Volume 25 - 2023

Odour is a major concern as they are termed hazardous to the surroundings as well as life forms when they are exposed to the environment. Odour emission is also one of the indicators of environmental changes that impact the environment. Among the different sources of odour emission, in the dumping yard itself, different types and ages of waste are dumped in the municipal solid waste (MSW) dumping yards. This study aims to relate odour emission and concentration changes caused by different weather patterns. Different periods of waste (fresh waste, moderate waste, and ripened waste) and weather seasons (summer and winter) affect the odour concentrations. Mixtures of gases and intolerable odours are major components of the MSW dumping yard. The odour concentration was monitored in the different periods of waste (moderate wastes) at different locations in the MSW dumping yard. In this study, it was found that meteorological conditions are also one of the main influences on odour concentrations in the environment. In this study, a comprehensive investigation of odour pollution from a local MSW dumping yard has been performed. The odour concentration indicates that the maximum range of aromatic hydrocarbon chemical compounds (volatile organic compounds) reported was T-butylbenzene at 1.41µg/m3 and the minimum range was Sec-butylbenzene at 0.07µg/m3. This study will provide information on odour emissions in urban areas and how VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) components are present and affect the dumping yards surrounding those areas

Green sand moulding uses silica sand for metal casting. Silica sand mining and delivery to foundries destroy the ecosystem, making metal casting unsustainable. Due to increased sand-casting output and massive civil buildings in India, the silica sand supply is declining. The depletion and shortage of silica sand necessitate the search for viable replacements. Industrial solid waste from large-scale industrialization pollutes land, air, and water. In order to use industrial waste in large amounts, an attempt is made to use it as a replacement for natural resources. The main objective of this research is to reduce the consumption of silica sand in the foundry mould-making process. Silica sand is replaced with industrial solid waste, cupola slag, and construction solid waste sources like spent fire bricks and quarry dust, up to a considerable amount, to save the natural resources. Utilization of solid waste material in the mould-making process will reduce production costs and environmental pollution, like dumping solid waste materials on land. Sand tests like permeability, green compression strength, dry compression strength, and compactability were conducted to assess the moulding properties of these alternative moulding materials. The process parameters considered for this investigation were the percentage of bentonite binder and the percentage addition of alternative mould materials with silica sand. The various sand tests showed that 40%, 30%, and 20% of quarry dust, spent fire bricks, and cupola slag, respectively, will adequately replace silica sand for mould making. A bentonite binder of 8% is suitable for quarry dust mould, and a 10% bentonite binder is required for spent fire brick particles and cupola slag to yield better results. Aluminium castings were produced at the optimal mixture of these solid waste particles and silica sand. The results of mechanical tests such as hardness, tensile, and impact tests are comparable to those of silica sand castings.

The paper attempts to discover a city's global, direct beam, and diffused solar radiation with the help of known solar radiation of its neighbor(s). Two distinctive architecture have been used to find the solar radiation of a city. In the first architecture, we used single input and a single hidden layer of the neuron to find the solar radiation of the city. The solar radiation of Lahore, Multan, and Quetta was found via the solar radiation of Karachi. In the second architecture scheme, we used three inputs and ten neurons' hidden layers to find the solar radiation of a city in the region bounded by three cities lying at the vertices of a triangle. Multan was assumed as such an area; its neighboring cities, Lahore, Quetta, and Karachi, form a triangle, and Multan lies inside the triangle area. In both architectures, three types of solar radiation, DSR, BSR, and GSR, were found with an accuracy of 99.8 %. The coefficient of determination in each case was 0.99. It shows that the results obtained through ANN models agree well with the known values.

The effectiveness of biochar as a soil conditioner is depended on the feedstock type and pyrolysis conditions as these two factors determine its physical and chemical properties. Wheat straw was heated at two temperatures: a) 2500C and b) 5000C for two time periods: i)20 min and ii) 60 min to produce four types of wheat biochar (WB) (WB250/20, WB250/60, WB500/20 and WB500/60) that were added at two different textured soils, a sandy and a loamy one. We studied C mineralization and changes of the structural quality of the two soils. Incomplete carbonization of WB250 resulted in higher C mineralization in both soils. WB250 decomposed more intensely in the sandy soil while decomposition of WB500 was not affected by soil texture or duration of pyrolysis. Biochar addition reduced the cohesiveness of the loamy soil. WB500 enhanced the formation of smaller aggregates while pyrolysis time had no effect. None of the four types of biochar altered the aggregate size distribution of the no cohesive sandy soil. Biochar with longer pyrolysis time enhanced aggregate stability of both soils because of its higher C contents and EC that promote aggregating mechanisms. WB500/60 resulted in reduced clay dispersion in both soils.