Within agriculture it is important to optimize the use of nitrogen, not only from an economic point of view but also to minimize damage to the environment. This can sometimes be difficult, especially within organic farming. Organic farmers are using increasing amounts of waste products from the food industry to cover their nitrogen needs. These different organic fertilizers release nitrogen at different rates and under specific soil conditions. Because of this, it would be beneficial to have a standardized method to measure the amount and rate of nitrogen mineralization from organic fertilizers. This project contributes to this knowledge by investigating whether relatively simple and repeatable laboratory methods can be used to estimate the nitrogen fertilizer value of organic fertilizers.

During pulp and papermaking process a huge amount of water is used. The wastewater contains a large amount of pollutants and has to be treated before it reaches the recipient. In March 2004 a new bleaching plant was started up at SCA Graphic Sundsvall AB, Ortviken?s paper mill using peroxide. The production of bleached thermo mechanical pulp and thus the load to the wastewater plant increased.

The population growth and urbanisation in low-income countries bring issues of poor living standards and miserable sanitation conditions onto the agenda. If well-functioning waste management systems were developed, this could master some of the problems. The already existing local informal waste handling system that is common in many low-income countries, needs to be developed with proper sorting and composting solutions to decrease the environmental burden and improve the overall situation in the dense cities. This master?s thesis project is performed with the intention of developing functional decentralised waste management units in the city of Pune, India.

The population growth and urbanisation in low-income countries bring issues of poor living standards and miserable sanitation conditions onto the agenda. If well-functioning waste management systems were developed, this could master some of the problems. The already existing local informal waste handling system that is common in many low-income countries, needs to be developed with proper sorting and composting solutions to decrease the environmental burden and improve the overall situation in the dense cities. This master?s thesis project is performed with the intention of developing functional decentralised waste management units in the city of Pune, India.

Ethanol for automotive purposes is an issue much debated and researchers disagree about the benefits of bioethanol. Converting energy-rich crops into ethanol suitable as motor fuel is a complex process and continuous development and improvements of processes and material used are important steps in the work of developing environmental friendly fuels. Grain is usually preserved by drying which consumes a lot of energy. Alternative storage of high-moisture grain in airtight storage systems reduce the energy required to produce bioethanol and studies have also shown that ethanol yields are increased more than 10% in ethanol fermentations of moist grain compared to dry. Airtight storage is often not perfectly airtight so biocontrol agents are necessary in order to preserve the grain.

Pets like dogs and cats have a considerable importance for humans and research demonstrate a variety of positive economic and social effects in society due to our pet companions. The presences of pets are increasing on a global scale with correlation to economic development in low- and middle income countries. For example dogs have doubled in India over a five year period. The feed industry for dogs and cats is also the fastest growing sector in the food industry and certain pets have a significant animal protein intake which, depending on the choice of resources may provide a high ecological footprint. Examples of environmental effects with distribution and manufacturing of pet food are increased greenhouse gas emissions, waste, use of water and energy.

Tropical rain forests only cover around six percent of the world?s land area and contain around 70 % of the world´s animals and plants. Tropical rainforests have been, and still are, negatively affected by human activities. These activities lead to forest Degradation which has negative impacts on production and biodiversity. Between 1970-1980 forests in Borneo, Sabah, Malaysia, was subjected to intense logging.

Climate changes today are mainly caused by anthropogenic activities and the increased emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and this has raised questions on how to reduce the usage of fossil fuels. Ethanol is a good alternative to conventional gas and has been used in Brazil since the 1970 ?s. In Sweden several newspapers has written about the poor working conditions on many farms thus making the Swedish company SEKAB design a certification for their ethanol to ensure that it can be considered to be a sustainable alternative.Furthermore WWF has developed a certification tool called Bonsucro in cooperation with Coca Cola, Ferrero group, BP and Shell. This is due to the fact that no global certification tool has been available up until now.

Milk fat is an important feature in many different milk products and other foodstuffs and it is often crucial for the dairy plants that the milk fat is stable for different manufacturing processes. Lipolysis is the enzymatic Degradation of fat and is the one of the causes for an elevated amount of free fatty acids (FFA) in milk. Further, the change in fatty acid (FA) composition in milk can affect the stability of the product and also the manufacturing process. Both internal and external factors, at farm level or at the dairy plants can affect both FA composition and content of FFA. Milking frequency (MF=number of milkings per cow and day) and the composition of feed are two examples of factors generally performed at farm level. The objective of the present study was to evaluate how FA composition of milk and amount of FFA are influenced by two different ingredients supplemented to concentrate.

In the tropics, logging and wild fire can result in degraded secondary forests with lower biodiversity than in the natural forest. One way to limit forest Degradation is to rehabilitate the present large areas of secondary forests. However, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the ecology of tropical tree species and further studies would be advantageous for future rehabilitation efforts of degraded rainforest. The objective of this study was to investigate how mother trees in secondary forest and different site factors affect the abundance and spatial distribution of natural regeneration of non-pioneer tree species in a tropical rainforest in Sabah, Malaysia. The study took place in the INIKEA Forest Rehabilitation Project area, which suffered from wild fire in 1983 and has been selectively logged over both before and after the fire. Natural regeneration and site variables were inventoried in plots, while mother trees were inventoried in the whole survey area.

I denna kandidatuppsats avlägsnas organiska föroreningar från vatten genom användning av textilier, vars yta belagts med nanopartiklar utav ämnet titandioxid. När titandioxid belyses med UV-strålning sker en fotokatalytisk reaktion, vilket i sin tur bryter ned bland annat bakterier och organiska färgämnen. I hopp om att finna ultimat vidhäftning mot textil passande titandioxid har olika typer av beläggningar studerats; akrylbaserade, sol-gel och slutligen en hybrid. Dessutom har fem olika konstruktioner av textila bindningar jämförts i syfte att undersöka dess påverkan på den fotokatalytiska effekten. Förorenade vatten är ett stort problem, både i utvecklingsländer och i industriella sammanhang.

I Sverige finns uppskattningsvis mellan 4000 och 8000 stycken deponier. De flesta av deponierna är nedlagda och år 2001 fanns det 142 stycken aktiva deponier för hushållsavfall. År 2010 hade antalet minskat till 76 stycken.  Vid nedbrytning av organiskt material i deponier bildas metanhaltig deponigas som bidrar till växthuseffekten. Utsläppens omfattning prognostiseras med hjälp av beräkningsmodeller, exempelvis IPCCs. Dessa modeller fordrar att antaganden görs av exempelvis andelen gas som utvinns via gasuppsamlingsutrustningen, det organiska materialets halveringstid och avfallets sammansättning och mängd.

Skoghalls Bruk fick i juni 2005 tillstånd av miljödomstolen att öka kartongproduktionen från 665 000 till 800 000 ton kartong per år. Villkoren för tillståndet var att under en prövotidsperiod bl.a. utreda möjligheten att minska utsläpp till omkringliggande vatten.Syftet med examensarbetet var att kartlägga Skoghalls Bruks avloppssystem med avseende på komplexbildarna EDTA (etylendiamintetraättiksyra) och DTPA (dietylentriaminpentaättiksyra), kväve samt fosfor.Dessutom genomfördes nedbrytningsförsök i luftade dammar i laboratorieskala.För att få en klarare bild av nedbrytningen i Skoghalls Bruks luftade damm gjordes även en molekylviktsfraktionering på inkommande och utgående avloppsvatten.Komplexbildare används inom pappers- och massaindustrin för sin förmåga att binda till sig metalljoner som kan vara skadliga i processen. Metalljoner katalyserar nedbrytningen av väteperoxid i blekningen och påskyndar bildandet av aldehyder i kartongen vilket kan leda till lukt- och smakpåverkan.EDTA och DTPA anses vara stabila ämnen, vilket innebär att de är biologiskt svårnedbrytbara. Under den litteraturstudie som genomfördes fanns motsägande uppgifter angående nedbrytningen av komplexbildare, där vissa menade att de genomgår biologisk nedbrytning, men att det sker mycket långsamt.