JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Year:2017 | Volume:19 | Issue:3 (74)|Papers Count:17

Background and Objective: This article with the purpose of investigation on some physicochemical properties of Khersan River has been accomplished. These parameters are including: Temperature, Dissolved Oxygen, Dissolved Solids, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Chemical Oxygen Demand, Total Phosphorus, Total Nitrogen, Electrical Conductivity, Chlorophyll a, Turbidity and finally analysis of statistical relations between this parameters were developed.Method: To perform the tests and determine the parameters we had 12 months sampling at 6 stations. Sampling methods and performing of examinations was in accordance with Standards method. Qualitative & quantitative variations were studied during a year and finally, data analysis through SPSS software and Pearson correlation coefficient test were performed.Findings: The highest temperature was in station No.1 in July 32.5oC and the lowest was in station No.4 in February 9.2oC, the most electrical conductivity is related to station No.2 in August 672 m mhos cm-1 and the lowest was in station No.1 in March 262 m mhos cm-1.Discussion and conclusion: According to Iranian DOE quality standard chart of state rivers' water, the range of changes in dissolved solids and dissolved oxygen in water is in optimum extent. But, Biochemical Oxygen Demand of water is in maximum permitted amount. There are meaningful relations in confidence extent of P<0.05 or P<0.01 between some studied parameters from statistical relations point of view.

Background and Objective: Because of high consumption on water in marble processing, issue of water reuse in the process, is essential. Therefore this study was conducted with purpose of survey efficiency of aluminum sulfate, ferric chloride, poly aluminum chloride, polymer and lime in removal of turbidity, total suspended solids and total solids of marble processing wastewater.Method: This study was performed on laboratory scale and using the jar test. The experiments was done based on various doses of coagulant (25, 50, 75, 100, 200 and 500 mg/l). Steps of rapid mixing, slow mixing and stable was done, and the factors such as turbidity, total suspended solids, total solids, pH, and electrical conductivity (EC) were investigated.Findings: Coagulants efficiency in the turbidity removal was approximately identical. The maximum rates of removal of the turbidity related to lime (99.8%) and a minimum rate of removal was related to aluminum sulfate (86.4%). Poly aluminum chloride and lime were high efficiency in the removal of the total suspended solids. The maximum rates of removal of the total suspended solids related to lime (99.1%) and the minimum rate of removal was related to ferric chloride (57.3%). Alum and polymer efficiency in removal of the total solids was higher than other coagulants. The maximum rates of removal of total solids related to alum (82.5%) and the minimum rate of removal was related to polyaluminum chloride (70%).Discussion and Conclusions: Use of coagulants can increase the treatment efficiency and accelerates return the water to cycle. Alum and lime have high performance in removal of turbidity, total suspended solids, and total solids and can be used for marble processing wastewater treatment.

Background and Objective: Cesium-137 is one of the most important radioactive nuclides which are released into the environment during nuclear accidents. This metal remains in high layers of the soil and by the time diffuse to the lower depths of the soil and absorbed by plant roots and finally it will enter the human chain and effects directly on the human health. Therefore, the use of appropriate models for prediction of the Cs absorption in root vegetables can help on the human health.Method: In this study, transfer coefficients and Cs-137 uptake in the root vegetables is investigated by compartmental model. Data of Fukushima accident were used for the calculation of parameters in the plants. Data of Cs concentration in soil and in root of vegetables are as inputs.Findings: The result shows the calculated transfer coefficients for soil to root of vegetable is 0.031 for turnip and 0.039 for carrot, in the same order of reference 0.037 for the loam soil of agricultural and root vegetables.Discussion and Conclusion: The calculated transfer coefficients are in a very good consistency to the recommended NCRP. This result can be used for predicting the nuclear contamination in the nuclear accident.

Background and purpose: Ammonia-Nitrogen is considered one of the environmental pollutants, these pollutants have high concentrations in petrochemical effluent specially, Ammonia and Urea plants. In this study, biological methods using native bacteria consertium isolated from petrochemical industry has been used for nitrate and ammonia removal.Methods: This study has been carreid out in batch mode and the effects of initial concentrations; pH and retention time has been investigated. The initial concentrations of 3×108 CFU/ml of nitrifier and denitrifier bacteria has been used. An initial ammonia and nitrate concentrations of 50-200 mg/l as well as the retention time 3-168 hours and also pH 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 were studied.Finding: The results showed that the native bacteria isoated from petrochemical industry with a population of 3×108 CFU/ml in pH 8 were able to remove ammonia and nitrate with a initial concentrations of 200 mg/l with 99.5% efficiency in a retention time 4 days for nitrifier, and 6 days for denitrifier bacteria.Discussion and conclusion: The isolated native bacteria had a powerful effect in the nitrification and denitrification processes, so effluent ammonia can be removed with high efficiency by isolated native bacteria, and needs for environmental standards can be applied for effluent discharge.

Background and purpose: Scattering the urban diverse applications and their compression intensity in level and height (density) are the determinant how to meet the citizens' needs, because, for using the urban facilities they are inevitable to move toward these applications. Subway and B.R.T are two mass public transportation systems with less traffic interference which transfer people within the territory of a city and also impose more expenses to city than other transportation systems, for practicing their infrastructures. Since more intensity of applications leads to more effective transportation systems, in contrary, and more efficient transportation system leads to more residential and activities growth around this system, thus, these two entities must be studied, designed and exercised coordinated.Methods: Due to the existence of both transportation systems in Tehran, Tehran pars, region 8, this case study was done there, also, for more precise identification of the relation between public transportation system (subway and B.R.T.) and density of various applications and by virtue of its location's nature, geographical information system and Arc GIS software were used.153 urban blocks were analyzed statistically in this area by OLS in ARC GIS by the significance level of 0.05. In this analysis, each dependent variable, difference during implementation of the system and difference between eligible and inaccessible blocks to the system, the method is used in this study (Diff-Diff).Findings: The result shows the increase in annual rate of residential density, number of floors and population density under the impact of subway, includes 0.05%, 0.072 floor and 0.001 person per square meter, respectively, also it shows the increase on the number of floors indicator by -0.05 floor within the area of BRT stations.Discussion and Conclusion: Relation between subway and urban density is significant but relation between B.R.T and urban density is not significant.

Background and Objective: Cities are considered as the main factor causing instability in the world. In fact, according to the inherent complexity of cities in terms of environmental issues, identification of the main factors in achieving sustainability is necessary. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the indicators of environmental instability in Ahvaz metropolis with a focus on indicators of water, soil and noise pollutions.Method: This study is a descriptive-analytical one using an applied method. In this context, after explaining the concept of urban sustainability and urban instability and identifying relevant criteria, according to the study, the conversion of criteria to quantitative indicators was done and the index and sub-index in AHP model were prioritized. To perform spatial analysis of the data, GIS software was used and the most important explanatory factors to assess the environmental indicators of instability in Ahvaz, with emphasis on the index of water, soil and noise pollutions were studied.Findings: Findings showed that considering the water pollution index, five area with the impact of 0.327 had the the highest weight value among the urban areas while six areas with the impact of 0.033 had the lowest value than other areas with water pollution in Karun river. In terms of soil pollution, four areas with effect coefficient of 0.331 had the the highest rate of soil pollution, and eight regions with effect coefficient of 0.024 had the least pollution. In terms of noise pollution, the region with effect coefficient of 0.336 had the highest weight value among other regions, while eight regions with effect coefficient of 0.02 had the least pollution.Discussion and Conclusion: Results showed that Ahvaz is in unstable environmental conditions and its current environmental condition is significantly far away from sustainability criteria. With this interpretations of situation, awareness about ecological sustainability of urban areas and understanding of the situation could play an important role in improving the planning and optimal allocation of resources to improve people's welfare.

Background and Objective: Land cover change detection is an effective tool for managing natural resources and evaluating ecosystem changes. The aim of this research is monitoring land cover changes using remotely sensed images and GIS in Kaftareh watershed in Ardabil province.Method: In this investigation, Landsat 5 TM images for years 1987 and 1998 and Landsat 8 OLITIRS images for year 2014 were collected and analyzed. For this purpose, atmospheric and radiometric corrections, the images of every year was classified using maximum likelihood supervised classification method. Then, considering study area features, the images were classified into four land cover classes: dry land, range land, irrigated land, garden land and bare land. Moreover, NDVI index was used to differentiate between range land and bare land. Slope layer was used to distinguish between range land and dry land.Findings: According to the results, during the period 1987-2014, 68.91 percent of study area haven’t been changed.1970.68 hectares of range land were destroyed and changed into bare land, dry land and garden land. Moreover, dry land, irrigated and garden land and bare land were increased 26% (1808.20 hectares), 6.97% (43.54 hectares) and 33.99% (100.78 hectares), respectively.Discussion and Conclusion: Additional information such as slope layer and NDVI index in assistant with supervised classification of satellite images can increase the accuracy of image classification to provide land cover maps.

Background and Objective: Environmental balance between transportation and urban landuse components of planning is very important, because they have great impact on each other. As transportation is one of the most important infrastructures of a city, its location-allocation is important for urban planning. Overall objective of this study is "Development of a GIS approach to plan appropriate locations for main urban land uses in the transportation network. Arak (a developing city in Iran) has been chosen as the case study.Method: This research includes the design and development of a model in the GIS environment with a view to introducing the development areas of Arak city for optimal urban use of urban areas with the aim of increasing the efficiency of urban transport and reducing environmental impacts. The research methodology has focused on the calculation and mapping of fuel consumption, air and noise pollution in the urban transportation network and the proper deployment of users.Findings: The results indicate the efficiency of the designed model for the proper location of the transportation network and urban utilities. Obtained maps show there are a lot of non-suitable zones for most of urban land uses. The results focus on the approaches such as road type change and location changes of the land uses locations to reduce environmental hazards.Discursion and Conclusion: This research has successfully managed development of a scientific approach for current and future model development. This approach can be employed in land uses and transportation network development. Suitability assessment can be done at both the local and national structure plan levels.

Background and objective: Hospital wastes are the second hazardous wastes after radioactive wastes. Proper management of this wastes cause to affordable disposal of hospital wastes which is also compatible with the environment. The present study has been done to evaluate the quantity of waste produced and also the function of safety methods in Sari's hospitals.Method: Required data were collected by going to the production and storage of waste and assessment of the devices function have been done based on biological monitoring of indicator bacteria in infectious wastes.Findings: Average of total wastes produced were 3198 kg per day in Sari's hospitals and per capita waste production were estimated kg per bed per day 2.49. Average of normal wastes, infectious wastes and winning wastes and radiation wastes were determined per bed respectively, 1.56, 0.7, 0.22, 0.01 kg per day. The total wastes and infectious wastes in private hospitals were more than of public hospitals and Social Security. The results showed that 46% and 36% of infectious wastes have been annihilated by incineration and safe methods respectively. Biological monitoring showed that the most of function Safety devices were at an acceptable level in hospitals. They have been eliminated with an average 80% of microorganisms.Discussion and conclusion: Waste production in the most of our hospitals, especially private hospitals, are much higher than usual offered by the World Health Organization. The results show that the size of hospitals (large or small) have no influence in the production of solid waste per bed, and there were related to the type of ownership and management procedures largely.

Background and Objective: Oil pollution is a type of organic water pollution. The hydrocarbons constitute most of the petroleum composition. Most of the early aromatic hydrocarbons are naphthalene with two benzene ring which cause anemia and damage the retina. It is also toxic to plants and aquatic environment. The removal of this compound from water by multi-walled carbon nanotubes is reviewed in this study.Method: This experimental study was done in a batch system to investigate the effects of variations factors such as contact time, naphthalene concentration and dose of nanotubes on removal of naphthalene. In this study, naphthalene concentration was determined during various steps using UV-vis spectrophotometer at 254 nm.Findings: Maximum surface adsorption of naphthalene onto multi-walled carbon nanotubes was 33.3 mg/gr and the maximum adsorption occurred at acidic pH (pH=3). And the appropriate time for reaching the maximum adsorption rate of naphthalene and equalization state was 90 min. By increasing the adsorbent dose from 0.2 to 0.3 gr/l, removal efficiency of naphthalene solution with 10 mg/l initial concentration increased from 97% to 99.99%. By increasing naphthalene initial concentration from 3 to 10 mg/l, the removal efficiency increased from 73.33% to 99.99 % at pH=3 after 90 min. Adsorption mechanism followed pseudo first-order kinetics (R2=0.96).Discussion and Conclusion: This adsorbent could be effective for removal of naphtalene due to its small size, large surface area, crystal shape and exclusive network arrangement and consequently very high reactivity and noticeable performance of multi-walled carbon nanotubes as adsorbent in removal of organic pollutants from aqueous solution.

Background and Objective: One of the main issues in regional planning and development is land use change by human activities. Considering the benefits and potentials of satellite data, we can use remote sensing to extract and find this changes.Method: In this study, land use changes of Qhaemshahr in a 15 years term has been detected. In this study, ETM+ images of 1999 and OLI images of 2014 of Landsat satellite has been used. After preprocessing via super wised classification, land use map has been extracted.Findings: Finally 5 land use types has been identified in this region. The kappa coefficient and the overall accuracy was 98.4 % and 0.97 % for ETM+ results and 99.67% and 0.97% for OLI results sequentially. The results showed that agricultural lands, forest, water covered areas has been converted to building zone and garden. The Results showed that 27.26% increase in garden regions, and 45.32 % decrease in agricultural zones during 15 years, also Forest lands and water covered decreased and building zones increased during 15 years.Discussion and Conclusion: The results confirm that satellite information for extracting land use maps and detecting land use changes is an effective method for planning the natural resources management.

Background and Objective: Landfill leachate has been identified as a potential source of ground and surface waters contamination due to the generation of leachate. Further, landfill leachate may percolate through soils and cause the large pollution of streams, creeks and water. Hence, the aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of a laboratory-scale ABR in different COD concentrations and hydraulic retention time for COD removal.Method: In this research, an anaerobic baffle reactor (ABR) was used for biological landfill leachate treatment. The ABR was 10 cm wide, 60 cm long, and 10 cm depth and was constructed from Perspex with an effective volume of 6 L. The ABR was seeded with anaerobically digested sewage sludge taken from an anaerobic digester of a wastewater treatment plant in Qaemshahr city. Landfill leachate used in this study was collected from a landfill leachate waste municipal site located in Kiasar, Sari. The experiments used in this study were chemical oxygen demand (COD), pH, suspended solids (SS) and alkalinity.Findings: The anaerobic baffle reactor (ABR) has been have an appropriate performance for COD removal of landfill leachate. Also, the results showed that this reactor presented an acceptable capability of pH control and acidogenic microorganism separation from others. On the other hands, the results demonstrated that an alkalinity remained at the desirable level in the reactor and it is not necessary to add chemical materials to control it. Moreover, the suspended solids were significantly removed in this reactor.Discussion and Conclusion: The obtained results indicated that the highest COD removal (86%) was achieved at the HRT of 2 days where the COD concentration of 2700 mg/L was reduced to 380 mg/L. Furthermore, the system performance at lower hydraulic retention time was decreased. At the COD concentration of 2700 mg/L, 70% decrement of the reactor efficiency was observed by decreasing hydraulic retention time to 12 hr.

Background and Objective: This study was implemented in 1393, aimed to evaluate reaction, learning and behavior of learners from training course and empowerment SAMEN Credit Institute IT staff to design green data center with the aim of developing the use of renewable energy and environmentally friendly technologies. Green data centers are the building for storage, management and dissemination of data, which have the highest efficiency in infrastructure design to minimize wasted resources of electricity and to achieve maximum efficiency with minimal environmental impact.Method: By the Cochran formula, 40 persons among the 45 of SAMEN Credit Institute and Samen Ertebat ASR IT experts had been considered (2014). Given the choice Kirkpatrick model, at the end of the training course, evaluation questionnaires designed in behaving and reactive level had been given to learners. Due to checking the learning level, learning questionnaires had been given to learners before and after the course. In order to analyze the data and confirm the research hypotheses, descriptive statistics (mean and frequency) and inferential statistics (KS, T-dependent and T one sample tests) were analyzed by SPSS software.Findings: Given the results of these tests, learners from teacher, contents, features and timing of course were satisfied and the education and empowerment of employees in the reaction, learning behavior has also led to increased knowledge and learning.Discussion and Conclusion: After the training, skills, thoroughness in completing tasks, work morale, job satisfaction, resolve work problems and use of learning increased and this course from a behavioral perspective lead to the desired results for improve the design of green data center.

The International Court of Justice and other international judicial and arbitral bodies play an important role through the issuance of international judicial judgements and precedents in the development of public international law, including international environmental law. These judgements and precedents, as well as some other cases of the International Court of Justice, will help to include new legal principles and rules of international law which can develop the environmental protection. However, alongside the legal capacity, there are obstacles and limitations which cause the positive development of international environmental law move slowly. Advisory opinions and Judgements issued by international courts show that State sovereignty has always been an obstacle to the development of international environmental law. Moreover, the traditional approach of International court of justice, based on the preference of the State sovereignty, is a significant challenge for developing the international environmental law. In fact, moving from absolute sovereignty to the rule based on rational and reasonable use of land could be a good opportunity for development of this legal field. For the first time, the concept of environmental protection was introduced in many cases such as the Trail Smelter case as an earlier environmental dispute and in this way environmental protection was developed in other environmental legal cases too. This research, attempts to analyze the international judicial judgements and precedents of the International Court of Justice to find the impact of these judgements and precedents in the development of international environmental law. It also provides guidelines for applicable solutions by identifying legal gaps and existing inefficiencies.

The aim of this research is the consideration of the fiftieth principle of constitutional law and the operation quality of governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the guarantee of the intentions of constitutional legislator.This research is analytic descriptive and author investigate by library method and arrangement index card and reference to the environmental laws.The findings indicate that the regardless of the useful activities done by competent organizations in environmental issues the intention of constitutional law in the fiftieth principle does not ascertained yet and the main reason of this case is the motiveless and the lack of knowledge of the officials mixture the duties of the public organizations and impossibility interference in the activities of the public organizations by NGO s.We can emancipation our environment from the various threats and guarantee the right to environment by the ratification of environmental laws that is proportional with the day circumstances the increase the level of the information of citizens apply of the specialized and motive staff in public organizations and the strengthening and support the NGOs.