Cultivating a sustainable future in the artificial intelligence era: A comprehensive assessment of greenhouse gas emissions and removals in agriculture.

Agriculture is a leading sector in international initiatives to mitigate climate change and promote sustainability. This article exhaustively examines the removals and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the agriculture industry. It also investigates an extensive range of GHG sources, including rice cultivation, enteric fermentation in livestock, and synthetic fertilisers and manure management. This research reveals the complex array of obstacles that are faced in the pursuit of reducing emissions and also investigates novel approaches to tackling them. This encompasses the implementation of monitoring systems powered by artificial intelligence, which have the capacity to fundamentally transform initiatives aimed at reducing emissions. Carbon capture technologies, another area investigated in this study, exhibit potential in further reducing GHGs. Sophisticated technologies, such as precision agriculture and the integration of renewable energy sources, can concurrently mitigate emissions and augment agricultural output. Conservation agriculture and agroforestry, among other sustainable agricultural practices, have the potential to facilitate emission reduction and enhance environmental stewardship. The paper emphasises the significance of financial incentives and policy frameworks that are conducive to the adoption of sustainable technologies and practices. This exhaustive evaluation provides a strategic plan for the agriculture industry to become more environmentally conscious and sustainable. Agriculture can significantly contribute to climate change mitigation and the promotion of a sustainable future by adopting a comprehensive approach that incorporates policy changes, technological advancements, and technological innovations.

Life cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions of typical sewage sludge incineration treatment route based on two case studies in China.

The rapidly increasing amount of municipal sewage sludge generated in China necessitates a thorough examination and evaluation of available treatment options. In recent years, thermal-drying and incineration technology has gained popularity, however, it may lead to significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Nevertheless, the differences in boundary conditions and technological characteristic across various cases may affect emission levels significantly. Therefore, this study utilizes a life cycle assessment to estimate the GHG emissions associated with two typical sludge incineration routes in China: direct thermal-drying combined with coal co-incineration incinerator in Case 1 and indirect thermal-drying and self-sustain combustion in Case 2. The entire treatment processes, containing different functional units, were comprehensively investigated. The results demonstrate that Case 1 and Case 2 produce 1133.33 and 350.89 kg CO2-eq/tDS (sludge dry solid) of GHG emissions, respectively. In Case 1, coal co-incineration produces 828.63 kg CO2-eq/tDS of GHG emissions, accounting for 73.1% of the total GHG emissions. Moreover, the exhaust gas treatment is a significant GHG emission source, accounting for 9.2% and 16.9% of the total GHG emissions in Case 1 and Case 2, respectively. Additionally, the sludge thickening and dewatering unit in Case 2 produces 213.75 kg CO2-eq/tDS of GHG emissions, accounting for 60.9% of the total GHG emissions. Analysis of energy flow and heat balance characteristics indicate that the indirect heat transfer method used in thermal-drying leads to significant heat loss, which limits heat recovery potential and hinders GHG emission reduction. This study proposed a scenario case based on Case 2, addressing the issues with the improvement of heat transfer process and reduction of electricity consumption, potentially reducing GHG emissions by 8.8%. Additionally, applying an exhaust gas heat recovery system could further offset up to 22.8% of the total GHG emission.

Towards low carbon society in Iskandar Malaysia: Implementation and feasibility of community organic waste composting.

Rapid population growth and urbanisation have generated large amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) in many cities. Up to 40-60% of Malaysia's MSW is reported to be food waste where such waste is highly putrescible and can cause bad odour and public health issue if its disposal is delayed. In this study, the implementation of community composting in a village within Iskandar Malaysia is presented as a case study to showcase effective MSW management and mitigation of GHG emission. The selected village, Felda Taib Andak (FTA), is located within a palm oil plantation and a crude palm oil processing mill. This project showcases a community-composting prototype to compost food and oil palm wastes into high quality compost. The objective of this article is to highlight the economic and environment impacts of a community-based composting project to the key stakeholders in the community, including residents, oil palm plantation owners and palm oil mill operators by comparing three different scenarios, through a life cycle approach, in terms of the greenhouse gas emission and cost benefit analysis. First scenario is the baseline case, where all the domestic waste is sent to landfill site. In the second scenario, a small-scale centralised composting project was implemented. In the third scenario, the data obtained from Scenario 2 was used to do a projection on the GHG emission and costing analysis for a pilot-scale centralised composting plant. The study showed a reduction potential of 71.64% on GHG emission through the diversion of food waste from landfill, compost utilisation and significant revenue from the compost sale in Scenario 3. This thus provided better insight into the feasibility and desirability in implementing a pilot-scale centralised composting plant for a sub-urban community in Malaysia to achieve a low carbon and self-sustainable society, in terms of environment and economic aspects.

Environmental and economic analysis of the transformation of paper mill sludge treatment technologies in China.

Paper mill sludge (PMS) is featured with a high content of cellulose and hemicellulose, and using its characteristics to make paperboard can achieve a high-value utilization of PMS, which has attracted growing interest. In this study, currently prevalent landfill, incineration technologies (generating heat and electricity by incineration), and three paperboard technologies (medium density fiberboard, pulp board, and corrugated paper) were evaluated and compared via life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methods. LCA results show that the PMS-to-pulp board outperforms others with an energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER) value of - 2.86 × 10-8, while the landfill exhibits the highest overall environmental impact with an ECER value of 4.80 × 10-9. LCC results reveal that the PMS-to-pulp board delivers the highest economic profit with $257.357, while the landfill is the lowest with $ - 35.63. The PMS paperboard technologies are more economically friendly than the incineration technologies due to additional electricity/steam consumption during the PMS pre-drying process in incineration. In addition, different scenarios were set up to explore national GHG emission reduction potential by increasing paperboard technologies application rate and reducing the proportion of landfill and incineration. The scenario analysis suggests that replacing 90% of landfill and incineration ratio with PMS paperboard technologies could tremendously improve the overall emission reduction performance with - 9.08 × 1010 kg CO2 eq. This result indicates that the PMS treatment technology transformation has a significant favorable impact on the achievement of the "carbon neutrality" target.

Estimation of greenhouse gas emissions from Iran's gas flaring by using satellite data and combustion equations.

In addition to the waste of resources and economic losses, environmental damage by gas flaring is widespread and significant. Since flaring the associated gas gives no added value in exchange for its pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it could be identified as a top priority for mitigation. Iran is the third gas flaring country after Russia and Iraq among those facing this issue, and is responsible for 12.1% of the world's gas flaring. While the necessity of developing a method for the precise estimation of flaring GHG emissions is clear, especially for evaluating the result of countries' efforts to meet their nationally determined contribution target, there are huge uncertainties and discrepancies in the values of emission factors among various data sources due to the lack of actual measurements of the volume and diversity of the composition of flare gas. This study aimed to fill the gap in providing authentic data on Iran's gas flaring GHG and air pollutant emissions by developing a model based on satellite data on flare volumes, gas compositions, and combustion equations. Our results revealed that based on 2021 data on flaring volume, Iranian gas flares are emitting approximately 50 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere annually, which could be reduced to 43 by only enhancing the flares' efficiency. It accounted for 5.5%-6% of the total GHG emissions of the country. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2023;19:735-748. © 2022 SETAC.