Adisa Azapagic's research while affiliated with The University of Manchester and other places
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Publications (298)
Most of plastic packaging waste does not degrade over time, which can lead to harmful effects on aquatic life and humans, highlighting the need for packaging materials that are easily degradable. Poly(mandelic acid) (PMA) is a biodegradable polymer that has been proposed as an alternative to polystyrene for use in packaging. However, its potential...
Waste PVC is scarcely recycled due to its high chlorine content and its use in composite materials, which reduces the applicability of conventional waste treatment methods, including thermal, mechanical and chemical recycling. For this reason, alternative treatment options are being developed to increase the recyclability of waste PVC. This paper f...
Graphene oxide (GO)-enhanced membranes are being developed to solve major limitations in both reverse
osmosis (RO) and membrane distillation (MD) technologies, which include high electricity and thermal energy
consumption. This study performed, for the first time, a life cycle assessment to determine the effects of using
GO-enhanced membranes on th...
Forest residues, as cheap and abundant feedstock, can replace current fossil-energy sources, helping to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve energy security. Given 27 % of total lands covered with forests, Turkey has a remarkable potential of forest residues from harvesting and industrial activities. This paper thus focuses on evaluati...
Wastewater treatment plants can become a source of valuable resources, such as clean water, energy, fuels and nutrients and thus contribute to the sustainable development goals and a transition to a circular economy. This can be achieved by adopting advanced wastewater and sludge treatment techniques. However, these have to be evaluated on their su...
Modern food production systems are highly resource intensive and are contributing through unsustainable practices to the degradation of land and water resources, as well as ecosystem services, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and reduction in biodiversity. With the increased demand for food by the growing population and the dietary shifts to...
Moving industrial production to a more sustainable basis requires a step change in the efficiency of site steam and cogeneration systems, coupled with a switch away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. This paper presents the first step in the development of an optimization framework capable of identifying a roadmap to move utility system...
Water scarcity and the consequent increase of freshwater prices are a cause for concern in regions where shale gas is being extracted via hydraulic fracturing. Wastewater treatment methods aimed at reuse/recycle of fracking wastewater can help reduce water stress of the fracking process. Accordingly, this study assessed the catalytic performance an...
Negative emissions technologies (NETs) are expected to play a significant role in mitigating climate change. However, there are also concerns that a large scale deployment of NETs may cause various environmental impacts due to the use of land, water and energy resources. A number of studies have assessed the environmental performance of various NET...
Anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic wastes is recognised as a promising solution to reduce GHG emissions owing to its multiple functions, such as energy supply, waste treatment and production of organic fertiliser. Being the 7th largest country for agricultural production, Turkey produces large amounts of agricultural wastes and livestock manure, m...
This study presents a novel combination of microwave irradiation and structured zeolite/SiC foam catalyst to improve the methanol-to-hydrocarbons (MTH) process as well as its environmental sustainability. Accordingly, ZSM-5/SiC foam was studied under microwave irradiation at various reaction temperatures (400−550 °C) and space velocities (8 and 12...
Retailers and consumers are increasingly requesting information on the carbon footprints of products, including paints. This is putting considerable pressure on suppliers and manufacturers to provide carbon-relevant information. However, estimating the carbon footprint of paints is not a trivial task as it is affected by many parameters including t...
Soil salinization has become one of the major environmental and socioeconomic issues globally and this is expected to be exacerbated further with projected climatic change. Determining how climate change influences the dynamics of naturally-occurring soil salinization has scarcely been addressed due to highly complex processes influencing salinizat...
Offshore wind electricity is becoming an important source of renewable energy due to its global warming potential (GWP). However, the GWP can vary significantly, depending on many factors, including the capacity of the installation, distance from the shore, supporting structure and maintenance requirements. Currently, there is a lack of life cycle...
This paper combines process design and modelling with life cycle sustainability assessment to identify opportunities for improving the environmental and economic performance in the cheese industry. Considering both the production and consumption perspectives, the study considers first a range of improvement options in the cheese manufacturing proce...
A large portion of plastic produced each year is used to make single-use packaging and other short-lived consumer products that are discarded quickly, creating significant amounts of waste. It is important that such waste be managed appropriately in line with circular-economy principles. One option for managing plastic waste is chemical recycling v...
The circular economy (CE) literature has so far focused on the implementation of the CE philosophy in teaching and research at universities. However, studies on the implementation of CE principles for sustainable campus management are lacking. This chapter shows how the latter may be achieved using the University of Manchester as an illustrative ca...
Significance
Land degradation due to soil salinization has detrimental impacts on vegetation, crops, and human livelihoods, leading to a need for a methodologically consistent analysis of the variability of different aspects of salt-affected soils. However, previous studies on the soil salinity issue have been primarily spatial and localized, leavi...
Information on the scale of food waste, its sources, causes and associated environmental impacts is critical for devising food waste prevention strategies. A number of studies have focused on these issues, but there are still significant knowledge gaps, both in terms of the amount of food waste generated in various parts of the supply chain and the...
Biofuels are being promoted as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels as they could help to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the related climate change impact from transport. However, there are also concerns that their wider deployment could lead to unintended environmental consequences. Numerous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have...
Growing uncertainty in the future availability of freshwater sources has led to an increase in installations for
desalination of seawater. Reverse osmosis (RO), currently the most widely adopted technique, has caused
environmental concerns over the high associated greenhouse gas emissions and generation of large amounts of
chemicals-containing brin...
Current studies on the food-energy-water nexus do not capture effects on human health. This study presents a new methodology for assessing the environmental sustainability in the food-energy-water-health nexus on a life cycle basis. The environmental impacts, estimated through life cycle assessment, are used to determine a total impact on the nexus...
Spent coffee grounds (SCGs) have a potential to be used as a feedstock for higher value-added products, such as biodiesel. However, the environmental implications of the valorisation of SCGs are largely unknown. This study evaluates the life cycle environmental impacts of utilising SCGs for biodiesel production in comparison with the widely used di...
Municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerators require effective flue gas treatment (FGT) to meet stringent environmental regulations. However, this in turn generates additional environmental costs through the impacts of materials and energy used in the treatment – these impacts are currently scarcely known. Therefore, this study uses life cycle assessme...
Cement production is a highly energy-intensive process, contributing 7% to the global CO2 emissions. Over 80% of the energy used in cement production is consumed by the calcination process. This paper considers a novel solar thermal technology for calcination, to investigate if it could help mitigate the climate change and other environmental impac...
Sewage sludge handling is becoming a concern in Europe due to its increasing amount and the presence of contaminants, such as heavy metals and pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs). Currently, over 70% of sludge in Europe is treated thermally by incineration or used as fertilizer in agriculture. New thermo- chemical methods are under de...
Reducing inequality is essential for sustainable development, yet our understanding of its many dimensions and driving forces is still limited. Here we study the global distribution of 25 environmental burdens encompassing natural resources (water, materials and land use) and air emissions, all related to activities underpinning human welfare. We f...
Improving access to energy and water in remote communities is an important step towards sustainable development. However, integrated sustainability studies at the community or household scale are rare compared to industrial or national studies. Thus, this paper presents an integrated approach to the development and evaluation of energy and water su...
Access to clean water is one of the targets in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. However, millions of people are still without basic water services, predominantly in rural areas in developing nations. Previous studies have investigated the environmental impacts of water provision, but they mostly focused on large-scale urban systems. This paper...
The success of deploying energy and water technologies in remote communities in developing countries can be improved by considering their synergistic relationships and their social, economic and environmental implications. This paper first evaluates social implications of current energy and water supply in a prototypical remote community against fi...
Access to clean cooking fuels and technologies is essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in developing countries, to minimise human health and environmental impacts. This paper assesses for the first time the environmental sustainability of household cooking, focusing on remote communities in developing countries in...
Healthcare and pharmaceutical products are used widely but their environmental impacts are still largely unknown. This paper provides an insight into the influence of product design and consumer behaviour on the environmental impacts of the use and end-of-life of some healthcare and pharmaceutical products, with the aim of identifying improvement o...
This paper presents a new framework for evaluating life cycle eco-efficiency of different products and sectors. The framework incorporates life cycle assessment, life cycle costing and multi-criteria decision analysis to enable estimations of the overall eco-efficiency and benchmarking of products and sectors. Overall, 17 eco-efficiency indicators...
![Sources of space and water heating in the UK[¹].](publication/336731096/figure/fig1/AS:11431281174372840@1689200659044/Sources-of-space-and-water-heating-in-the-UK_Q320.jpg)
Heat from biomass is being promoted in an effort to reduce GHG emission. However, the full life cycle environmental and economic implications of biomass heat are currently unknown and are therefore explored in this paper. The results indicate that heat from solid biomass can reduce global warming potential as well as depletion of fossil resources a...
Producing fuels and chemicals from carbon dioxide (CO2) could reduce our dependence on fossil resources and help towards climate change mitigation. This study evaluates the sustainability of utilising CO2 for production of transportation fuels. The CO2 feedstock is sourced from anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge and the fuels are produced in the...
Producing fuels and chemicals from carbon dioxide (CO2) could reduce our dependence on fossil resources and help towards climate change mitigation. This study evaluates the sustainability of utilising CO2 for production of transportation fuels. The CO2 feedstock is sourced from anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge and the fuels are produced in the...
Small-scale off-grid renewable energy systems are being increasingly used for rural electrification, commonly as stand-alone home systems or community micro-grids. With the variety of technologies and configurations available, it is not clear which options are sustainable for remote communities. This study investigates the life cycle environmental...
The value embedded in food waste is increasingly being recognised, with the UN targeting a 50% reduction in consumer food waste and the EU recycling of 60% of all household waste, both by 2030. Aiming to provide guidance on the most sustainable food waste utilisation routes, this study evaluates the life cycle environmental and economic sustainabil...
Fruits are indispensable for a balanced and healthy diet. However, their environmental impacts remain largely unknown. Using a life cycle approach, this work estimates for the first time the impacts of fruits consumed in the UK. What makes the UK a particularly interesting case is that only 7% of fruits are produced domestically, with the rest impo...
River flow reductions as a result of agricultural withdrawals and climate change are rapidly desiccating endorheic lakes, increasing their salinity and affecting the bio-diversity and human wellbeing in the surrounding areas. Here we present a new framework to guide eco-hydrological restoration of saline lakes and build their resilience to climate...
The life cycle environmental impacts of cellulose-supported solid ionic liquids are estimated in comparison with a range of other CO 2 sorbents.
This work aims to assess the environmental and economic sustainability of poultry litter gasification for heat and electricity generation. The results are compared with gasification of two other biomass feedstocks (Miscanthus and waste wood) and energy from fossil fuels. The findings suggest that poultry litter gasification can lead to significant...
Around a third of food is wasted globally, requiring significant resources for its treatment and disposal, in addition to wasting valuable resources. Following the circular economy principles, this waste should ideally be avoided, and if not possible, treated to recover resources. This paper considers the life cycle environmental and economic impli...
Pressurised metered-dose inhalers are a method of choice for delivering drugs into lungs for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease across the globe. HFC-134a and HFC-227ea propellants, which are currently used in these inhalers, have significant global warming potentials. To reduce the climate change impact of inhalers,...
Editor: Damia Barcelo Driven by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil resources, the chemical and other industries are gradually starting to develop bio-based products. For the introduction of bio-feedstocks in existing production pathways in a cost-effective way, a simplified approach based on mass balance has been p...
Although there is a growing body of literature on the environmental impacts of food, virtually none of the studies has addressed baby foods. Therefore, this work explored the life cycle environmental impacts of different ready-made baby foods, both at the level of individual meals and their combinations within a weekly menu. Twelve different meals...
This study uses life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental impacts of electricity generated from fossil fuels in Chile over a ten–year period, from 2004 to 2014. The focus on fossil fuels is highly relevant for Chile because around 60% of electricity currently comes from natural gas, coal and oil. The impacts are first considered at the le...
Thin-film technologies have been part of the rapidly-expanding solar photovoltaics (PV) market for many years, led by cadmium-telluride (CdTe) and copper‑indium‑gallium-selenide (CIGS). However, their environmental impacts remain largely unknown, particularly considering state-of-the-art CIGS manufacturing techniques. This study estimates the life...
Although electricity supply is still dominated by fossil fuels, it is expected that renewable sources will have a much larger contribution in the future due to the need to mitigate climate change. Therefore, this paper presents a new framework for developing Future Electricity Scenarios (FuturES) with high penetration of renewables. A multi-period...
Cascaded wood utilisation could help to bridge the gap between the rising wood demand and fresh wood availability as well as contributing to a circular economy. However, the economic and environmental implications of cascading wood-based products are not fully known yet and are hence explored in this paper, considering both aspects simultaneously f...
Biscuits are a major product category in the global confectionary sector. Despite this, their environmental impacts are poorly characterised. Therefore, this paper sets out to evaluate the life cycle environmental sustainability of the following widely-consumed types of biscuit, both at the product and sectoral levels: crackers, low fat/sugar, semi...
Consumers are the leading producers of food waste (FW) in developed countries and the majority of household FW is still embedded in general waste where it is incinerated or landfilled. There is increasing awareness in the value of collecting FW as a separate waste stream for production of compost or recovery of energy through anaerobic digestion (A...
Convenience is one of the main determinants of modern society where products, such as ready-made meals, play a key role. However, the continuing growth of this market has raised environmental concerns, which have not been well studied yet. This paper evaluates life cycle environmental impacts of meals consumed in the UK, the second largest consumer...
Cakes are a favourite food across the globe and yet little is known about their environmental sustainability. To address this research gap, this paper evaluates the life cycle environmental impacts associated with the production and consumption of industrially-produced cakes. The following main product categories are considered: whole cakes, cake s...
![Properties of rice and coconut residues [41e43].](profile/Alejandro-Gallego-Schmid/publication/332306621/figure/tbl1/AS:825839428042756@1573906871686/Properties-of-rice-and-coconut-residues-41e43_Q320.jpg)
Agricultural wastes are readily available in farming communities and can be utilised for off-grid electrification as an alternative to diesel generators. This work evaluates for the first time the life cycle environmental sustainability of these small-scale systems in the context of Southeast Asia. Rice and coconut residues are considered for direc...
A healthy diet depends on the daily intake of vegetables. Yet, their environmental impacts along the full supply chains are scarcely known. Therefore, this paper provides for the first time a comprehensive evaluation of the life cycle environmental impacts of vegetables consumed in UK. The impacts are assessed for 56 fresh and processed products pr...
Many higher education institutions have started to develop academic curricula, research capacity and outreach activities related to circular economy. However, little is known yet on how to apply circular economy thinking to sustainable campus management. In an attempt to address this gap, this paper proposes a methodological framework and guidance...
This study evaluates the life cycle environmental sustainability of cheddar cheese with energy recovery from cheese whey via anaerobic digestion. Environmental hotspots and improvement opportunities along the supply chain are also identified. The cheddar cheese production process has been simulated by using Aspen Plus. The environmental impacts hav...
![Characteristics of poultry litter [6]](publication/331848919/figure/tbl1/AS:871231368724480@1584729153533/Characteristics-of-poultry-litter-6_Q320.jpg)
The poultry industry generates a large quantity of litter, which consists of a mixture of manure, waste bedding and feathers, and can be used for recovery of energy. Recent studies suggest that gasification is a promising technology for an effective conversion of poultry litter to energy. This paper aims to assess the environmental impacts of gener...
![Carbon footprint of UK household food waste along the life cycle [12, 19]](publication/331854737/figure/tbl1/AS:870538658455552@1584563998153/Carbon-footprint-of-UK-household-food-waste-along-the-life-cycle-12-19_Q320.jpg)
The majority of household food waste in the EU is sent to landfill or incinerated; a slowly-increasing fraction is collected separately and utilised for anaerobic digestion (AD) or in-vessel composting (IVC). This study evaluates life cycle environmental impacts of these four options to identify the most sustainable alternatives. The results are co...
Reducing food waste and increasing resource efficiency have become worldwide targets as highlighted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 – Responsible consumption and production. Food packaging, in particular plastics-based, is a key component of food-related waste: packaging increases the amount of total waste, but also reduces po...
