All products will eventually end up as waste, which in a sustainable society has to be handled in an efficient and environment friendly way. This report focuses on waste fractions meant for combustion, often difficult to characterize. However, more homogeneous fractions that are treated biologically are also discussed.The study concerns the region of Borås, Sweden, where the waste plant Sobacken has provided a good starting point. On this site, fuel to the Energy-from-Waste plant of Borås Energi is prepared and the biological waste is treated through anaerobic digestion.One important part of the study has been to collect experience-based knowledge from the technical staff at Sobacken and Borås Energi. This information was compiled into an overview of wanted and unwanted fractions to the preparation plant and the boilers respectively.

This thesis is made by Carl Persson and Alejandro Saavedra for Gryaab. Gryaab is Gothenburg?s water processing plant and produces about 60 GWh biogas annually with a flow around 1150 Nm3/h. Gryaab wants to research their possibilities to become independent with electrical energy and the possibilities to enrich, upgrade biogas. The use of methane rich gases like biogas and natural gas is today low in Sweden compared to major parts of the world.

I dagens samhälle blir det allt mer intressant att spara energi, dels med tanke på miljön och dels föratt minska på utgifterna. Denna energi ska sparas på ett sådant sätt att effekten för användarna blirså liten som möjligt.I denna rapport beskrivs hur ett reglersystem kan byggas för att minska energiförbrukningen hosväxthus genom att reglera belysningen på ett effektivt sätt. Systemet är helt automatiskt vilket göratt användarna inte behöver tänka på styrningen av lamporna alls när väl systemet är uppsatt ochkonfigurerat.För att styra lamporna på ett bra sätt mäts det inkommande ljuset med en PAR-sensor. Lampornatänds och släcks därefter beroende på ljusmängden och även på hur varmt, eller kallt, det är iväxthusen.Styrningen av belysningen sker med en mikrokontroller från Microchip, en PIC18F4620 som ärprogrammerad i C18. Kringkomponenter som portexpasioner, klocka och reläer användes också föratt bygga ett bra reglersystem.Resultatet är att det är möjligt att bygga ett reglersystem med begränsad budget som styr lampornapå ett effektivt sätt.

This paper aims to explore the phenomenon urban wind energy, its visual effect on built environment and the factors that affect the opinion towards new elements in the city. A place study of the city Gävle serves as a complement to the theoretical part of the paper. The theoretical discussion opens with an account for the technical and economical conditions of urban wind energy. It presents the technical basics, different types of turbines and a discussion occurring wind related techniques in built environment. Today, the knowledge of how the wind moves and acts in the rural landscape is quite good.

As a result of increased energy prices more and more energy-efficient homes are coveted. An energy-efficient alternative is passive houses, which is characterized by an extremely well insulated building envelope that recovers the heat without the use of radiators or under floor heating. But a passive house requires a higher investment cost than a conventional building project, since it will require more construction materials, training of construction workers, greater land area, and long construction period. But the lower operating cost expects to pay back the higher cost of investment. We therefore question how profitable a passive house is in relation to houses built according to modern conventional building techniques.The aim of our study is to investigate the viability of passive houses compared to convent­ional houses.

This essay examines the environmental ideological direction of the Swedish parliamentary parties through the private members motions directed to the committee of industry and trade and the committee of environment and agriculture during the governmental time from 2002 to 2006.The environmental ideologies explained is anthropocentrism, ecocentrism and biocentrism. Based on the ideas of these three ideologies main points the private members motions directed to the committee of industry and trade and the committee of environment and agriculture, also matching the search words environment and energy, was compared and analysed.What has emerged is that all parliamentary parties express a desire to create an energy production and producing guide lines which are stringent environmentally and matches the safety requirements. Although the approach to environmental and safety standards differ significantly between them. Basically all Swedish parliamentary parties are more or less anthropocentric in its arguments, which in short terms means that they estimate natures and animals value through their usability for humans or based on their contribution to human feelings of wellbeing.The Centre Party and the Green Party shows hints of weak ecocentrism because in many cases they put animal intrinsic value high, but the human value higher. Moderates are predominantly anthropocentric but they also express some hint of biocentrism in one statement concerning research in order to reduce and rebuild environmentally destroyed areas.

I dagens samhälle blir det allt mer intressant att spara energi, dels med tanke på miljön och dels föratt minska på utgifterna. Denna energi ska sparas på ett sådant sätt att effekten för användarna blirså liten som möjligt.I denna rapport beskrivs hur ett reglersystem kan byggas för att minska energiförbrukningen hosväxthus genom att reglera belysningen på ett effektivt sätt. Systemet är helt automatiskt vilket göratt användarna inte behöver tänka på styrningen av lamporna alls när väl systemet är uppsatt ochkonfigurerat.För att styra lamporna på ett bra sätt mäts det inkommande ljuset med en PAR-sensor. Lampornatänds och släcks därefter beroende på ljusmängden och även på hur varmt, eller kallt, det är iväxthusen.Styrningen av belysningen sker med en mikrokontroller från Microchip, en PIC18F4620 som ärprogrammerad i C18. Kringkomponenter som portexpasioner, klocka och reläer användes också föratt bygga ett bra reglersystem.Resultatet är att det är möjligt att bygga ett reglersystem med begränsad budget som styr lampornapå ett effektivt sätt.

The equine hoof is often manipulated in purpose to achieve a better stride or to reduce the weight on damaged tissue. The living tissue in the hoof can?t store energy as glycogen and is therefore depending on a continuous supply of glucose for its energy production. The purpose of the study was to determine if wedging (i.e. elevating) the heel could influence the hooves glucose and lactate consumption/production. Five standardbred horses were trained to trot on a treadmill without getting physical or mentally tired.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the stir drying method, for drying of grain during Swedish conditions. The evaluation was done during the harvest year 2004, on four farms with stir driers. The driers were evaluated for their energy consumption, design, stirring effectiveness and how much time the farmer has to spend on every tonne of grain. A comparison was also done with conventional Swedish high temperature driers. Totaly six batches of grain from stir driers were examined, mostly winter wheat, but also barley and wheat.

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.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how investments are justified in the Swedish data center industry, with a focus on cooling equipment. This is achieved through semi-structured interviews with 20 different interviewees. These interviewees represent different facets of the industry and facilitate an understanding of which factors, such as: investment costs, operating costs, reliability, environmental impact and the influence of external and internal actors, come into play and to which degree they impact the investment decision-making process. The results show that primarily low operating cost in the form of low energy consumption is the driving factor when it comes to the procurement of new equipment. A lower environmental impact is a positive side-effect of lower energy consumption.

The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

It has become more and more common that companies in the service sector are beginning to understand their own effect on the environment and thus the need to contribute to a sustainable development through acting in a deliberate way. Serious environmental work can help a company to improve their image and in that way win competitive advantage that leads to improved profitability. In a short time perspective, adjustment to the environment is an opportunity to gain competitive advantage and an opportunity to develop a profile. In a long time perspective it is about survival. The environmental work has become a sequel to the work with quality.

This study includes a life cycle assessment, LCA, on an ecological produced cotton shirt for the company Reflective Circle, which designs ethical and ecological clothes.Initially were cotton farming and textile production studied to gather basic knowledge about the processes. Since this shirt is being ecological produced in the whole production chain, we studied what an ecological production means, but also how a conventional production works. When this was done we could start to discuss the differences and similarities between the production of the shirt and general conventional production.When the LCA was first initiated, the main focus was on the green house gas emissions from the manure at the cultivation. Thereafter the process steps such as picking, ginning, carding, spinning, weaving and sewing were being studied. The picking is done by hand, but the rest of the processes are handed by machines which consumes energy.

In today?s hectic society more and more people experience stress and our lifestyle gives us a very limited chance to recover. For some it sometimes goes that far that they get burnt-out, they have pushed themselves to the ultimate limit. There are different methods and treatments to recover but one very efficient treatment is to spend time in a rehabilitation garden. There the patients get treated by therapeutics that uses the garden as the main tool.The fact that gardens and parks have a positive effect on humans have been used by people for a long time but it?s not until recently that the research has taken speed.