

Numerous data on the negative impact of pollutants on the environment indicate the necessity of industrial and sewage water treatment. This problem is actual in the territories of the tailings dams situated in the Kemerovo Region (Ursk and Komsomolsk tailings sites, Russia). In these tailings sites, the main source of pollution is the mine drainages containing copper, zinc, arsenic, and antimony. In the absence of reliable protective devices, pollutants can enter to the soil, surface and groundwater, having a sign...

This paper provides a comparative study of the energy consumption and energy efficiency of a heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system with three configurations. This system was used to cool an experimental room in an office building in more control scenarios realized by adopting different cooled water temperatures and chiller cooling systems. It is proposed an airпїЅwater mist cooled system for an air-cooled chiller. The three configurations of the HVAC system have the following configurations: (1) a...

This paper provides a comparative study of the energy consumption and energy efficiency of a HVAC system with three configurations. This system was used to cool an experimental room in an office building in more control scenarios realized by adopting different cooled water temperatures and chiller cooling systems. It is proposed an airпїЅwater mist cooled system for an air-cooled chiller. The three configurations of the HVAC system have the following configurations: (1) air handling unit (AHU) and fan-coil units (...

Some of the most promising areas for the extraction of heavy oil, maltha and asphalt in the eastern part of the Siberian platform are the southern and southeastern slopes of the Anabar anteclise. Using solvents for mining heavy oil and natural bitumen in a permafrost zone is the only option to steam injection, which is obviously cost ineffective there. Advantages of the solvents include convenience of transportation to field and storage stability. Moreover, the solvents have sufficiently high solubility with respe...

Biological treatment is one of the most efficient process to remove biodegradable pollutants from wastewater. In practice, this process use air and activated sludge for well over a century. It is largely influenced by aeration equipment, which in addition to introducing oxygen into wastewater for oxidation of organic pollutants, they have to create hydrodynamic conditions to mix wastewater with microorganisms and with air, avoiding dead zones and microorganisms sedimentation. This stage of wastewater treatment is ...

Groundwater is one of our most important natural resources. Groundwater is the source of about 33 % of the water that county and city water departments supply to public supply. Statistics show that groundwater is use for more than 90 % of the rural population who do not get their water delivered to them from a county/city water department or private water company. In this sense, groundwater quality plays an invaluable in rural zone plays. This paper aims to identify qualitative status of groundwater in rural zones...

The rural space in the Baltic Sea East Coast States пїЅ Latvia, Lithuania and Poland пїЅ comprises a significant part of the territories of these states. It occupies more than half of each stateпїЅs territory and employs more than a third of labour market participants. For these reasons, the future prospects of the rural space in each of the states is an important issue in designing their smart growth strategies. Smart growth is determined not only by objective circumstances but also by local authorities, the acti...

In the context of deregulated energy market, energy companies need a flexible and efficient framework for energy trading. Along with concerns regarding environment issues, deregulation determined an increased share of sm all and medium renewable energy power plants. With these came along challenges in operation regarding their variability and the lack of central monitoring. Aggregation of distributed energy sources led to the concept of virtual power plant, which brings ad advantages as a better control of product...

The paper deals with the implementation of photovoltaic system in specific extraterrestrial area. It is focused on proposal of photovoltaic system for new international space station. Authors use in the analysis knowledge of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) space researches, information about of ISS (International Space Station) and proposal of first piece of new space station situated in cislunar area (space between Earth and Moon). Analysis of space deals with finding suitable location for ne...

On the territory of the Volga-Ural oil and gas province in the Permian sediments are concentrated significant resources of bitumen-containing rocks, which are of interest as a source of unconventional oil. In this connection, it is very important to clarify the conditions for the formation of bituminous strata and their productive areas. High efficiency in the study of oil-bearing rocks has radio-spectroscopic methods for determining the structure of the oil deposit and the nature of its oil and bitumen saturation...

To date, in connection with active development of all branches of industry, transport, agriculture the most urgent issue of identifying the characteristics of the behavior of chemical elements in soils and parent rocks within local areas with characteristic patterns. The object of this study is to Rostov region. Soil cover of the territory is formed mainly by two genetic soil types пїЅ chernozems and chestnut soils. Since 2005 was conducted areal soil geochemical sampling areas, which yielded data on the content o...

State entrepreneurship and state marketing are the key forms of the state participation in national economy. Within their frames there is a distribution of the resources directed to the maintenance and development of infrastructure, implementation of social obligations and state programs. One of the instruments of state entrepreneurship is the procurement system provided with target budgetary financing by executive authorities. Introduction into the system of state and municipal management the methodology of proje...

Investigation of the paramagnetic properties of core samples from the section of the reference well was performed on the basis of a representative sample (97 samples) by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) for mineral associations of the Evlan horizon of the Upper Devonian deposits of the Volga-Ural region of the Republic of Tatarstan. Within the Volga-Ural region, reef formation dates back to the late Frasnian and has developed to the maximum extent in the Voronezh, Evlan and Liven times. The deposition of the ...

The paper reveals the distinctive features of the change in the composition of natural bitumen - asphaltite from from the sandstones of the Permian sediments of the Spiridonovsky field in the territory of Tatarstan, in model experiments at a temperature of 250 пїЅC, characteristic for steam-thermal impact on the formation, and the pressure in the system of not more than 2 MPa. The choice of low pressure is due to the fact that bituminous rocks in the Permian sediments occur at relatively shallow depths in the near...

The rivers of the Northern part of European territory of Russia (ETR) contain large amounts of organic matter. This is due to natural features of the area (short cool summer, high wetlands, large areas of forests and features of soil formation), and to specificity of the anthropogenic impact. One of the largest rivers of the Northern ETR is the Northern Dvina River, flowing into the Dvina Bay of the White Sea. A general study of the organic carbon content in the bottom sediment of the Northern Dvina River mouth ar...

When conducting studies related to the study of the radon hazard of premises and territories, conducting radon monitoring measurements with the aim of predicting mountain impacts and earthquakes, studying the emanation characteristics of rocks and a number of other problems, it has been shown that in some cases the materials of the connecting elements used in measuring structures On the results. In this connection, experimental studies were carried out aimed at studying the sorption abilities of the material of th...

The paper deals with the oil recovery problem, research methods for heterogeneity parameter determination in oil-bearing horizons and its influence on the reservoir porosity and permeability. The article describes the author's lithologic-and-petrophysic anisotropy detection method. This method allows quantifying the directions, quantities, the lateral heterogeneity influence probability in the reservoir and takes into account its possible manifestation in the field development process. For measuring magnetic susce...

The research-development activity has not been quite adequately financed in Romania over the last few years. Annual financing programs and multiannual programs were issued (NPRDI I пїЅ [National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation]), and, as of 2007, together with RomaniaпїЅs adherence to the European Union, an effort was made to align the financing programs of this activity to the UnionпїЅs programs. Thus, beginning with the Seventh Framework Program (FP7), the National Plan for Research- Development an...

Fatigue damage is determined from time signals of loading, usually in the form of stress or strain. However, there are many design scenarios when the loading, or fatigue damage process, cannot easily be defined using time signals. In these cases the design/operation engineer usually has to use a test based approach to evaluate the fatigue life of the structure or the component. Alternatively, a frequency based fatigue calculation can be used where the loading and response are represented using Power Spectral Densi...

The north-western and western coast of the Black Sea, corresponding to Romania and Bulgaria, is subject of crustal deformations due to remote effects produced by geological processes ran at planetary (e.g. plate tectonics in the Atlantic and Eastern Mediterranean-Anatolia realms) and regional (e.g. the tectonic coupling of the Black Sea basin and Vrancea seismogenic area) scales as well as due to relatively local geological processes (e.g. subsidence of sedimentary basins, young sediments compaction, etc.). The ge...

The post-mining landscape of HornпїЅ Slezsko is characteristic by intense detorioration of original landscape features and components caused by underground coal mining. There are huge ecosystems changes typical for those landscapes reclaimed by classical nature-friendly methods and procedures. The aim of this study is fitness evaluation of selected trees species using their growth on selected plots for 2016 vegetation period. We have compared individual growth of trees by an orientation toward the cardinal points ...

The main purpose of the construction of flood protection measure is to protect the urban area. Flood strategy should cover the entire river basin area and promote the coordinated development and management of actions regarding water, land and related resources. Structural measures (defence structures) will remain important elements and should primarily focus on the protection of human health and safety, and valuable goods and property. Intensive rainfall and springпїЅs snow melting occurrence leads to floods almos...

Climate change also increase different natural risk possibility - erosion and floods in coastal local municipalities in Latvia are becoming increasingly more important. The most significant flood risk factor, particularly in the climate change context, are wind surges, especially coinciding with ongoing sea level raise and, even, rapid and intence, rainfall, while the nation wide spread snowmelt flood risks are less impacting the coastal municipalities. Research-and-development study analyzed coastal risk governan...

We analyzed the dynamics of Lake Teletskoye water level and attempted to use data on bottom sediment geochemistry in combination with Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) tree-ring width chronology to reconstruct it for late Holocene. In particular, we studied the links among the water level characteristics, precipitation amount, bottom sediment geochemistry, and tree-ring width chronology available for Russian Altai. A correlation analysis revealed the annual water level fluctuations to correlate closely with mean ann...

Renewable energy is a key factor in the sustainable development of any modern society. The development of renewable energy project must continue to be part of a competitive economy and the research and innovation of this domain should be a priority. One of the renewable energy sources (RES) that are reliable, provides predictable energy, assures the energy supply in remote areas and at the end of the power transmission lines, are small hydro power plants (SHPP). In Romania SHPP are not new, being part of the devel...

The focal mechanism and rupture directivity for intermediate-depth earthquakes occurred in the Vrancea source (Romania) are determined using FMNEAR algorithm [1]. The method is based on the waveform inversion of near-source seismic waveforms and on a linear finite source model. When the FMNEAR algorithm is started the first parameters that are determined are the moment magnitude (Mw), the double couple focal mechanism (strike, dip, rake) and the distribution of seismic moment along strike. This provides a first or...

Food security has been and continues to be a current topic given the fact that, it stands at the base of all issues related of human existence. In this respect it is necessary to analyze the idea of food security on the two levels closely correlated, meaning the qualitative level and quantitative level. Quantitative aspect aimed the insurance of food necessary to meet the physiological needs of the population from the bottom of Maslow pyramid and converging towards meeting other needs found on top of the pyramid s...

The 21st century presents us with enormous challenges related to environmental protection. This applies to both the citizens of our globe, businesses, institutions as well as regions and countries. Contemporary companies increasingly focus on sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, and report their actions contributing to improvement and protection of the environment. Metrics known as footprint family, such as ecological, carbon, water, energy, waste, land or material footprints, are gaining i...

Industrial history of many places still interacts with the present time. Ostrava (Czech Republic) as former industrial city is a typical example of problems and barriers which can be found in process of regeneration, revitalization or redevelopment of areas used formerly for heavy industry. The article is focused on retrospective description of development of areas which can be known as backfields or mega sites. The article will be focused on five areas for which there are expectations and likely huge potential fo...