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Dewatered sludge is the main by-product from wastewater treatment and it contains various types of hazardous substances which can cause environmental pollution. The alternative utilization of sludge waste is for covering the landfill or as liner for the landfill. Landfill cover is a critical component to protect the surrounding environment from leachate contamination produced by landfills and it has specific characteristics. This study analyzes the optimum water content, permeability coefficient, and stability of the material consisting of a mixture of dewatered sludge, bentonite, and quicklime. The test results show that the optimum water content in the three composite variables meet the requirements; the highest optimum value was 28%, a mixture with a ratio of 84% sludge, 15% bentonite, and 1% quicklime. The results also show that mixing sewage sludge with bentonite significantly reduces the permeability value with a ratio of 80% sludge, and 20% bentonite produces the lowest permeability coefficient of 1.979 x 10-7 and this has reached the hydraulic conductivity limit of 1 x 10-7. The shear strength and safety factor results test show that V3 had the best results, with a cohesion value of 22.40 kPa, a shear angle of 31.97°, and a safety factor of 5.297. The addition of bentonite tends to reduce the value of the safety factor. This safety factor can reach a high value because of the ratio of the total shear resistance to the working soil shear stress.

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) of MgM3+ (M3+=Al and Cr) were synthesized by coprecipitation method to form Mg/Al and Mg/Cr LDHs. The materials were applied as adsorbents of malachite green in aqueous solution. The physical properties of Mg/Al and Mg/Cr were analyzed using XRD, FTIR, BET and TGDTA characterizations. The XRD pattern shows the characteristic of LDHs which has diffraction at 11.470 (003) and at 34.690 (012) for Mg/Al and 12.450 (003) and at 380 (012) for Mg/Cr. The interlayer spaces of Mg/Al and Mg/Cr LDHs were 7.71 Å and 7.62 Å, respectively. The surface area of Mg/Al was higher than Mg/Cr. The FTIR spectra confirm that the intense peak at 1385 cm-1 denotes vibration of nitrate bond and M-O band in under 1000 cm-1. Thus the Mg/Al and Mg/Cr LDHs were applied as adsorbents to remove malachite green in aqueous solution. The results of malachite green adsorption showed that malachite green was adsorbed onto Mg/Al and Mg/Cr followed pseudo second order and Langmuir adsorption parameter. The adsorption capacity of malachite green for Mg/Al and Mg/Cr was 44.444 mg/g and 33.784 mg/g, respectively. The thermodynamic study showed that the adsorption process was spontaneous, endothermic and favored in high temperature. The regeneration process showed that Mg/Al and Mg/Cr LDHs has high stability structure toward reusability of adsorbent until three cycles adsorption process.

Spatio-temporal methods have been developed for the estimation of concentrations of pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide for application in epidemiological studies. A limited number of city-specific spatio-temporal ozone (O3) models have been proposed until today. Our aim was to develop a spatio-temporal land use regression (LUR) model that estimates daily concentrations of O3, for the whole year, as well as the warm (April-September) and cold season (October-March), within the greater Athens area. We developed models using a semiparametric approach including linear and smooth functions of spatial and temporal covariates and a bivariate smooth thin plate function. The final set of explanatory variables was selected based on the adjusted-R2. We tested the final model in temporal and spatial terms following a leave-one out monitor approach. The adjusted-R2 in the leave-one-out cross validation was 0.73 for the annual model (warm: 0.65 and cold: 0.70). The spatial terms in our annual model explained 32.9% and the temporal 63.2% of the variability in O3. The developed models showed good validity when comparing predicted and observed measurements for the 2015 data. Spatio-temporal LUR modeling provides a useful tool for estimating O3 spatio-temporal variability with adequate accuracy for subsequent use in epidemiological studies.

In this research, the selective leaching of copper from waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) using glycine as a complexing agent was investigated. PCBs were pulverized and sieved, which allowed obtaining a PCBs powder of particle size fraction ≤ 1mm. The PCBs powder has been characterized by several techniques before and after leaching. In order to understand the copper extraction process, the reaction mechanisms, and to determine the optimal leaching parameters, the effects of a range of parameters during copper leaching were investigated, including leaching time, solid-to-liquid ratio, mechanical stirring rate, leaching temperature and glycine concentration. Copper leaching from PCBs waste powder was identified as a complex four-stage gas-liquid-solid process that is carried out slowly under ambient conditions. Glycine shows a very significant selectivity for copper during leaching process allowing dissolving copper from PCBs waste with a percentage of 92.8% under ambient conditions.