Air transportation has an undisputed speed advantage among all other modes. On the other hand, it is known that the environmental metrics of aviation is quite unsatisfactory compared to other transportation types due to its fuel characteristics and the amount of consumed fuel. However, it would be a wrong choice to rely solely on operational processes to make a true comparison. For this reason, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model should be generated by taking into account processes such as production except the operation process and the calculations should be performed with a comprehensive and holistic perspective. In this study, the environmental impacts of air and rail transport types are compared from the life cycle perspective. For this purpose, first, the emissions in the case of one passenger per one km (pkm) transportation by air and rail were calculated. Then, taking into account the production and disposal processes of the aircraft and passenger trains, the LCA cycle was completed and total emissions were calculated. SimaPro version 9.0.0.49 package program and 1.09 version of ReCiPe 2008 method were used for LCA calculations. With the help of the program, emissions generated during both production and one pkm transportation processes of an aircraft, high-speed and normal train were estimated. Accordingly, the greenhouse gas produced one pkm in air transport was 126.8 g in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2eq ), while CO 2eq was 0.3 and 0.31 g for high-speed trains and regular trains, respectively. Considering the production processes, 2072.1, 28.72, and 19.07 t of greenhouse gases are produced, respectively for these three transportation modes.
Bio-electroactive fuel cells are systems that produce useful products from renewable sources without causing environmental pollution and treating waste. In this study, general design properties, operation mechanisms, application areas, and historical advancement of the bio-electroactive fuel cell was reviewed. Electricity generating microbial fuel cells offer new opportunities as with hydrogen and methane-producing microbial electrolysis cells due to their attractive variety of electroactive microorganisms and operating situations. This article provides an up-todate review for Bio-electroactive fuel cells and outlines instructions for future studies.
Medical waste management has always been an important topic due to its infectious status. Recently, more care has been given to it due to the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world. Several methods are applied to handle medical wastes. Incineration and sterilization with autoclave are among the most common medical waste treatment methods. Among all methods, incineration serves the ultimate method of waste destruction since the waste is exposed to high temperatures (~800 °C) for about 2 hours. Because of the pandemic or some other reasons, administrations may want to shift their technology to incineration from autoclave. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to prepare a comparison of both technologies in terms of life cycle perspective. We used OpenLCA for calculations. Two different calculations were conducted. In the first one, the actual treatment methods and the waste amount were used. In the second one, a scenario was formed that included the treatment of the whole medical waste of Istanbul by only incineration process. The results indicated a higher mid-category life cycle impact for the combustion method. The highest contribution was for human toxicity with 3.8e4 kg 1,4-DB eq and 1.7e5 kg 1,4-DB eq for the current operation and scenario, respectively. The environmental impact of the sterilization process remained negligible relative to the combustion process.
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