Publication

Decoupling municipal solid waste generation and economic growth in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland

Publications associées (24)

Renewable energy integration and waste heat valorization in aluminum remelting for co-producing kerosene and methanol

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos, Réginald Germanier

The aluminium sector relies on natural gas for the conversion of recycled scrap into new feedstock, which results in substantial atmospheric emissions. Hydric resources are also impacted, as they serve as heat sinks for the waste heat generated during the ...

Associazione Italiana Di Ingegneria Chimica2024

Tandem catalysis enables chlorine-containing waste as chlorination reagents

Paul Joseph Dyson, Mingyang Liu, Xinbang Wu

Chlorinated compounds are ubiquitous. However, accumulation of chlorine-containing waste has a negative impact on human health and the environment due to the inapplicability of common disposal methods, such as landfill and incineration. Here we report a su ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Towards edible robots and robotic food

Dario Floreano, Jun Shintake, Bokeon Kwak, Markéta Pankhurst

Edible robots and robotic food — edible systems that perceive, process and act upon stimulation — could open a new range of opportunities in health care, environmental management and the promotion of healthier eating habits. For example, they could enable ...

2024

Reuse of cut concrete slabs in new buildings for circular ultra-low-carbon floor designs

Numa Joy Bertola, Célia Marine Küpfer, Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet

The study explores an original idea that responds to the urgent need to reduce the detrimental environmental impacts of load-bearing floor construction in new buildings by reusing saw-cut reinforced concrete (RC) pieces salvaged from soon-to-be demolished ...

2024

The impacts of decarbonization pathways on Sustainable Development Goals in the European Union

Marc Vielle, Sigit Pria Perdana

Climate action to achieve the Paris Agreement should respect the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Here, we use an integrated assessment modelling framework comprising nine climate policy models and quantify the impacts of decarbonisation pathw ...

2024

Acids from fruits generate photoactive Fe-complexes, enhancing solar disinfection of water (SODIS): A systematic study of the novel " fruto-Fenton " process, effective over a wide pH range (4-9)

César Pulgarin, Aline Laetitia Schaub, Stefanos Giannakis, Giulio Farinelli, Mona Kohantorabi

This study aimed to enhance solar disinfection (SODIS) by the photo-Fenton process, operated at natural pH, through the re-utilization of fruit wastes. For this purpose, pure organic acids present in fruits and alimentary wastes were tested and compared wi ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Frihet, sikkerhet, forstaden: Brev fra Amerika

Nagy Makhlouf

Why have countries formerly leading public policies of housing – Norway, the U.K., France, etc. – shifted towards privatizing accommodation from the late 1970s? Have these States merely let go of housing and handed it over to private interests in the name ...

2024

Spectral Estimators for High-Dimensional Matrix Inference

Farzad Pourkamali

A key challenge across many disciplines is to extract meaningful information from data which is often obscured by noise. These datasets are typically represented as large matrices. Given the current trend of ever-increasing data volumes, with datasets grow ...

EPFL2024

Decision support methodology for waste-to-value process integration

Rafael Amorim Leandro De Castro Amoedo

Waste treatment is a complex procedure that comprises multidimensional aspects. The challenges posed by the energy transition and international protocols emphasize the role of waste in its material and energy dimension. With an increasing population and li ...

EPFL2023

Lignin, from biomass waste to sustainable materials for food packaging, antiviral coatings and agriculture

Alice Boarino

Our planet has been challenged for years by our reckless use of fossil fuels, which has led to the ongoing climate change and energy crisis. The transition to the use of renewable alternative sources has now became urgent and inevitable. The valorization o ...

EPFL2023

On the role of system integration in plastic waste management

François Maréchal, Ivan Daniel Kantor, Julia Granacher

The management of plastic waste is a growing concern that can harm wildlife and ecosystems, and its end-of-life policies are key to mitigating plastic environmental impact. This work presents a decision-making methodology for the thermal and material valor ...

Elsevier2023

A Reuse-Ready Timber Slab-and-Column System for Modular Building Structures

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jan Friedrich Georg Brütting, Alex-Manuel Muresan, Jonas Warmuth, Edisson Xavier Estrella Arcos

The construction industry is a significant contributor to resource consumption and waste generation. To address this issue, component reuse has been proposed as a way to prevent valuable building elements from being discarded and avoid producing new ones. ...

Curran Associates, Inc.2023

Printed degradable piezoelectric microsystems: From ink formulation to device fabrication and characterization

Morgan Mc Kay Monroe

As the world moves further and further into the semiconductor era, the amount of waste generated from electronics ("e-waste") is increasing rapidly and unsustainably. Of particular note, alternatives to lead-based piezoelectric materials must be establishe ...

EPFL2023

Selection and Optimal Use of Nanoporous Materials for Adsorption Energy Technologies

Emanuele Piccoli

Due to the large waste of heat in the power and industrial sectors, our use of energy is inefficient. Moreover, it relies on rapidly depleting and greenhouse-gas-emitting sources such as fossil fuels. While the scarcity of energy resources is a relevant so ...

EPFL2023

Investigation of Biomass Hydrothermal Conversion Products by HRMS

Daniil Salionov

The dependency on fossil fuels and their impact on the environment is a matter of great concern for the future sustainability of modern society. The development of the "green" technologies which utilize renewable energy sources is now under investigation. ...

EPFL2023

A systemic study for enhanced waste heat recovery and renewable energy integration towards decarbonizing the aluminium industry

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Réginald Germanier

The aluminium remelting industry relies on natural gas to transform recycled aluminium into aluminium feedstock, entailing significant atmospheric emissions. Hydric resources are also affected as they are used as sinks of waste heat from the casting proces ...

2023

Renewable Energy Integration and Waste Heat Recovery for the Production of Sustainable Jet Fuel and Decarbonization of Industrial Heating Applications

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos, Réginald Germanier

The process synthesis and optimization methods used in this work include simulation of biomass gasification, hydrogen and synthetic natural gas production, and jet fuel production via a Fisher Tropsch unit. An energy integration approach, carried out by th ...

American Institute of Chemical Engineering2023

Addressing the challenges of homogeneity, quality control and waste handling in soil bio-cementation: A large-scale experiment

Lyesse Laloui, Dimitrios Terzis, Ray Harran

In an attempt to go beyond the conventional laboratory experiments widely reported in literature around the emerging technique of soil bio-cementation, this work addresses key challenges related to its large-scale application. Precisely, a state-of-the-art ...

JAPANESE GEOTECHNICAL SOC2023

A Framework for Autonomic Computing for In Situ Imageomics

Nina Marion Aurélia Van Tiel

In situ imageomics is a new approach to study ecological, biological and evolutionary systems wherein large image and video data sets are captured in the wild and machine learning methods are used to infer biological traits of individual organisms, animal ...

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc2023

Multiscale pattern analysis of building replacements in Zurich from 2000 to 2019

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Jingxian Ye

Building replacement (BR) – i.e., the demolition of existing structures and subsequent construction of new buildings on the same site – is often understood as a necessary urban planning strategy despite significant environmental implications regarding soli ...

2023