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Conference report 7th International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Management ICEEM07
Journal of Cleaner Production 67 (2014) 291e292
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Conference report
Conference report 7th International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Management ICEEM07 Carmen Teodosiu a, Anton Friedl b, Krzysztof Urbaniec c, * a
Department of Environmental Engineering and Management, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Ias¸i, 71 Mangeron Blvd., 700050 Iasi, Romania Research Division Thermal Process Engineering and Simulation, Vienna University of Technology, Getreidemarkt 9/166-2, A-1060 Vienna, Austria c CERED Centre of Excellence, Warsaw University of Technology, Jachowicza 2/4, 09-402 Plock, Poland b
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 30 October 2013 Received in revised form 28 November 2013 Accepted 4 December 2013 Available online 15 December 2013
The 7th International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Management (ICEEM07) was held on September 19e20, 2013 at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Organized in close cooperation with the Environmental Biotechnology section of the European Biotechnology Federation, it was dedicated to integrating cutting-edge environmental technologies with efficient management practices, contributing thus to a sustainable future. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Environmental engineering Environmental management Environmental biotechnology Sustainability
Declaring “Integration Challenges for Sustainability” as the major headline, the conference was held on September 19e20, 2013 at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. The event was coorganized by “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Ias¸i, Romania (represented by the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Protection) in cooperation with Vienna University of Technology (represented by the Institute of Chemical Engineering). The two universities received support from three partners including the Environmental Biotechnology Section of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB) and two Romanian institutions InterMEDIU Information & Consultancy Centre, and Academic Organization for Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development. The conference chairpersons Prof. Carmen Teodosiu of Ias¸i and Prof. Anton Friedl of Vienna were flanked by the International Scientific Committee (ISC) whose 32 members came from 15 countries. In a way the Journal of Cleaner Production was involved in the event as Prof. Han Brezet and Prof. Krzysztof Urbaniec (JCLEPRO subject editors) served as members of the ISC and presented their papers as contributions to the conference programme.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ48 24 2622610x23; fax: þ48 24 2626542. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Teodosiu), [email protected] (A. Friedl), [email protected], [email protected] (K. Urbaniec). 0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.015
Held in 2013 for its 7th consecutive time, the conference brought together researchers, practitioners and specialists in various environmental fields, with a strong focus on integrating cutting-edge environmental technologies with efficient management practices, contributing thus to a sustainable future. The conference programme was structured in two plenary sessions featuring five keynote papers, a number of parallel sessions in which about 70 orals were presented and a poster session with more than 80 posters. In the plenary opening session, Prof. Adisa Azapagic of the University of Manchester, UK, elucidated the background of the event in her keynote presentation on “Sustainable Production and Consumption: Integrating Environmental, Economic and Social Aspects of Sustainability”. Industrial systems exist to provide goods and services to society; this improves quality of life but also requires environmental resources and results in emissions and wastes which are returned back into the environment. The industrial operations can be continued only if economic viability is maintained. Thus the challenge of sustainable development is to continue providing goods and services to society in an economically viable way while at the same time minimising the impact on the environment. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires action by all social actors, including governments, industry and individuals. One of the challenges is that, even if there was a universal commitment to sustainable development, most actors would need to find out what economic and industrial activities could be considered sustainable and how progress towards sustainability
292
C. Teodosiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 67 (2014) 291e292
could be measured. In order to provide correct answers, it is necessary to translate a number of the environmental, economic and social issues into the appropriate indicators of sustainable development to assist in measuring sustainability. It is argued that life cycle thinking is essential for measuring sustainability as it enables us to obtain a full picture of the interactions between industry, human activities and the environment. To illustrate the approach to the identification and attainment of sustainable production and consumption, Prof. Azapagic presented examples and case studies including the energy and food sectors. In another keynote presentation, Prof. Spiros N. Agathos of the Catholic University Leuven, Belgium, contributed to the engineering component of the conference by speaking on “Bioprocesses in the Fight against Emerging Pollutants”. There is a growing concern about the pollution of ground- and surface water by emerging micropollutants (EM), which include pharmaceuticals and personal care products originating largely from raw and treated municipal wastewater. Even at very low concentrations, some of the EM can act as endocrine disruptors that interfere with the endocrine (or hormone system) in mammals. Unfortunately, such pollutants often escape conventional wastewater treatment, including activated sludge and physicochemical nonspecific approaches such as ozonation. An attractive and ‘greener’ alternative for the removal and detoxification of EM is the use of biocatalysis. The transformation and removal of the biological effects of endocrine disruptors can be achieved using ammonia monooxygenase and other oxidative enzymes like cytochrome P-450. The EM can also be degraded using a broad spectrum of oxidative enzymes like fungal laccases and peroxidases. The re-usability of such enzymes and their separability from reactants and products can be ensured by carrier-based immobilization or by formation of cross-linked enzyme aggregates (CLEA). In recent years, a considerable progress has been achieved regarding identification of key factors for the production of CLEA of laccases alone or of combined oxidoreductases, and these novel biocatalysts have been improved by applying rational experimental design and optimization methodologies. As an example, novel robust biocatalysts for micropollutant removal based on laccase have been prepared using encapsulation by biomimetic methodologies. The creative fusion of biocatalysis, chemical engineering fundamentals and nanotechnology appears not only to open up attractive horizons towards sustainable treatment of EM-contaminated matrices but also to multiply options for environmentally relevant industrial processes. A keynote presentation by Prof. Emmanuel G. Koukios of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, was linked with the management component of the conference as the subject was “Environmental Management Potential of Developing Sustainable Bioeconomy Solutions”. Bioeconomy or biobased economy is a term used recently to express the broad spectrum of potential applications of biological sciences and their associated technologies for improved performance and quality of products and services in various fields of the economy. A particular aspect of the value and strategic attraction of bioeconomy, especially of its sustainable version, to policy and decisionmakers is its potential “greening” effect on processes, products and systems. Such a bio-greening follows two pathways: (a) that of environmental engineering, i.e., the employment of biobased solutions to specific environmental problems, e.g. treatment of biowastes, development of “cleaner” bio-industries, recycling of nutrient and bioenergy vectors; and (b)
the one of environmental management, i.e., the formulation and use of biobased tools and methods for the rational management of communities, ecosystems, and other natural and anthropogenic biosystems. Prof. Koukios presented an overview of the latter pathway, introducing a new definition of the bioeconomy concept in the form of a two-dimensional matrix linking its “bio” and “economy” components. The new definition makes it possible to “map” the dynamics of the matrix through various scenarios for bioeconomic growth driven by particular drivers. Four typical scenarios can be identified and named as follows: (i) fertile valleys, (ii) poles of crystallization, (iii) hospitable plateaus, and (iv) islands of survival. Each scenario has its own environmental management implications also depending on the type of bio-links formed between the biobased tool and its area of application; four different types of such links can be distinguished. Consequently, a total map of 4 4 ¼ 16 maximum combinations of environmental management options of each bio-tool are available for use by the local, regional or global managers. Examples of applications include changing land use patterns, modeling material and energy flows in biosystems, wetlands vegetation management, understanding soil systems, and multi-purpose bioresource utilization. Regarding other contributions presented in the plenary or regular sessions as well as in the poster sessions, the range of topics can be divided into seven areas: -
Environmental integrated management and policy issues, Environmental pollution and monitoring, Water supply and wastewater treatment, Waste management for resources and energy recovery, Modeling, simulation and optimization, Sustainable processes and production, Environmental biotechnology (apart from the conference sessions, this topical area was discussed at two side events, namely the General Assembly of EFB Environmental Biotechnology Section, and the meeting of EFB Experts Group).
During the closing session, the organizers and participants of ICEEM07 reflected over the past conferences in the series (http:// iceem07.iceem.eu/). The history dates back to 2002 when the first event was held in Ias¸i, Romania, where three consecutive editions of the conference were also organized. In 2009, ICEEM05 stayed in Romania but was held in an attractive location of Tulcea near the Danube Delta and in 2011, ICEEM06 was organized in Balatonalmádi near the Lake Balaton, Hungary. The success of ICEEM07 in the Austrian capital city of Vienna, attended by 170 participants coming from 32 countries of all continents, can be seen as a confirmation of the scientific maturity and high international standing of ICEEM conferences. A complete set of abstracts of conference papers on a flash disk was made available to each conference participant. As announced prior to the conference, the organizers invited selected papers for publication in special issues of ISI ranked international journals including “Environmental Engineering and Management Journal”, “New Biotechnology” and “International Journal of Nonlinear Sciences and Numerical Simulation”, or in Springer open access journal “Energy, Sustainability and Society”. Following an additional agreement reached after the conference, authors of several papers were encouraged to submit their work for publication in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
Conference report
Conference report 7th International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Management ICEEM07 Carmen Teodosiu a, Anton Friedl b, Krzysztof Urbaniec c, * a
Department of Environmental Engineering and Management, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Ias¸i, 71 Mangeron Blvd., 700050 Iasi, Romania Research Division Thermal Process Engineering and Simulation, Vienna University of Technology, Getreidemarkt 9/166-2, A-1060 Vienna, Austria c CERED Centre of Excellence, Warsaw University of Technology, Jachowicza 2/4, 09-402 Plock, Poland b
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 30 October 2013 Received in revised form 28 November 2013 Accepted 4 December 2013 Available online 15 December 2013
The 7th International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Management (ICEEM07) was held on September 19e20, 2013 at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Organized in close cooperation with the Environmental Biotechnology section of the European Biotechnology Federation, it was dedicated to integrating cutting-edge environmental technologies with efficient management practices, contributing thus to a sustainable future. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Environmental engineering Environmental management Environmental biotechnology Sustainability
Declaring “Integration Challenges for Sustainability” as the major headline, the conference was held on September 19e20, 2013 at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. The event was coorganized by “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Ias¸i, Romania (represented by the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Protection) in cooperation with Vienna University of Technology (represented by the Institute of Chemical Engineering). The two universities received support from three partners including the Environmental Biotechnology Section of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB) and two Romanian institutions InterMEDIU Information & Consultancy Centre, and Academic Organization for Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development. The conference chairpersons Prof. Carmen Teodosiu of Ias¸i and Prof. Anton Friedl of Vienna were flanked by the International Scientific Committee (ISC) whose 32 members came from 15 countries. In a way the Journal of Cleaner Production was involved in the event as Prof. Han Brezet and Prof. Krzysztof Urbaniec (JCLEPRO subject editors) served as members of the ISC and presented their papers as contributions to the conference programme.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ48 24 2622610x23; fax: þ48 24 2626542. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Teodosiu), [email protected] (A. Friedl), [email protected], [email protected] (K. Urbaniec). 0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.015
Held in 2013 for its 7th consecutive time, the conference brought together researchers, practitioners and specialists in various environmental fields, with a strong focus on integrating cutting-edge environmental technologies with efficient management practices, contributing thus to a sustainable future. The conference programme was structured in two plenary sessions featuring five keynote papers, a number of parallel sessions in which about 70 orals were presented and a poster session with more than 80 posters. In the plenary opening session, Prof. Adisa Azapagic of the University of Manchester, UK, elucidated the background of the event in her keynote presentation on “Sustainable Production and Consumption: Integrating Environmental, Economic and Social Aspects of Sustainability”. Industrial systems exist to provide goods and services to society; this improves quality of life but also requires environmental resources and results in emissions and wastes which are returned back into the environment. The industrial operations can be continued only if economic viability is maintained. Thus the challenge of sustainable development is to continue providing goods and services to society in an economically viable way while at the same time minimising the impact on the environment. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires action by all social actors, including governments, industry and individuals. One of the challenges is that, even if there was a universal commitment to sustainable development, most actors would need to find out what economic and industrial activities could be considered sustainable and how progress towards sustainability
292
C. Teodosiu et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 67 (2014) 291e292
could be measured. In order to provide correct answers, it is necessary to translate a number of the environmental, economic and social issues into the appropriate indicators of sustainable development to assist in measuring sustainability. It is argued that life cycle thinking is essential for measuring sustainability as it enables us to obtain a full picture of the interactions between industry, human activities and the environment. To illustrate the approach to the identification and attainment of sustainable production and consumption, Prof. Azapagic presented examples and case studies including the energy and food sectors. In another keynote presentation, Prof. Spiros N. Agathos of the Catholic University Leuven, Belgium, contributed to the engineering component of the conference by speaking on “Bioprocesses in the Fight against Emerging Pollutants”. There is a growing concern about the pollution of ground- and surface water by emerging micropollutants (EM), which include pharmaceuticals and personal care products originating largely from raw and treated municipal wastewater. Even at very low concentrations, some of the EM can act as endocrine disruptors that interfere with the endocrine (or hormone system) in mammals. Unfortunately, such pollutants often escape conventional wastewater treatment, including activated sludge and physicochemical nonspecific approaches such as ozonation. An attractive and ‘greener’ alternative for the removal and detoxification of EM is the use of biocatalysis. The transformation and removal of the biological effects of endocrine disruptors can be achieved using ammonia monooxygenase and other oxidative enzymes like cytochrome P-450. The EM can also be degraded using a broad spectrum of oxidative enzymes like fungal laccases and peroxidases. The re-usability of such enzymes and their separability from reactants and products can be ensured by carrier-based immobilization or by formation of cross-linked enzyme aggregates (CLEA). In recent years, a considerable progress has been achieved regarding identification of key factors for the production of CLEA of laccases alone or of combined oxidoreductases, and these novel biocatalysts have been improved by applying rational experimental design and optimization methodologies. As an example, novel robust biocatalysts for micropollutant removal based on laccase have been prepared using encapsulation by biomimetic methodologies. The creative fusion of biocatalysis, chemical engineering fundamentals and nanotechnology appears not only to open up attractive horizons towards sustainable treatment of EM-contaminated matrices but also to multiply options for environmentally relevant industrial processes. A keynote presentation by Prof. Emmanuel G. Koukios of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, was linked with the management component of the conference as the subject was “Environmental Management Potential of Developing Sustainable Bioeconomy Solutions”. Bioeconomy or biobased economy is a term used recently to express the broad spectrum of potential applications of biological sciences and their associated technologies for improved performance and quality of products and services in various fields of the economy. A particular aspect of the value and strategic attraction of bioeconomy, especially of its sustainable version, to policy and decisionmakers is its potential “greening” effect on processes, products and systems. Such a bio-greening follows two pathways: (a) that of environmental engineering, i.e., the employment of biobased solutions to specific environmental problems, e.g. treatment of biowastes, development of “cleaner” bio-industries, recycling of nutrient and bioenergy vectors; and (b)
the one of environmental management, i.e., the formulation and use of biobased tools and methods for the rational management of communities, ecosystems, and other natural and anthropogenic biosystems. Prof. Koukios presented an overview of the latter pathway, introducing a new definition of the bioeconomy concept in the form of a two-dimensional matrix linking its “bio” and “economy” components. The new definition makes it possible to “map” the dynamics of the matrix through various scenarios for bioeconomic growth driven by particular drivers. Four typical scenarios can be identified and named as follows: (i) fertile valleys, (ii) poles of crystallization, (iii) hospitable plateaus, and (iv) islands of survival. Each scenario has its own environmental management implications also depending on the type of bio-links formed between the biobased tool and its area of application; four different types of such links can be distinguished. Consequently, a total map of 4 4 ¼ 16 maximum combinations of environmental management options of each bio-tool are available for use by the local, regional or global managers. Examples of applications include changing land use patterns, modeling material and energy flows in biosystems, wetlands vegetation management, understanding soil systems, and multi-purpose bioresource utilization. Regarding other contributions presented in the plenary or regular sessions as well as in the poster sessions, the range of topics can be divided into seven areas: -
Environmental integrated management and policy issues, Environmental pollution and monitoring, Water supply and wastewater treatment, Waste management for resources and energy recovery, Modeling, simulation and optimization, Sustainable processes and production, Environmental biotechnology (apart from the conference sessions, this topical area was discussed at two side events, namely the General Assembly of EFB Environmental Biotechnology Section, and the meeting of EFB Experts Group).
During the closing session, the organizers and participants of ICEEM07 reflected over the past conferences in the series (http:// iceem07.iceem.eu/). The history dates back to 2002 when the first event was held in Ias¸i, Romania, where three consecutive editions of the conference were also organized. In 2009, ICEEM05 stayed in Romania but was held in an attractive location of Tulcea near the Danube Delta and in 2011, ICEEM06 was organized in Balatonalmádi near the Lake Balaton, Hungary. The success of ICEEM07 in the Austrian capital city of Vienna, attended by 170 participants coming from 32 countries of all continents, can be seen as a confirmation of the scientific maturity and high international standing of ICEEM conferences. A complete set of abstracts of conference papers on a flash disk was made available to each conference participant. As announced prior to the conference, the organizers invited selected papers for publication in special issues of ISI ranked international journals including “Environmental Engineering and Management Journal”, “New Biotechnology” and “International Journal of Nonlinear Sciences and Numerical Simulation”, or in Springer open access journal “Energy, Sustainability and Society”. Following an additional agreement reached after the conference, authors of several papers were encouraged to submit their work for publication in the Journal of Cleaner Production.