Global NEST Journal

This study analyses seasonal and regular variations in ambient atmospheric concentrations of total gaseous mercury (TGM), ancillary air pollutant concentrations, and their relationship to weather conditions of a megacity environment in India. Further, to correlate with TGM concentrations at different megacities all around the urbanized environments in the world. The average concentration for TGM was 4.66 ± 8.35 ng/m3 and with an absorptions range of 0.41∼540 ng/m3 throughout the study period. The maximum concentration of total gaseous mercury was observed at 5.64 ng/m3 during the winter, while the minimum concentration was 3.91 ng/m3 during the southwest monsoon. The multivariate statistical analysis indicates the TGM values interacted positively with SR, WD, BP, CO, PM2.5, NO2, NOx and negatively with SO2, relative humidity, wind speed, and temperature. Meteorological parameters have an essential influence on the transport and distribution of pollutants in the monitoring site due to its location, local sources, and anthropogenic activities. Wind across India belongs to the southern hemisphere in summer and to the northern hemisphere in winter due to the movement of the intertropical convergence zone. Limited studies of atmospheric mercury concentrations have been conducted in India's city environments; however, as far as our results are concerned, they are the essentials, which exposed about environmental aggregate vaporous mercury detected in a required industrialized and coastal metropolitan zone in India.

Wastewater generated in oil production and refinery industries contains high levels of pollutions. Water from the oil production field is the largest source of wastewater in the oil production and refinery industry. It can cause environmental problems on a global scale due to its high volume and pollutant properties. The treatment of produced water and refinery wastewater is traditionally carried out by physical, chemical, and biological treatment processes. In recent years, it has been focused on the use of membrane technologies. In the treatment of oil production wastewater, membrane bioreactors are used as pre-treatment and / or direct treatment methods. In this study, the treatability of wastewater generated in the oil production field by membrane bioreactor was investigated. The system has been operated for 70 days and its efficiency has been evaluated. Treatment parameters such as chemical oxygen demand, total solids, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, Alkalinity, and conductivity were analyzed. In addition, flux and transmembrane pressures were measured. Result, chemical oxygen demand, total solids, total volatile solids, suspended solids, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and sulfate, average removal efficiencies 65%, 65%, 58%, 73%, 70%, 50%, and 57% was obtained, respectively. It has been determined that the system used can be used in petroleum production wastewater treatment.

A critical element for the successful management of wastewater is the active participation of residents in all stages of treatment in order to ensure public acceptance. The primary purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the specific views and attitudes of the inhabitants of Leros Island, Greece, regarding (a) the performance of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) operating on Leros Island and (b) their level of awareness on and (c) their willingness to accept a natural wastewater treatment system. This study also emphasizes the significance of a participatory approach to construct sustainable wastewater treatment systems in small communities. Results show an apparent lack of information regarding natural wastewater treatment systems for all respondents, and it turns out that a high level of education does not necessarily mean higher awareness of alternative wastewater treatment methods nor greater acceptance of innovative wastewater treatment systems. Age showed a significant correlation with social acceptance of alternative ways of waste treatment, with people over the age of 56 shown to be most willing to apply a natural wastewater treatment system in remote areas of the Leros island. Environmental awareness policies could contribute to more sustainable community wastewater management.

In the present work a new freely available web-based tool is developed within Google Earth Engine (GEE) that aims to support water agencies, farmers and public services acquire information on the water budget components in the areas of their interest. The tool makes use of the high-resolution land component of the fifth generation of European ReAnalysis (ERA5), i.e. ERA5-Land, post processed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The application accesses the bands associated with the hydrologic variables from ERA5-Land, in order to estimate the water budget at the local, river basin and regional scales. Therefore, the time series of major water budget constituents i.e. precipitation, runoff, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and storage changes are computed at the monthly time step. Considering the use of freely available data sets and the convenient cloud functionalities offered by GEE, the developed application will offer a free supporting tool for farmers and decision makers to plan activities, infrastructures and measures in water resources management, emergency services and agricultural sectors.