Francesco Petracchini

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute for Atmospheric Pollution IIA

In this study, a comprehensive examination, both theoretically and practically, is undertaken on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning algorithms (MARL). The investigation is situated within the context of real adaptive traffic signal control (ATSC) scenarios, with the primary objective being to validate the algorithms theoretical framework and evalua...

The implementation of the circular economy and green energy transition for the treatment of agricultural waste into bioenergy presents greater challenges in mountainous and rural areas. The integration of rural-farming plant (tomato plant residue, TR; and cacao pod husk, CPH) and animal-based biomass waste (deer manure, M) with an anaerobic digesti...

Brake wear emission is a significant contributor to vehicle-related particulate matter, especially in areas with high traffic density and braking frequency. Only recently, non-exhaust emissions from car brake wear have been regulated under Euro 7 regulation, which introduces emission limits for both brake and tires. It also introduces a standard br...

Small islands are recognised for their vulnerability to climate change. In this context, mitigation and adaptation policies are needed but ecological transition must be based on data. This study aims at assessing the level of sustainability reached by 26 of the Italian inhabited small islands, collecting and analysing data and initiatives on energy...

In this study, we present a statistical forecasting framework and assess its efficacy using a range of established machine learning algorithms for predicting Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations in the Arctic, specifically in Pallas (FI), Reykjavik (IS), and Tromso (NO). Our framework leverages historical ground measurements and 24 h predictions...

In this study, we present a statistical forecasting framework and assess its efficacy using a range of established machine learning algorithms for predicting Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations in the Arctic, specifically in Pallas (FI), Reykjavik (IS), and Tromso (NO). Our framework leverages historical ground measures and 24-hour predictions f...

Wastewater treatment plants are known to be relevant input sources of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the aquatic environment. This study aimed to investigate the occurrence, fate, and seasonal variability of twenty-five PFAS in four municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP A, B, C, and D) surrounding the city of Milan (Northern, I...

Manure production is currently growing with the demand of meat products. Manure is a nutrient-rich biomass containing carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous compounds which can at the same time be useful as fertilizing agents and harmful as pollutants in large quantities. Nitrogen and phosphorous can pollute surface and groundwater, leading to al...

This study was investigated biohydrogen production on the effects of different ratio of food waste to seed digestate and pH value from co-digestion process in anaerobic reactor. The seed digestate was mixture of cattle manure 45%, corn silage 25%, chicken manure 15%, and olive pomace 15% which was collected from the biogas plant in central Italy. I...

While environmental benefits of biofuels in general are well known, the impact of liquefaction and carbon capture to the biomethane production chains are yet to be explored. Hence, a well-to-wheels (WtW) analysis of liquified biomethane (bio-LNG, or LBM) production chains was performed; Italy was chosen as case study, having more than 25% of EU met...

Clean- and high-value recovery and reuse of the residue of biohydrogen production (biohydrogen slurry) is an urgent problem to be solved. In this study, sodium alginate (SA) gel was used to concentrate nutrients quickly in situ from biohydrogen slurry, which was prepared into gel microspheres (GMs), just like “capsule.” The immobilization and relea...

In the framework of the Italian Special Network for Mercury (ISNM) “Reti Speciali”, a sampling campaign to monitor atmospheric mercury (Hg) was carried out at Monte Sant’Angelo (MSA). This is a coastal monitoring station in the Apulia region, representative of the Southern Adriatic area, within the Mediterranean basin. This work presents continuous...

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is an attractive straw resource treatment technology as it can improve the utilization efficiency of straw resource. Raw straw materials contain complex polymers, so some enhancements are needed to achieve better biodegradability. The addition of various additives has become an effective method to improve the AD efficiency,...

Adaptive traffic signal control (ATSC) in urban traffic networks poses a challenging task due to the complicated dynamics arising in traffic systems. In recent years, several approaches based on multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MARL) have been studied experimentally. These approaches propose distributed techniques in which each signalized i...

Pretreatment of biomass helps to enhance reducing sugar yield from biomass during enzyme hydrolysis tests. Ultrafine grinding was applied to pretreat corncob. The effect of affecting factors including milling time, initial particle size and ball to power weight on the reducing sugar yield from corncob was investigated firstly. And then, an GM(1,N)...

This study reviews the recent advances and innovations in the application of additives to improve biomethane and biohydrogen production. Biochar, nanostructured materials, novel biopolymers, zeolites, and clays are described in terms of chemical composition, properties and impact on anaerobic digestion, dark fermentation, and photofermentation. The...

This study aims to evaluate and quantify the environmental, health, and economic benefits due to the penetration of electric vehicles in the fleet composition by replacing conventional vehicles in an urban area. This study has been performed for the city of Turin, where road transport represents one of the main primary emission sources. Air polluti...

In this work, an untargeted approach based on ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS/MS) was employed for the analysis of contaminants in surface water samples, possibly deriving from an ineffective removal by wastewater treatment plants or illicit release. First, solid-phase ext...

The recycling of plastic waste is undergoing fast growth due to environmental, health and economic issues, and several blends of post-consumer and post-industrial polymeric materials have been characterized in recent years. However, most of these researches have focused on plastic containers and packaging, neglecting hard plastic waste. This study...

The insecticidal ingredient in a biogas solution being fully utilized by cation exchange resin to produce slow-release insecticide is of great social value. In this work, the feasibility of ammonia nitrogen in a biogas slurry loaded on resin as a slow-release insecticide was evaluated by studying the effect of adsorption and the slow release of amm...

Adaptive traffic signal control (ATSC) in urban traffic networks poses a challenging task due to the complicated dynamics arising in traffic systems. In recent years, several approaches based on multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MARL) have been studied experimentally. These approaches propose distributed techniques in which each signalized i...

In this work we theoretically and experimentally analyze Multi-Agent Advantage Actor-Critic (MA2C) and Independent Advantage Actor-Critic (IA2C), two recently proposed multi-agent reinforcement learning methods that can be applied to control traffic signals in urban areas. The two methods differ in their use of a reward calculated locally or global...

This study explored the interrelationship between nano-TiO2 addition and photo-fermentative hydrogen production (PFHP) of corn straw. The maximum cumulative hydrogen volume (CHV) was up to 688.8 mL under the optimal photo-fermentative process conditions with nano-TiO2 addition of 300 mg/L. Initial pH and interaction between substrate concentration...

The present study focuses on the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN or ConvNet) to classify a multi-seasonal dataset of Sentinel-2 images to discriminate four grassland habitats in the “Murgia Alta” protected site. To this end, we compared two approaches differing only by the first layer machinery, which, in one case, is instantiated as a fu...

Perennial woody crops could have a positive impact on carbon balance, absorbing carbon during growing season and storing it for several years, whereas annual crops do not have this particular effect. Usually, techniques for GHG (greenhouse gases) flux measurements have limited spatial representativeness, with some difficulties to extend leaf measur...

Water scrubbing is a mature and efficient family of methodologies that is already widespread due to its simplicity and generally low costs. This chapter reviews the state of the art of the most common water scrubbing solutions applied to biogas upgrading, focusing on the main advantages (such as low methane loss, energy consumption, and maintenance...

Social acceptance has proven to be a significant barrier in the implementation of renewable energy systems (hereinafter "RES"). While a general acceptance of RES is high, low local acceptance has hindered the development of renewable energy projects (hereinafter "REP"). This study assesses the determinants of local and general social acceptance of...

The smaller islands are isolated systems that can become the ideal laboratory to face the most urgent and important environmental challenges over the world. It is possible to apply innovative models in the field of energy, the water cycle and waste. This challenge looks at the protection of the natural and landscape resources of the Italian and Med...

“MobilitAria 2020” è lo studio, annuale, di Kyoto Club e Istituto sull’Inquinamento Atmosferico del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-IIA). Obiettivo è delineare un quadro sull'andamento della qualità dell'aria e delle politiche di mobilità urbana nelle 14 principali città e aree metropolitane italiane nel periodo 2019-2020. Dalla nuova ediz...

Despite a connection between road traffic and air pollution has been clearly identified, few integrated analyses on air quality and mobility policies are currently available worldwide. Aim of this work is to build a framework for the evaluation of the impact of mobility policies on air quality in 14 major Italian cities, on a long-time scale (2006-...

MobilitAria 2019 is the second report produced by the Kyoto Club Sustainable Mobility work group and by the experts of CNR-IIA (National Research Council, Institute for Atmospheric Pollution) with an unprecedented collaboration with OPMUS, ISFORT's Sustainable Urban Mobility Policies Observatory. The report outlines an overall picture of air qualit...

The objective of this study is to assess and determine the necessary quantitative values of energy consumption from RES by energy sector (electricity, transport, residential, agriculture and industrial sector) in order to achieve consumption of a planned quantity of energy from RES in future years (2030 and 2050). A Long Energy Action Planning mode...

The goal of the study will be to inventory biomass wood power plants as a first essential step for all related planning efforts to implement the biomass strategy for reduction of fossil sources in energy production. This inventory also represents a first step toward sustainable energy policies and renewable integrated energy vision since informatio...

This study reports the concentration level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including siloxanes in the biogas produced from sewage sludge in the municipality of Milan, Northern Italy. The obtained biogas was upgraded to biomethane in a pilot scale vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) plant based on activated carbon and zeolite 13X. The produced biomet...

This study reports a monitoring campaign of biomethane production from sewage sludge at industrial scale, conducted from December 2016 to March 2017. The considered case study is focused on the municipality of Milan, Northern Italy. Biomethane was produced from the biogas upgrading in a pilot scale vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) plant based on activ...

This survey reports the emission rate estimates of the main greenhouse gases (GHG), namely CO2, CH4 and N2O, according to several case studies conducted over the world. Direct emissions of gaseous pollutants are then discussed, with a focus on nitrogen oxides (NOx); evidences of the importance of suitable biomass and digestate storages are also rep...

In this study we report a case study for a small scale anaerobic digester to be located in Calabria, Southern Italy. The research includes technical, economic and environmental analysis for the specific case study. The plant will be able to process food waste for 10,000-30,000 inhabitants, corresponding to a small town or a district of a city.With...

This survey reports the social acceptance of several independent renewable energy projects based on bioenergy (biogas, biomass combustion, gasification) along EU. The main factors affecting the trust of the local community are identified and classified, in order to obtain a general guidelines for improving local acceptance of bioenergy plants.

This study assesses the potential forestry biomass availability, energy potential and transport infrastructure using multi criteria analysis and geographic information system approaches (GIS map services). For this reason in the present project the Forest Management Plans of all the municipalities in Latium were collected and examined. Forest Manag...

Legambiente e CNR-IIA presentano il primo rapporto dell’Osservatorio sulle isole minori: le sfide italiane e le buone pratiche dal mondo. Numeri e storie da ogni isola italiana: dall’energia pulita, oggi ancora bloccata, alla gestione dei rifiuti e della raccolta differenziata ferma a una media del 6%; poi acqua e depurazione, purtroppo assenti in...

Drying is a critical point for the exploitation of biomass for energy production. High moisture content negatively affects the efficiency of power generation in combustion and gasification systems. Different types of dryers are available however; it is known that rotary dryers have low cost of maintenance and consume 15% and 30% less in terms of sp...

MobilitAria 2019, è il secondo rapporto realizzato dal gruppo di lavoro “Mobilità sostenibile” di Kyoto Club e dagli esperti di CNR-IIA (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto sull’Inquinamento Atmosferico) con una inedita collaborazione con OPMUS, l’Osservatorio Politiche Mobilità Urbana Sostenibile di ISFORT. Il rapporto delinea un quadro c...

S.I.Po.Tra. è un’associazione indipendente e senza fini di lucro, costituita nel 2013 per iniziativa di un gruppo di professori universitari, dirigenti pubblici, professionisti e manager accomunati da un forte impegno civile e dalla convinzione della centralità del sistema dei trasporti per lo sviluppo economico e sociale; e al tempo stesso convint...

The use of asbestos was banned because of the carcinogenic properties of its fibres, but asbestos-containing wastes are still present in great amounts. They are currently landfilled or encapsulated with resins, but these approaches led to the release of fibres in the environment. Hence, the destruction of asbestos fibres is now regarded as a prefer...

The social acceptance of biogas is often hampered by environmental and health concerns. In this study, the current knowledge about the impact of biogas technology is presented and discussed. The survey reports the emission rate estimates of the main greenhouse gases (GHG), namely CO2, CH4 and N2O, according to several case studies conducted over th...

This study investigates the conversion of sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) into biomethane for automotive fuel or grid injection. A prototype plant was monitored in Northern Italy, based on vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) on synthetic zeolite 13×: this biogas upgrading method is similar to pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and comm...

In this paper we show the developing and the applications of a remotely controlled terrestrial vehicle (or Unmanned Ground Vehicles—UGV) provided with an integrated sensory system for environmental monitoring. The developed system is aimed to monitor some of the key air pollutants and harmful compounds, usable in contaminated sites at high risk to...

Il rapporto MobilitAria 2018 ha l’ambizione di realizzare un quadro complessivo dell’andamento della qualità dell’aria e della mobilità urbana nelle principali 14 città italiane nel decennio 2006- 2016. Lo studio è stato realizzato da un gruppo di esperti del CNR-IIA (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto sull’Inquinamento Atmosferico) e di...

Particulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), n-alkanes, and gaseous pollutants were collected from the harbor and the urban area of Crotone (Southern Italy) in October 2015. The atmospheric concentrations of organic substances associated to PM10 were determined daily, while gaseous pollutants (BTEX, O3, SO2, NOx, NO2, and NH3) were monitore...

An innovative two-stage AD system to treat food waste with cow manure is presented to address the problem of ammonia inhibition and improve the stability of methanogenic reactor. The liquid digestate recirculation in the first phase was adopted to enhance the hydrolysis rate and the solubilization of organic matter. A stable long-term run (80 days)...

Most QCM-based devices devoted to PM measurement use substrates of various kinds to collect and retain particles. The novelty of this work is the possibility to use an integrated microheater actuator to change the substrate collecting features during the particulate adsorption. In fact, this paper presents preliminary results about the exploitation...

Natural zeolites from tuffs were tested for tar removal, during woody biomass gasification. The following compounds were considered: benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, styrene, naphthalene, phenol, cresols and guaiacol. Two different methodologies have been tested: addition of tuffs in a wet scrubber (30 °C) and catalytic cracking (600 °C). W...

This paper reports the improvement obtained by natural zeolites for anaerobic digestion of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste and cattle manure. A full scale multi-stage reactor was used for the tests. A first dry stage was used for hydrolysis and acidogenesis, equipped with a leachate accumulation and recirculation unit. Leachate is the...

A vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) prototype plant wasdeveloped and tested, based on natural zeolites from tuffscontaining Chabazite. The regeneration procedure of naturalzeolites was optimized, and the operative pressure resulted tobe the most important parameter. The VSA prototype was fedfor 3 months with a real biogas, produced by agrozootechni-cal...

Landfills play an important role in urban society. Consequently, an accurate management and planning of such anthropic activities are essential to improve decision making eco-strategies. The application of remote sensing techniques may improve the monitoring of different environmental matrices and the assessment of both gas emission in the atmosphe...

Satellite imagery allows to estimate vegetation parameters related to large areas and to evaluate biogeochemical cycles and radiative energy transfer processes between soil/vegetation and atmosphere. Moreover, the spectral indices derived from remote sensed data can be used for biomass estimation. This paper focuses on the evaluation of above-groun...

The environmental influence of biomass burning for civil uses was investigated through the determination of several air toxicants in the town of Leonessa and its surroundings, in the mountain region of central Italy. Attention was focussed on PM10, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and regulated gaseous pollutants (nitrogen dioxide, ozone and...

il documento illustra le tecnologie di inertizzazione dell'amianto sviluppate

This work presents the study of tuff as an alternative material for CO2 capturing and removal by pressure swing adsorption techniques. Tuff represents an economic and environmentally sustainable alternative to commonly-used synthetic zeolites. The proposed methodology includes a laboratory characterization of the CO2 adsorption process under differ...

Nitrogen oxides (NO2 and NOx), ozone (O3), sulphur dioxide (SO2), benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) and ammonia (NH3) in ambient air were preliminarily assessed, by diffusive sampling technique, in the years 2010-2012 through four measurement campaigns in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang in NW China. This is a heavily industrialized a...

Air quality preliminary assessment was carried out in Pančevo. 8 two-week campaigns, one for each season, were carried out starting from August 2005 up to May 2006 by means of passive samplers for nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, ozone, ammonia, benzene, toluene, xylenes, and total non methanic hydrocarbons exposed in 35 sites. T...