This Master?s Thesis aims to investigate and assess the methods used to decrease the discharge ofmetals, primarily copper, from the water purification plant at Assa Industries plating factory inEskilstuna.Literature studies of the purification methods precipitation, ion exchange, evaporation, reverseosmosis and electrolysis has been done to appraise the adequacy of the technique. Thesetechniques are commonly used for purification of industrial waste water.Assa has four plating lines: the Trumline, the big Zinkline, the new Zinkline and the Decorativeline. The new Zinkline is the most modern of the four lines and purification is done byrecirculation over an ion exchange unit. The demand for fresh water is thereby heavily reduced.The Trumline, the big Zinkline and the Decorative line all use older techniques.

It is estimated that 22 000 contaminated areas exist in Sweden today. In order to classify the risk of contaminant migration from these areas and to prioritize which of these contaminated areas should first be treated, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designed a method, for the investigation of contaminated areas (MIFO). One of these contaminated areas is the landfill Gräsötippen outside Köping. The landfill has been used by both Yara AB and the Köping municipality between the years 1945 and 1975, and both industrial and household waste have been deposited there. The aim of this report is to survey which contaminants that can be found in the soil and water in the landfill Gräsötippen and to evaluate the migration of these contaminants.

Diabetes mellitus type 2 and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) are two of the most common diseases in the world and the amount are increasing. The treatments of these diseases are self care and a change of lifestyle. For this to be successful there is a need for the person to have knowledge about the diseases and a motivation for making changes in his or her lifestyle. Most of this information is given by the district nurse at the health centre. It is important to get a better knowledge of these persons experiences and how they used the information given to them.

LKAB is an international high tech mineral corporation and a world leading manufacturer of refined ironore products for steal manufacturing and other mineral products destined other industries. LKAB is an international corporation with companies world wide, with it?s main location in the north of Sweden, which is where the iron ore mines and the refining works are located. LKAB?s iron refining process in Vitåfors, Malmberget, is a source of great amounts of waste-rock.

This final thesis is performed on commission of Torsby forestry administration, Stora Enso Skog. Stora Enso Skog is one of the major forestry companies of Sweden. The main business area is located in and around the region of Bergslagen. During the last decade the practice of forest management has rapidly changed due to a new forest legislation. The new law has resulted in that the production goal is equal to the environmental goal within forestry.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, OTEC, a technology using the temperature difference between cold deep seawater and warm surface water, can extract the work in the form of electricity. OTEC gives also synergies of drinkable fresh water. The temperature difference has an impact on the efficiency of the technology, which means that the feasibility of OTEC is geographically limited. The project intends to explore the possibility of replacing the atoll Tarawa?s present electricity generation with an OTEC plant and to explore synergies. In the present situation all of Tarawa?s electricity is generated by fossil fuels.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and clarify the facts surrounding one of Vattenfall's district heating plants; The "solar field" and associated rock cavern in Lyckebo, Storvreta. The plant was built in the '80s by the formerly municipal utility,Uppsalakraftvärme AB, as an experimental building. A ground water filled cavern would serve as seasonal storage of solar heat from an adjacent solar field. Since both the energy company and the facility itself has undergone major changes over the past 30 years, there was a great need to gather facts in order to provide a picture of its current condition and potential for continued use. The thesis investigates the plant's history and problems with the rock cavern losses, and how the operation developed. It also presents the calculations regarding the possibilities of again supplementing the facility with solar energy - which is not the case today - as well as the economic conditions for it. Regarding a re-launch of solar energy, primarily a concentrating solar collector has been studied, as it has the advantages of an integrated control system.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, OTEC, a technology using the temperature difference between cold deep seawater and warm surface water, can extract the work in the form of electricity. OTEC gives also synergies of drinkable fresh water. The temperature difference has an impact on the efficiency of the technology, which means that the feasibility of OTEC is geographically limited. The project intends to explore the possibility of replacing the atoll Tarawa?s present electricity generation with an OTEC plant and to explore synergies. In the present situation all of Tarawa?s electricity is generated by fossil fuels.

The Swedish industrial society has left several areas with contaminated soil and water which today is of danger for the environment and human health. One of these areas with contaminated soil and water is the region where the former Glava glassworks operated during 1859 to 1939. The main object in this study has been to study the responsibility for the contaminations according to the Environmental Code. The method used is a qualitative content analysis of relevant literature to answer the following questions:What types of contaminations can be found in the area of Glava glasswork and what health issues can these cause?What kind of activity has been conducted in the area that have caused the contaminations in soil and water?According to law, what are the responsibilities for the contaminations in soil and water at Glava glassworks?The contamination in the region has been confirmed to originate from the glasswork due to the environmental engineering survey made in the area in 2009.

The use of earth bricks in Scanian building traditionThe present work is concerned with the manufacturing and use of earth bricks inbuilt heritage in the south Swedish province of Scania. The first part of the studyprovides a thorough description of the traditional use and manufacturing of earthbricks based on relevant literature, archive material as well as interviews withinformants. This forms a basis for the second part of the study in which practicalexperiments on and tests with earth bricks where carried out. This involved themaking of traditional earth bricks of different composition. The new handmadebricks were compared with industrially produced bricks (extrusion bricks) and oldhandmade bricks.

Large areas have been ditched in Sweden during the past 100 years to improve the forest production. Ditching and also maintenance of old ditches are operations having mainly negative effects on water quality, flora and fauna and changing characteristics of soil. The purpose of this study was to suggest a method for inventory of the need for ditching maintenance in old forest ditches that takes biodiversity, water protection and forest production into consideration. Inventory methods from five Swedish and Finnish forest companies, agencies and organisations were compared. Their employees were interviewed about their handling with ditches, forest production and nature conservation.

Wastewater contains biodegradable materials, which are often measured as BOD7.Trickling filters are sometimes used as a purification step for BOD-reduction. Atrickling filter is a tower, which is filled with a carrier material. Microorganisms growon the carrier material in the form of a biofilm. This biofilm consists mostly of bacteriathat purify water from BOD.In Älgarås? wastewater treatment plant the water is purified by a trickling filter.However the treatment plant has difficulties reaching the emission requirements forBOD.

Södra Cell Mörrum is one of the five paper pulp plants that are included in Södra Cell, and the paper pulp that is produced here is not only sold to Swedish paper mills. Most of the paper pulp is exported to different countries in Europe. In the manufacturing process the plant needs different kind of process water and there are guideline values for how much copper, iron and sodium this water is allowed to contain. Analyzes of this water is in the current situation done with an atomic absorption spectrometric instrument (AAS-instrument) with a flame. Measurements done with flame-AAS of samples that have concentrations near the guideline values for copper, iron and sodium, are not reliable. The reason for not being reliable is that the quantitation limits of these metals are higher than the limit values.

This bachelor thesis aims at investigate how a specified house can optimize its energy consumption.Today the house often stands for the major part of the energy consumption in a consumers? life,whereas an energy optimization creates economic as well as environmental advantages. It is importantto make old houses more energy efficient, but putting high energy demands on new houses could beargued to be more important. The installations functions as both the heart and brain in a house, thusmaking it important to energy optimize these. Since the background describes the importance ofenergy efficiency and optimization in a house, the focus area of this report will be an investigation ofdifferent types of heating systems in order to be able to choose the one most suited for the house.Aspects considered when choosing the heating system was how economic the system is both inservice- and investment costs and how environmental and operational friendly the system is.Through literature reviews there were sufficient information gathered that served as a foundation whencomparing and choosing between the four systems - district heating, pellet-fired boiler, geothermalheating and solar heating.

As a part of the fight against the global warming the energy production needs to be more efficient and redirected towards sustainable options. One alternative is cogeneration, which means that electricity and heat is produced in one plant. The purpose with this survey is to examine if there are any commercial available combined heat and power techniques, based on combustion of solid moist biomass, which are suitable to small-scale applications. The technique must be able to produce between 2 and 10 MW thermal and the heat demand is a Swedish district-heating system. When already published reports had been studied, the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) was chosen as the most suitable technique.