Giuseppe Genon

• Polytechnic University of Turin

Nowadays, when the energy, industry and transport sectors are adapting to climate change and need to reduce their environmental impact, it is vital that the optimal solutions are found for individual countries and their different circumstances. Territories, which have a hydrocarbon deficit, should use non-conventional energy sources while the count...

Among the solutions for the achievement of environmental sustainability in the energy sector, district heating (DH) with combined heat and power (CHP) systems is increasingly being used. The Italian city of Turin is in a leading position in this field, having one of the largest DH networks in Europe. The aim of this work is the analysis of a furthe...

The air quality in metropolitan areas of Russia and Italy, although with different distribution and intensity, raises similar concerns for the respective public authorities about vehicle emissions, as well as about the stagnation of toxic pollutants in urban areas. This article discusses some typical situations in both these countries. In order to...

Urban water cycle, managing water supply, distribution, potabilization and wastewater treatment, comprehensively involve a considerable consumption of chemicals and energy. This study proposes an overview of the factors contributing to the environmental impact of Water Treatment (WT) process. The approach is based on the evaluation of Carbon Footpr...

The presence of residual nitrogen loads in treated wastewater may cause eutrophication in receiving water bodies. Nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is commonly based on nitrification–denitrification (NdN). This study presents a novel and practical assessment tool which uses mass balances to evaluate the efficiencies of the NdN...

Predictability of any full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) model is highly dependent on availability of sufficient influent data. Considering the fact that realistic data collection and further analysis of collected samples from influent of WWTP are expensive and time-consuming processes, application of available techniques for analyzing, c...

In the last year anaerobic digestion have become widespread throughout Europe, since anaerobic digestion provides the possibility to recover energy from the produced biogas from different natural materials. Among the factor that are influencing on the mass transfer in each biological step of anaerobic digestion, both the composition and the quality...

Waste activated sludge (WAS) contains various organic and inorganic substances that should be treated for a safe disposal. Anaerobic digestion is the most widely accepted method for stabilizing WAS. This work presents preliminary results concerning the technical and economic feasibility of alkali and hybrid thermo-alkali pretreatments for the impro...

This study presents a procedure, called EICS (Enterprise IPPC Compatibility Study) aimed at evaluating, by means of the calculation of three indexes, the compliance of the processes performed in an industrial plant with the guidelines provided by BREFs (BAT References) Documents. In fact, according to European Directive 2010/75/EU (concerning the I...

The goal of making the urban environment safer amid increasing human impact adds to the importance of district heating management. The article outlines the results of a study into the problem of improving the urban environment by implementing two innovative solutions. Technological innovations imply the introduction of modern sustainable tools of r...

If we consider the desirability of reducing fossil fuel consumption, together with the increasing production of combustible solid wastes, there is clearly a need for waste treatment systems which achieve both volume reduction and energy recovery. Direct incineration method is one such system. The aim of this work was to analyze the municipal solid...

While the demand for energy in Italy continues to increase, the European Union Directive 2009/28/EC has set a goal of obtaining 20 % of all energy from renewable sources by 2020. It is required both for efficient energy utilization and the development of renewable energy plants, including biomass. In this context, we consider the use of residues fr...

The requirement of energy in different human activities is continuously increasing; from the energetic production, chiefly by thermal systems, important and worrying environmental problems are generated: there are concerns about climate change, local air quality worsening, exhaustion of resources and land use change. To limit these negative aspects...

The paper examines, under specific local situation of planning of innovative solutions for municipal solid waste treatment, the results obtained from a technical, economic and environmental comparison between two different scenarios for waste management: the first scenario foresees the gasification of the residual waste after separate collection an...

The aim of this paper is to examine the Po River water quality in a small stretch in Piedmont (northern Italy). In this stretch a large pollution load, derived from the wastewater treatment plant of Torino area (more than 2 million inhabitants), is discharged and diluted in the water. In this study this load has been quantified and modeled in order...

In order to improve the air quality in some very critical areas in Europe, it is required to limit the contaminant flux coming from different sources (thermal and industrial plants, transport systems, cars, and other technological apparatus). This limitation in many cases corresponds to important investment costs, and normally to a substantial incr...

The right individuation of the more convenient solution for final treatment and destination of sewage sludge deriving from wastewater plants, normally after anaerobic digestion process, is a very interesting problem, in accounting of urgent needs for acceptable solutions. The produced sludge, primarily after thermal drying, can be sent to energetic...

Given the desirability of reducing fossil fuel consumption, together with the increasing production of combustible solid wastes, there is clearly a need for waste treatment systems that achieve both volume reduction and energy recovery. Direct incineration method is one such system. The aim of this work was to analyze the municipal solid waste inci...

The European Union Directive 2009/28/EC (European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources and amending and subsequently repealing directives 2001/77/EC and 2003/30/EC, Directive 2009/28/EC) establishes a common framework for the use of energy from renewable sources in order to redu...

The right individuation of a more convenient solution for the final treatment and destination of sewage sludge is a very interesting problem, in account of the urgent need for acceptable solutions. In this work we examined, both from a technological and from an environmental point of view, the thermal solutions (firstly the direct combustion in inc...

There has been a great deal of attention given to the necessity to improve innovative systems of energy recovery and this, together with a positive trend in the increase of waste, has lead to a need to consider systems of the disposal and treatment of waste that enable the reduction of both volumes and energy and, if possible, a recovery of materia...

Different configurations for energetic production (only electric and cogenerative) assume a different significance in connection with the different considered criteria. From an economic point of view, in many instances (in particular in the case of the use of a renewable source as fuel), only the electric configuration results are more convenient....

The promotion of renewable energy is mainly driven by the perspective of its production, in order to satisfy the local energy requirements and to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. However, the final choice about the real acceptability of a biomass plant must take into account different aspects; from one side the benefits in terms of limitation o...

The treatment of municipal or industrial wastewaters generates primary and secondary sludge that in medium and large wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are stabilized by means of anaerobic digestion (AD) processes. Due to several causes like the increasingly cogent European and national laws concerning the quality of sludge after stabilization, th...

For the final treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW), thermal disposal by incineration is the dominant technology to obtain energy from the material. In recent years, pyrolisis and gasification technologies have emerged, with the aim to increase energy output and to reduce environmental impact. While biomass pyrolisis and gasification are well kn...

In Italy and many European countries, energy production from biomass is encouraged by strong economic subsidies so that biomass energy plants are getting large diffusion. Nevertheless, it is necessary to define the environmental compatibility taking into account global parameters as well as environmental impacts at regional and local scales coming...

The wastewater treatment plant utilized in the metropolitan area of Turin is connected to the Po river near the town, in an area that has been considered very critical for potential eutrophication phenomena. This fact led to the requirement of very high nitrogen removal performances for the plant; with this purpose an examination of water treatment...

In order to determine the optimal final destination of municipal solid waste, it is necessary to consider both monetary costs and environmental externalities, such as carbon balance and GHG production, as well as the local availability of waste-processing industrial infrastructure. In order to develop a strategy for the selection of the optimal was...

The paper summarises the main results obtained from two extensive applications of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to the integrated municipal solid waste management systems of Torino and Cuneo Districts in northern Italy. Scenarios with substantial differences in terms of amount of waste, percentage of separate collection and options for the disposal o...

Given the booming of bioenergy plants under construction in Piedmont, in Northern Italy, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used in order to assist public decision-makers during the evaluation of new bioenergy projects. Local administrators are in fact worried that public incentives granted to bioenergy producers, regardless of the overall environment...

Climate change is the primary worldwide issue of the twenty-first century, as it threatens not only natural ecosystems but many national economies as well. Since the major contributor to climate change is the emission of greenhouse gases, switching to renewable and clean sources of energy production would result in the most immediate benefit. And o...

In consideration of local critical aspects in opposition to overall environmental benefits (decrease of GHG generation), the aim of this work is to verify the local acceptability from the point of view of air quality of the territory in question for a biomass plant. The plant to be realized in a small town located in Piedmont, Northern Italy, will...

With the aim to study the fundamental processes of MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) gasification scheme and to obtain a comparison with existing thermal utilization schemes, an useful model was realized by using the tools of energy and mass balances, and of chemical homogeneous gas equilibrium (as concerns the residual solid, it was assumed that it is c...

Bottom ashes (BA) obtained from a municipal solid waste incineration plant, have shown different pH and lead concentrations in leachate for different lines. In order to explain this behaviour, combustion tests were performed concerning the lines and the effect of the type of wastes. The BA obtained from the same waste has shown the same raw chemica...

The aim of this paper is to examine the Po river quality in a small stretch between two stations in Piedmont in the north of Italy. In this stretch a large pollution load is introduced and diluted in the fluent water of the river. The load has been quantified and about it we performed mass balances and modeling in order to understand the entity, th...

In Italy and many European countries energy production from biomass is encouraged by strong economic subsidies so that biomass energy plants are getting large diffusion. Nevertheless, it is necessary to define the environmental compatibility as well as technological and economic issues dealing with the emerging renewable energy scenario. This evalu...

This work was aimed at evaluating the feasibility of a remediation treatment performed by means of a supercritical carbon dioxide extraction on a sandy soil recently contaminated by light polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.The soil utilized in this study was artificially contaminated by naphthalene and anthracene. The artificial contamination process...

District heating (DH) systems, together with combined heat and power (CHP) plants, have been increasing both in number and interest over the last decade, but the environmental improvements are still controversial, because although there is usually a reduction in CO2 emissions, a positive effect concerning other pollutants is not always certain. A l...

In this paper, starting from previous works, further analyses on district heating cogeneration systems are proposed and particular attention is given to the NOx pollutant. In addition to the mean yearly concentrations, the hourly limit values for the protection of human health are also taken into account: the 18th maximum hourly concentration is co...

The increasing diffusion of small-scale energy systems within the distributed generation (DG) paradigm is raising the need for studying the environmental impact due to the different DG solutions in order to assess their sustainability. Addressing the environmental impact calls for building specific models for studying both local and global emission...

Within air quality management, one of the most important emission factors that should be known is PM10 (exhaust and non-exhaust flows) coming from traffic. The existing data and models produce very variable emission factors, also according to climate, sanding conditions, road material; thereby, a more general approach, based on the use of traffic t...

RDF, the high calorific value fraction of MSW obtained by conventional separation systems, can be employed in technological plants (mainly cement kilns) in order to obtain a useful energy recovery. It is interesting and important to evaluate this possibility within the general framework of waste-to-energy solutions. The solution must be assessed on...

The performance of a cyclic reactor was examined using a kinetic model allowing for inhibition by the metabolic product of the growth of microorganisms and production coupled with their growth and maintenance. The reactor's stability field was investigated through a search for cyclically stable solutions giving Sf ≠ O and Xf ≠ O. The productivity p...

The situation of air pollution due to nitrogen oxides in an urban area of North Italy has been evaluated starting from the definition of emission scenario calculated on the basis of specific localisation of emitting sources, their working regime and emission factors. Afterwards, by using specific atmospheric models suitable to the different sources...

It is possible to obtain a fraction of high calorific value, indicated as RDF (residue-derived-fuel) from municipal solid wastes using conventional separation systems. Two different solutions can be considered for utilisation; that is the use in technological plants (mainly cement kilns) or direct incineration. These two alternatives must be evalua...

The environmental sustainability of technological plants, which is a fundamental requirement for territorial planning, needs the development of different widening moments. First, of all it is necessary to consider the plant as a potential source of pollutant emissions and to verify that the best technologies have been used to limit these fluxes, ta...

The introduction and distribution of transport activities, energy infrastructures and technological plants throughout the territory are operations that must be conducted taking into consideration some constraints or objectives, and that of respecting environmental quality and compatibility seems to be increasingly more important, in particular with...

European directive 96/61/CE concerning integrated pollution prevention and control was completely received in Italy at the beginning of 2005 by D.Lgs. 59/2005. The contents of the directive are now widely applied within the authorization procedure of many industrial activities in Italy, such as pulp and paper production, cement factories, foundries...

The ECOSENSE software has been created and applied as part of the European long term project called ExternE, a research program devoted to the assessment of external costs due to electricity production. The ECOSENSE model starts from the emission rates of a facility, calculates the yearly mean concentrations of the pollutants at the ground level on...

The ExternE project is a research program of the European Commission devoted to the assessment of the external costs associated to airborne pollution. The ExternE methodology individuates the emission rates, calculates the year mean concentrations of the pollutants at the ground level on the basis of atmospheric dispersion models (e.g. AERMOD) and...

The study of the transport mechanisms connected to solid-liquid interactions is fundamental in the determination of the extension of the pollution of a site and in the evaluation of the best remediation process to be applied. The sorption of hydrophobic ionizable organic contaminants from the groundwaters is supervised not only by the physico-chemi...

The ExternE project is a research program of the European Commission devoted to the assessment of the external costs associated to electricity production and transport. The ECOSENSE model was developed within this project in order to support the assessment of priority impacts resulting from the exposure to airborne pollutants and to harmonize and s...

Biogas production is characteristic of municipal solid waste landfills. A knowledge of the trend of this production allows an exploitation of this energy source. The here presented model is more accurate than those that already exist as it takes the temperature variation in time and depth and the landfill settlement into account. The obtained model...

This article describes some laboratory tests performed on each kind of sludge located in an industrial wastes landfill. Measured physical properties are: field capacity, hydraulic permeability, saturation water content, effective porosity and particle-size distribution. The laboratory apparatus is described; the obtained results are analyzed to poi...

Within a urban context, the most important pollutants that should be studied and reduced in order to ensure the sustainability of the metropolitan environment are NO x and PM 10 . While the emission factors for NO x are well known for all the sources, the PM emissions from traffic are of two types, exhaust and non-exhaust. The latter type of emissi...