In the coming years, organic food waste will be collected in the region of Gästrikland, Sweden. The collection is planned to cover the entire region by the end of year 2007. To start with, smaller amounts are being collected and transported to a central composting plant in Sala. However, a central composting plant in the region of Gästrikland is projected.The objective of this thesis is to evaluate a number of possible methods for composting of organic food wastes regarding their environmental impacts and localization.There are four scenarios for future composting of organic waste that have been evaluated. There are two that consist of membrane composting, either in Sala or in the region of Gästrikland.

?Halmstads Fastighets AB? is a local real estate company investing in sustainable development. One problem though is that the domestic waste, particularly the source separation, at the three resident blocks for students? isn´t working very well. This creates inconveniences for people and environment as well as decreasing the impression on the estates.This project has had the ambition to improve the domestic waste and increase the amount of source separation at HFAB´s student hostels.

Livscykelanalys används som metod för att undersöka produkter eller tjänster från ?vaggan tillgraven?. Med hjälp av mjukvaruprogrammet SimaPro utförs en livscykelanalys på förbränning av avfall med energiutvinning. Resultatet jämförs med en livscykelanalys som utförs på biogasproduktion från matavfall, för att visa vilken av processerna som har mer positiv påverkan på miljön. Resultatet visar att förbränning av avfall bidrar till minskad miljöpåverkan med 63,9 kg CO2-ekvivalenter per ton avfall.

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.

Since 1996 the Swedish households have ten folded their volume of loans for own homes that is attached to a floating interest rate. Also in 1996 the Swedish electric market was deregulated. These two facts have increased the volatility in the household expenses for these two commodities. This thesis studies the risk for homeowners attached to the exposure against the electric and the credit market. The risk model used is Cost-at-Risk which is usually used by public authorities for analysing the risk involved with national debt.

Femsjö is a small parish situated in Hylte municipality, Växjö diocese. The parish has a total area of 8230 ha of which 5000 ha are covered with forest. There have not been any large industries in the parish offering work opportunities for the inhabitants, so they have had to generate income from their land and the forest. Instead of going to the bank to get a bank loan the people of Femsjö parish went out in to the forest and harvested trees for timber and extra cash revenue. Production of pine tar and potash were two other ways that the residents of Femsjö parish could earn extra money for the household in order to keep starvation away.

Discharge of inadequately treated waste water containing nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen as well as organic matter and bacteria is associated with a risk of eutrophication and contamination. The Swedish government has decided upon several Environmental Quality Objectives aiming to reduce the emissions of nutrients to water bodies.In Sweden, there are between 675 000 to 1 000 000 on-site sewage systems. Recent studies have shown that the function of small sewage treatment plants is in many cases insufficient. To prevent this regular service and supervision by a professional is needed. The focus of this study are small sewage treatment plants which use a technique where mechanical, chemical and/or biological reduction of pollutants is being used in the same facility to reduce nutrients in Household wastewater.The aim of the study is to investigate how different municipalities ensure that small sewage treatment plants fulfill the requirements and reduce pollutants as efficient as the manufacturers claim.

Pulp- and papermills expend vast amounts of water in order to produce pulp, paper and cardboard. Hence, they alsocreate vast amounts of waste water which has to be cleaned before it can be released into the receiving body of water. Insuch a wastewater treatment plant, tremendous amounts of energy are expended by the aeration in the biologicalcleaning process. This aeration is necessary to supply the microorganisms that shall decompose organic material withoxygen, which they need for their metabolism. The transfer of oxygen from the gas phase to the liquid phase isprimarily inhibited by surface-active substances in the waste water like resin acids or fatty acids.

In the production of pulp, paper and cardboard, a large amount of water is used daily. The water has to be purified in the internal purifying plant before it reaches the receiving body of water. In the biological purifying stage at the Stora Enso Skoghall mill, an aerated basin is used where the microorganisms, using oxygen, oxidize the organic material to carbon dioxide. The air is pumped from the bottom of the basin and the oxygen can then be transported from the air bubbles to the water through diffusion. The problem with aeration of waste water from the forest industry is that wood residues, such as fatty acids, are making the transport of oxygen in water more difficult.

The report comprises two separate parts:part 1:  Temperature needs for district heating in the paint shop for axles in building 210part 2:  Energy and low temperature waste heat solutions in heating and cooling systems for   building 64 with surroundingsThe paint shop for axles in part 1 has air quality requirements in places for coating of axles. Toachieve desired air properties there are different process ventilation systems, which consist ofventilation coils for heating and cooling, plus air humidifier. The ventilations coils for heating usedistrict heating. Today the ventilation coils use water of 100°C to achieve necessary air demands inthe coating boxes. This part of the report investigates whether the existing system would achievethe air requirements with a water temperature of 75°C instead of 100°C in the ventilation coilsduring the coldest parts of the year.

An excessive input of nutrients to lakes and other water bodies has created a problem with eutrophication in Sweden. Untreated, or partially treated, domestic sewage is a major source for discharge of phosphorus (P), which is the nutrient most frequently responsible for eutrophication of most fresh waters and the Baltic Sea. The waste water can be cleaned by filter materials, which have a high P-retention ability and which after saturation may be used as fertilizers. Four potentially suitable filter materials were tested in batch- and column experiments in this study. In the batch experiments, the following materials were shaken with waste water in time series ranging from 5 seconds to 60 minutes: coarse (1-4 mm) and fine (0-2 mm) Polonite® (heated bedrock from Poland); Filtralite® (light expanded clay aggregates with limestone added before burning); water cooled blast furnace slag (BF-slag) and BF-slag mixed with 10% burned limestone.

Detta arbete har sin utgångspunkt i ökad återvinning och minskning av sopberg. Ett exempel som vi har använt oss av i vår forskning är ett samarbete mellan Röda Korset och Kriminalvården. Varje år slängs 25 % av de textilier som välgörenhetsorganisationer får in och dessa sopberg skulle man kunna minska genom ökad återvinning. Kriminalvården har registrerat ett varumärke som heter Made in Jail, vilka tillverkar köksrelaterade produkter. Syftet med det här arbetet blev därför att utveckla idéer till hantverksprodukter som slukar mycket spill.Valet av metod blev kvalitativa intervjuer, som utfördes med tre personer med olika kopplingar till arbetet.

The demand for district heating is expected to decrease in the future, due to competition from heat pumps and energy efficiency measures in buildings. Development of existing district heating systems is therefore necessary for district heating companies to maintain market shares. This Master?s thesis describes and investigates the heat and electricity production and profitability of a combined Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) and heat pump that is integrated with an existing district heating system. The studied district heating system is utilizing heat from waste incineration. In Sweden waste constitute 20 % of the fuel mix used in district heating systems, and this share is expected to increase in the future.

The demand for biogas as vehicle fuel has risen sharply and there is a great need for increased production. A possible addition of vehicle gas can be produced by upgrading landfill gas which is formed by degradation of organic waste. This thesis investigates the potential of producing vehicle fuel from landfill gas in the region of Biogas Öst.In 2008, an amount of 32 million Nm3 landfill gas was extracted in the region. This level can be maintained for another ten years if the efficiency of gas extraction is improved. The annual production will decrease with time since landfills aren?t allowed to receive more organic waste.

Blood samples from 44 clinically healthy cats were analysed for the presence of antibodies to Chlamydophila felis. As we wanted to investigate if the antibody titre of clinically healthy cats correlates to shedding of chlamydia, conjunctival and vaginal or preputial swabs respectively, were taken and analysed with rtPCR (real-time polymerase chain reaction) for the presence of chlamydia DNA. Furthermore, to investigate possible epidemiological factors connected with asymptomatic cats infected with chlamydia and to see if there were any indications that chlamydiosis can cause reproductive problems, the owners of the cats were asked questions regarding this. Sixty-one per cent (27 of 44) of the cats were seropositive. Three of these (11 %) had the highest antibody titre (1:1600).