Jiri Jaromir Klemeš

• Professor Dr-Habil
• Head of Department at Brno University of Technology - VUT Brno

This paper assesses various approaches that use captured greenhouse gases (GHG) as feedstocks for chemical synthesis. The analysis focuses mainly on the two most abundant anthropogenic GHG, such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ), as well, their conversion technologies to obtain methanol (MeOH), formic acid (FA) and dimethyl carbonate (D...

Transportation significantly contributes to carbon emissions, prompting the need for effective mitigation policies. This study addresses the knowledge gaps in assessing the effectiveness of transport carbon policies and offers the lack of a holistic comparative overview. The study used a model composed of a mixed-effects meta-regression and carbon...

CALL FOR PAPERS: The 9th International Conference on Low Carbon Asia 2023 is here again. The ICLCA'23 Conference is scheduled for Okayama, Japan between 17th - 18th October 2023. Mode: Hybrid. ICLCA, is a very unique Conference that Assembles diverse intellectuals from the academia, industries, world research centres, seasoned administrators an...

The water sector has been considered as the priority in implementing the Circular Economy (CE) in Kazakhstan, aiming to reduce anthropogenic pressure on the environment and promote efficient water resource use. Challenges have been rising significantly in the water sector in Kazakhstan, while tailor-made research on the CE in the water sector has n...

Globally, industrialisation and urbanisation have led to the generation of hazardous waste (HW). Sustainable hazardous waste management (HWM) is the need of the hour for a safe, clean, and eco-friendly environment and public health. The prominent waste management strategies should be aligned with circular economic models considering the economy, en...

Assessing the prospective climate preservation potential of novel, innovative, but immature chemical production techniques is limited by the high number of process synthesis options and the lack of reliable, high-throughput quantitative sustainability pre-screening methods. This study presents the sequential use of data-driven hybrid prediction (AN...

The valorisation of oil palm empty fruit bunch is challenging due to its poor surface functionalities, which require a comprehensive pre-treatment process. To ensure efficient valorisation of the agricultural waste, the biochar derived from empty fruit bunch is subjected to hydrothermal nitric acid pre-treatment to act as an adsorbent for sodium io...

Rapid population growth and urbanisation have accelerated waste generation, and effective waste management has become a major challenge worldwide. With advances in technology and management methods, waste management strategies have begun embracing digitalisation, leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, cloud/edge computing, mac...

The coordinated decision-making approach for considering sequential activities of the supply chain results in additional benefits by optimizing production, inventory, and distribution operations. Accordingly, this paper proposes a mixed integer linear mathematical model to optimize a multi-period production routing problem utilizing electric vehicl...

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) are recognized as promising bio-based flocculants for controlling harmful algal blooms (HABs). Due to the charge shielding effect in seawater and the strong mobility of algae cells, CNC can't effectively remove Phaeocystis globosa from seawater. To solve this problem, peroxymonosulfate (PMS) was used to enhance the coag...

Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) is a major waste produced by the palm oil industry. The incineration or random disposal of EFB has led to serious environmental pollution. This study evaluated the potential of hydrothermally post-treated EFB biochar as an adsorbent to remove sodium cations (Na⁺) from an aqueous environment. Physicochemical analysis...

A plate heat exchanger (PHE) is a modern, effective type of heat transfer equipment capable of increasing heat recuperation and energy efficiency. For PHEs, enhanced methods of heat transfer intensification can be further applied using the analysis and knowledge already available in the literature. A review of the main developments in the construct...

Biosurfactants have been found capable of replacing synthetic surfactants which include ongoing bioprospecting of biosurfactant-producing bacteria as well as process optimization for maximum biosurfactant production. In this study, five morphologically distinct actinomycete strains isolated from hydrocarbon-polluted soil collected from an oil spill...

The postsynthetic modification of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) has opened up a promising area to widen their water treatment application. However, their polycrystalline powdery state still restricts their widespread industrial-scale applications. Herein, the magnetization of UiO-66-NH2 is reported as a promising approach to facilitate the separa...

The increasing methane emissions from the upstream oil and gas sector deviates from the goals of the Paris Agreement on sustainable development and climate control. This paper reviews recent direct measurement results and technological advances in the upstream oil and gas sector, based on more than 100 sources published between 2018 and 2022. No co...

Recently nanobiochar (NB) has been getting more attention than bulk biochar due to its ultrafine particles, desired chemical composition, and negatively charged surface. These properties make NB a great nano-additive to improve the agro-environmental value of any conventional fertilizer. However, the production of smart organic fertilizer with the...

Water injection demand for oilfields varies greatly in different development periods. The topology and size of the water injection pipeline network should match the changing demand. Long-term benefits should be considered to avoid the frequent expansion of the network. This paper considers the water demand in multiple periods and develops an MINLP...

The motivation of the present study was a synthesis of the nanocomposites of [email protected]/Biochar to embed carbendazim (CBZ) pesticide inside its porous structures for smart spraying and cleaner production. [email protected]@ZnO/Biochar had the purpose of not only smart spraying to avoid releasing a large amount of CBZ into the groundwater but...

Industrial development poses significant challenges to water resource management, both in terms of quality and quantity. In response to these challenges, the concept of sustainable water use has been proposed as a means of addressing these issues. However, this concept is not yet widely adopted in developing countries, particularly in Kazakhstan. T...

CoFe2O4/Graphene Nanoribbons (GNRs) nanocomposite was successfully fabricated and utilised as an electrode active material for high-energy supercapacitor cells. Thanks to the outstanding physicochemical features of a graphene nanoribbon with excellent electrical conductivity and the synergistic effect with cobalt ferrite, as well as the pseudocapac...

The non-transparency of a centralised power system creates security issues in energy trading, and the inability of prosumers to participate in energy trading arose. Blockchain can be applied in distributed generation (DG) with its immutability, security, decentralised, transparency, anonymity, transactional data, and automation features to resolve...

Renewable energy systems play an important role in alleviating environmental pollution, and their characteristics, including low emissions and recyclability, are highly favourable. At present renewable energy can be costly and renewable energy systems have room for optimization, particularly systems which cater to remote and island areas. This pape...

A thermosyphon heat pipe (THP) involves a vacuum tube with a specific quantity of liquid. Due to its simplicity of design and structure, THP has many applications in heat recovery and renewable energy devices. Prior studies showed that using stable nanofluids can improve THPs' energy efficiency. In this evaluation, the effect of working fluid type,...

Owing to the oil diffusion, a mixed oil segment would inevitably form between two adjacent oil products, leading to economic loss and a reduction of oil product quality. Current works have inherent drawbacks, including computational inapplicability for long-distance pipelines by using numerical methods and unreasonable physical results by using con...

Plastic pollution is a serious sustainability issue facing the global community. Fragments of macroplastics and microplastics pollute terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, while nanoplastics can also degrade air quality. The recent COVID-19 pandemic also exacerbated the problem. Large-scale commercial use of plastics recycling technologies is hindere...

The process of steam condensation in the presence of non-condensing air inside channels of Plate Heat Exchanger (PHE) is investigated based on experimental data and the results of mathematical modelling. The model consists of a system of ordinary differential equations with nonlinear right parts, solved numerically on a computer. It describes the l...

This Virtual Special Issue (VSI) presents a selection of the presentation at the 24 th Conference of Process Integration , Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction (PRES'21), which was held as a hybrid (face2face + online) conference in Brno, Czech Republic, on the 31st October to the November 3, 2021. The main features...

Hydrogen applications range from an energy carrier to a feedstock producing bulk and other chemicals and as an essential reactant in various industrial applications. However, the sustainability of hydrogen production, storage and transport are neither unquestionable nor equal. Hydrogen is produced from natural gas, biogas, aluminium, acid gas, biom...

The natural gas liquefaction process occupies a considerable part of the energy consumption in the LNG industry chain, and efficient optimisation methods should be developed to improve the economic and environmental performances of this process. In this work, a new optimisation strategy based on the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm and b...

The accurate power generation forecast of multiple renewable energy sources is significant for the power scheduling of renewable energy systems. However, previous studies focused more on the prediction of a single energy source, ignoring the relationship among different energy sources, and failing to predict accurate power generation for all energy...

CO2 utilization can not only control greenhouse gas emissions but also provide renewable clean energy. CO2 utilization technology is an important technology to control carbon emissions. This work provides a review of CO2 utilization and emissions reduction technology which can provide important theory and a key technology for various applications e...

To improve the efficiency of photocatalytic oxidative degradation of antibiotic pollutants, it is essential to develop an efficient and stable photocatalyst. In this study, a polymer-assisted facile synthesis strategy is proposed for the polymorph-controlled α-Bi2O3/Bi2O2CO3 heterojunction retained at elevated calcination temperatures. The p-n hete...

Increasing energy usage efficiency requires enhanced heat energy recuperation between process streams in the industry and civic sector with waste heat utilization. The condensation of different vapours is the process encountered in many industrial applications. Increasing the heat recuperation in this process is possible with efficient heat transfe...

The thermophysical properties of refrigerating systems should be accurately understood for designing low-temperature refrigeration cycles of economic acceptance. The present work has tried to simplify this complicated procedure by proposing reliable and new correlative methods for determining thermodynamic and transport properties of four refrigera...

The most important raw material needed for food production is phosphorus (P), which cannot be replaced by other elements. P is listed as a Critical Raw Material (CRM) for the European Union (EU). It is an element essential for human nutrition and is used for fertiliser production. The key importance of P for human life is evidenced by the fact that...

Life cycle assessment modelling of multi-cycle recycling systems is challenging. There is still neither consensus on applying allocation approaches nor a one-size-fits-all solution. This study proposes an allocation approach embedded with the responsibility distribution of stakeholders rather than the standard approach, which is assessed based on s...

Composting is a biological process that converts organic waste into compost, an organic fertiliser. As a waste management technology, the use of composting in managing food waste is gaining more attention these days. In recent years, many studies have been done to analyse the research trend in solid waste management using bibliometric analysis, whi...

This chapter introduces Process Integration (PI). PI methodology dates back to the 1970s and was conceived and developed in response to the oil crisis during that period, which had caused fuel to become expensive and scarce. The first developments naturally occurred in the Heat Integration (HI) field and targeted energy efficiency and savings. HI p...

The application of boron nitride (BN) nanomaterials in various fields received extensive attention in the past decades, attributed to its extraordinary characteristics: high surface area, low density, excellent thermal stability, mechanical strength, bio-compatible, and excellent corrosion resistance and antioxidant. This article starts reviews the...

A polycarbonate copolymer was used to create a novel low-cost microfiltration membrane. Due to their antibacterial properties, carbon quantum dots and silver nanoparticles (CD-Ag NPs) have been synthesized and incorporated into a poly(acrylonitrile-styrene) membrane by the Creighton method. This work examined the membranes using Infrared Vibrationa...

Vehicle emissions have become one of the key pollution sources affecting air quality and human health in China's megacities. How to curb excess vehicle emissions has become a key pain point of urban air pollution prevention and control. This work tries to explore an effective integrated approach/framework to quantitatively assess the risk factors o...

Climate change is a significant long-term threat faced by humanity today. The urban energy transformation from a carbon-emissions-intensive environment to a carbon-emissions-free solution is vital to achieving carbon emissions neutrality. Future city planning shall include the carbon emissions neutrality concept for sustainable urban green energy d...

Today the most popular system of district heating systems is based on pre-insulated pipes arranged in parallel or twin-pipe configuration. One of the greatest difficulties with heat distribution through pipelines is thermal loss from the distribution. The most efficient solution to that problem is optimising the insulation wall thickness layer acco...

The reduction of the fossil fuels consumption is of great importance nowadays. The heating of residential apartments of domestic houses and hot water supply in the modern metapolicies arises challenges in application of modern technologies. The necessity for reliable regulation of temperatures inside the apartments requires quick-respond and accura...

Air quality issues still affect the quality of life for people in industrialised cities around the world. The investigations should include the identification of the sources of the pollution and its distribution in space and time. This work is the first attempt to perform identification of the sources of pollution in Ust-Kamenogorsk city in Kazakhs...

Process Integration (PI) methodology dates back to the 1970s and was conceived and developed to respond to the oil crisis of that period, which had caused fuel to become expensive and scarce. The first developments naturally occurred in the Heat Integration (HI) field and targeted energy efficiency and savings. The HI methodology still provides the...

Achieving savings in energy and water use, thereby counteracting global warming and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, has become a major technological, societal and political issue of significant strategic importance. Numerous studies have been carried out with the aim to improve the efficiency of energy generation and use whilst reducing the emis...

Microplastics (MPs) and SARS-CoV-2 interact due to their widespread presence in our environment and affect the virus' behaviour indoors and outdoors. Therefore, it is necessary to study the interaction between MPs and SARS-CoV-2. The environmental damage caused by MPs is increasing globally. Emerging pollutants may adversely affect organisms, espec...

Introduction to Process Integration Handbook

What is the Process Integration and its history

The growing disposable medical gown consumption due to the COVID-19 pandemic has driven tons of waste to landfills and posed plastic pollution. Investigating the pros and cons of biodegradable gowns over conventional counterparts can guide disposable medical gowns to be environmentally and socially sustainable. This work presents environmental and...

As one promising high-efficiency equipment, flat-plate heat pipes show an important influence on the thermal management of energy systems. This research experimentally investigates the effects of working fluids (acetone, ethanol, and 1.0 wt% Al2O3 water-based nanofluid), liquid filling ratios (30%, 45%, 60%, and 80%), and inclination angles (0°, 30...

Policymakers and officials worldwide are making more stringent environmental norms and waste disposal policies to encourage industries to move towards cleaner production. One of the main challenges that industries face moving towards cleaner production is the adoption of different strategies for optimising their resource utilisation and waste reduc...

Solar energy offers the potential to support the battery electric vehicles (BEV) charging station, which promotes sustainability and low carbon emission. In view of the emerging needs of solar energy-powered BEV charging stations, this review intends to provide a critical technological viewpoint and perspective on the research gaps, current and fut...

The applicability of a combined fuzzy best-worst method (FBWM) and geographic information system (GIS) was investigated to find the optimal location of a solar power plant site in Guilan province, which has a temperate and humid climate. Fifteen criteria were determined based on the guidelines and performance of photovoltaic (PV) systems and divide...

Hospital wastewater treatment is gaining attention in recent studies due to its complex nature. The performance of the sequencing batch reactor coupled with tube-settler was investigated for hospital wastewater treatment. The performance was evaluated regarding removing organic matter and nutrients (nitrate and phosphate). The phosphate was removed...

The results of mathematical modelling and experimental study of plate heat exchangers (PHEs) in steam-air mixture condensation are presented. The mathematical model is validated by test data for PHE in the industry and for five experimental samples with corrugation angles, 30°, 45°, and 60° and corrugation heights 5, 7.5 and 10 mm. With no limited...

The accurate prediction of natural gas consumption plays a central role in long-distance pipeline system production and transportation planning, and it becomes even more important during present political situation. The existing prediction methods for natural gas consumption barely consider spatial correlations and domain knowledge. As a result, th...

The district heating system (DHS) is an efficient way for heat supply in urban areas. The efficiency of the DHS is considerably increased with the modern developments of technology, introducing 4th and 5th generations of centralised DHS. The existing DHS in Ukraine needs energy-efficient modernisation, where the reduction of heat losses at building...

A sustainable circular economy could be generally achieved via process analysis and optimisation. The circular system or design has to be optimised based on sustainability (economically, environmentally and socially) rather than focus on the degree of circularity in the view that circular is not equivalent to sustainable. The articles that compose...

The rate of Biomedical waste generation increases exponentially during infectious diseases, such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which burst in December 2019 and spread worldwide in a very short time, causing over 6 M casualties worldwide till May 2022. As per the WHO guidelines, the facemask has been used by every person to prevent the infection of the S...

Circular Economy is a well-known concept to mitigate global resource depletion issues. The sustainability of a system is closely related to its environmental performance, which is directly linked to energy consumption. This work provides a circularity assessment tool by determining the minimum system energy requirements, according to the Energy Qua...

This article is Editorial related to the Research Topic entitled Combined water and heat integration in the process industries published in Frontiers in Chemical Engineering, section Computational Methods in Chemical Engineering. The details of the article are the following: Ahmetović E, Grossmann IE, Kravanja Z, Maréchal FMA, Klemeš JJ, Savule...

There is a dual perspective regarding agricultural materials. The first one is regarding the removal of certain chemical elements for specific applications, and the second one is regarding the recovery of certain elements to make them more appealing. The most appropriate use of agricultural and industrial waste materials demands the development of...

As the renewable energy sources (RES) continues to grow in power system due to emissions decarbonisation and sustainability policies, a fast and reliable connection between RES components and equipment is crucial to ensure quality power delivery. This review provides a detailed insight into the full potential in 6G for the acceleration of RES with...

Heat exchanger network synthesis is an essential optimisation tool for Process Integration, particularly in energy-intensive industries. Proper design or retrofit of heat exchanger network can enable energy conservation, efficiency improvement, and process debottlenecking. Many earlier pieces of research have focused on the impact of the network st...

The coal chemical industry is facing severe challenges in energy conservation and emission reduction. High-value utilisation of waste heat is an effective method to solve the problem. However, the bottleneck is the utilisation of surplus low-grade waste heat full of uncertainty, challenging in its scale configuration and stable operation. This rese...

Carbon emission neutralisation is the future target in many countries. Many sectors including the breeding industry, are contributing to achieve this target. Carbon emissions can be reduced by adjusting breeding and dietary structures. This study develops a Food-Carbon Emission Pinch Analysis tool for diet configuration optimisation to target possi...

Collision between particle and wall is common in granular two-phase flow. This study is helpful to optimise flow conveying system, reduce attrition between materials and devices, and improve development of economy. The collision between a single coarse particle (3 mm in diameter) and wall in a viscous media was investigated by Hertz-Mindlin no-slip...

Wastewater reuse is one of the most critical problems worldwide, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. In order to analyse wastewater reuse applications, chemical oxygen demand (COD) is an essential factor for tertiary treatment processes. This study aims to develop an algorithm to evaluate COD removal from low-strength wastewater (COD 70 mg/L)...

Research into biodiesel as a greener fuel alternative derived from renewable resources has been increased due to the depletion of fossil-fuel reserves, as well as growing environmental concerns. It is a cleaner alternative fuel that may be utilised in diesel engines without requiring any modifications to the engine. This document provides a synopsi...

The RESHeat (Renewable Energy System for Residential Building Heating and Electricity Production) system is a typical application of the utilisation of waste heat from sun-tracked Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) panels. This work introduces the integration of the PVT with the Underground Thermal Energy Storage (UTES) system, which consists of a non-insu...