Petroleum Engineering

EPSEI – Evaluating Policies for Sustainable Energy Investments: Towards an Integrated Approach on National and International Stage

PEOPLE

MARIE CURIE ACTIONS

International Research Staff Exchange Scheme

Call: FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IRSES

The project “Evaluating Policies for Sustainable Energy Investments: towards an integrated  approach on national and international stage” (EPSEI) aims at improving the integration of methodologies and tools concerning the evaluation of investments for sustainable energy.

Scienfitic Coordinator: Prof. Paolo Davide Farah, PhD.

For information : paolofarah@yahoo.com

The institutions participating to this project are:

1) University of Turin, Faculty of Law, Italy (Coordinator)

2) University of Lund – Department of Political Science, Lund, Sweden

3) Université de Provence, Center of Comparative Epistemology & Ergology (CEPERC), France

4) Tsinghua University, Center for Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy Law (THCEREL), Beijing, China

5) Tomsk State University, Department of Law, Russia

6) Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) in Beijing, China

7) Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change (CMCC), Venice, Italy

8) University of Piedmont Oriental, Faculty of Law, Italy.

9) gLAWcal - Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development, United Kingdom

10 Wuhan University, Law School, China

Fundamental trends in the European Union and the world at large provide an increasingly important policy agenda for financing sustainable energy in terms of energy efficiency, innovation in energy exploitation and development of renewable resources. The long-range forecasts for investments and energy market are determined by highly interconnected environmental, geological and technological research despite scientific differences in modelling the scenarios and interpreting the data. The medium-range forecasts for investments and energy market largely depend on geopolitical considerations and internal pressure by public opinion and stakeholders. States, firms and other actors play their game within the current legal framework at the international, regional and national level. Accordingly, the proper policy design for the sustainable energy needs to be complemented by research on the legal, regulatory and geopolitical side.

However, the characteristics of social sciences which drive their approach to such issues are determined by their fragmentation into sectoral domains and national traditions. It is commonly agreed that there are great benefits in overcoming the disciplinary divisions combining scientific, social and economic considerations in order to assess the policy impact of sustainable energy. The evaluation of the policies for sustainable energy investments requires to connect several
national approaches on such topics, not only in Europe, where the fragmentation of social sciences into national traditions is a matter of fact. In turn, the global nature of the questions addressed by the project needs to be implemented through an IRSES programme in order to strengthen the research partnerships between European research organisations and research organisations from crucial world regions as far as European interests for energy matters are concerned.

A. International and Comparative Law:

Department of Law, University of Turin;

Department of Business and Territorial Studies, University of Eastern Piedmont;

Center for Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy Law, TsinghuaUniversity;

Department of Law, TomskStateUniversity

B. Geopolitics and Geoeconomics:

Department of Business and Territorial Studies, University of Eastern Piedmont;

Center for Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy Law, Tsinghua University;

Department of Political Science, University of Lund

C. Epistemology and Politics of Energy:

Center of Comparative Epistemogoly & Ergology, Universite de Provence;

Center for Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy Law, Tsinghua University;

Department of Political Science, University of Lund.

The project is also structured to strengthen the research partnerships between core competences from social sciences and key competences from other sciences

D. Environmental Economics and Managerial Economics:

Department of Business and Territorial Studies, University of Eastern Piedmont;

Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change;

Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences;

E. Geology and Environmental studies:

Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change;

Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences;

Department of Law, Tomsk State University.

This project has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 269327 Acronym of the Project: EPSEI, Coordinated by University of Turin – Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza. For any information about the EPSEI project and its objectives, please address your queries by email to the Vice-Scientific Coordinator: paolofarah@yahoo.com

Sensor Webs deployed to collect and disseminate real/near real time data enable ad hoc monitoring of environmental phenomena. This real time data dissemination capability can be exploited to monitor natural and human induced hazards and subsequently broadcast alert notifications to decision makers, emergency managers and general public of an ensuing event. A sensor Web-based architecture for real time alert notifications is designed and presented in this paper. The architecture is built on top of an event based communication model which enables pro-active data dissemination. Such a communication scheme enables seamless integration of heterogeneous information sources, ensures scalability of the overall system and enables interoperability between the involved components

The mineralisation kinetics of petroleum refinery effluent (PRE) by Fenton oxidation were evaluated. Within the ambit of the experimental data generated, first-order kinetic model (FKM), generalised lumped kinetic model (GLKM), and generalized kinetic model (GKM) were tested. The obtained apparent kinetic rate constants for the initial oxidation step (k 2 ′), their final oxidation step (k 1 ′), and the direct conversion to endproducts step (k 3 ′) were 10.12, 3.78, and 0.24 min-1 for GKM; 0.98, 0.98, and nil min-1 for GLKM; and nil, nil, and >0.005 min-1 for FKM. The findings showed that GKM is superior in estimating the mineralization kinetics. © 2014 Diya'uddeen Basheer Hasan et al.

http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/252491.pdf 

Industrial activities generate significant amount of hazardous waste from refinery, chemical manufacturing, cosmetic, drug and pharmaceutical industry. Petroleum sludge is immobilized using ordinary Portland cement to stabilize and solidify the contaminant in the sludge as an alternative treatment for final disposal of the waste. The waste has significant amount of organic material which normally interfere with the cement hydration process. A way to improve is by addition of cement replacement material. Rice husk ash (RHA) was added at 5, 10 and 15 % cement replacement. The 5 % RHA exhibited the best performance with regards to unconfined compressive of 24.9 N/mm2. The strength is better than the sludge cement of 19.2 N/mm2. Porosity was found to increase with increasing RHA content. The surface morphology of solidified cement with voids was found to be in the range of 10 to 15 μm for 15 % RHA. RHA addition promotes carbonation. Its high silica content reacts with CO 2 to form calcite and silica gel. © 2010 IEEE.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx5/5640357/5648795/05650631.pdf?tp=&arnumber=5650631&isnumber=5648795 

This study analyzes the effects of toxic, hydraulic, and organic shocks on the performance of a lab-scale sequencing batch reactor (SBR) with a capacity of 5. L. Petroleum refinery wastewater (PRWW) was treated with an organic loading rate (OLR) of approximately 0.3. kg chemical oxygen demand (COD)/kg MLSS. d at 12.8. h hydraulic retention time (HRT). A considerable variation in the COD was observed for organic, toxic, hydraulic, and combined shocks, and the worst values observed were 68.9, 77.1, 70.2, and 57.8%, respectively. Improved control of toxic shock loads of 10 and 20. mg/L of chromium (VI) was identified. The system was adversely affected by the organic shock when a shock load thrice the normal value was used, and this behavior was repeated when the hydraulic shock was 4.8. h HRT. The empirical recovery period was greater than the theoretical period because of the inhibitory effects of phenols, sulfides, high oil, and grease in the PRWW. The system recovery rates from the shocks were in the following order: toxic, organic, hydraulic, and combined shocks. System failure occurred when the combined shocks of organic and hydraulic were applied. The system was resumed by replacing the PRWW with glucose, and the OLR was reduced to half its initial value. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0304389413001143/1-s2.0-S0304389413001143-main.pdf?_tid=bb94bc2e-21d6-11e4-aa93-00000aab0f02&acdnat=1407816868_48791313b6d51665d79637ccbb64231a 
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389413001143