Marco Segreto

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

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...

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...

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-...

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...

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...

Two in-field campaigns have been carried out in Calabria region, Southern Italy, aimed at characterizing the release of volatile hydrocarbons (VOCs) from exhausted dumps. The former experiment was conducted at two landfills (San Giovanni in Fiore-SGF and San Martino di Finita-SMF), while the latter was performed at one only site (SGF). Volatile hyd...