Otimização da síntese do AlSBA-15 para produção de biodiesel por transesteri-ficação do óleo de coco

Stimulus encouraging the production and consumption of biodiesel favors the policy of pre-serving the environment, contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas reducing climate change. The current trend of research in this field focuses on improving these processes with the use of heterogeneous catalysts, seeing has significant advantages such as: low contamination of products, ease of separation of the catalyst from the reaction medium, possibili-ty of reuse of the catalyst, decreased corrosion problems. The objective of this research was to optimize the synthesis of AlSBA-15 for the production of biodiesel through transesterification process via ethyl route. For the optimization of hydrothermal synthesis of type AlSBA-15 catalyst has assembled a 23 factorial experimental matrix with eleven trials. The stoichiometric amounts of starting materials were varied according to different ratios Si / Al which is a factor in the experimental design, in addition to the time and temperature of aging of the synthesis gel. The material showed the best results of characterization (SBET = 591.7 (m2 / g), Vp = 0.83 (cm3 / g), Dp = 5.59 (nm), w = 6.48 (nm) was synthesized at 100 ° C for 24 hours, with a ratio Si / Al = 10.This material was applied as a heterogeneous catalyst in the reaction of ethyl transesterification as raw coconut oil in natura. Coconut oil presented suitable for obtaining biodiesel via ethyl route.The visual aspects and physical-chemical characteristics of the reaction products show that AlSBA-15 catalyst favored the reaction. According to physical-chemical analysis the order of oxidative stability of the product of the transesterification reaction was: catalytic reaction at 1500 ° C> non-catalytic reaction at 100 ° C> 100 ° C catalytic> catalytic reaction at 200 ° C Reaction. The results of oxidative stability and kinematic viscosity shows that the biodiesel produced in the catalytic sandblasting held at 150 ° C which was maintained within the ABNT NBR 7148, ABNT NBR 10441 and EN 14112.

Isotopic data of atmospheric methane from EDML and Vostok ice cores over a full glacial cycle

The response of natural CH4 sources to climate changes will be an important factor to consider as concentrations of this potent greenhouse gas continue to increase. Polar ice cores provide the means to assess this sensitivity in the past and have shown a close connection between CH4 levels and northern hemisphere temperature variability over the last glacial cycle. However, the contribution of the various CH4 sources and sinks to these changes is still a matter of debate. Contemporaneous stable CH4 isotope records in ice cores provide additional boundary conditions for assessing changes in the CH4 sources and sinks. Here we present new ice core CH4 isotope data covering the last 160,000 years, showing a clear decoupling between CH4 loading and carbon isotopic variations over most of the record. We suggest that d13CH4 variations were not dominated by a change in the source mix but rather by climate- and CO2-related ecosystem control on the isotopic composition of the methane precursor material, especially in seasonally inundated wetlands in the tropics. In contrast, relatively stable d13CH4 intervals occurred during large CH4 loading changes concurrently with past climate changes implying that most CH4 sources (most notably tropical wetlands) responded simultaneously.

Estimativa da poluição emitida pelos ônibus das linhas troncais da cidade de Uberlândia, MG

The transport of people and goods contributes to the deterioration of the environment in urban areas because of the generation of pollution, such as, air, noise, soil, water or visual degradation. The heavy vehicles that use diesel as fuel are mainly responsible for the emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM), contributing to participation of the transport sector in air pollution. In addition, there is emission of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) whose main component is carbon dioxide (CO2). In most major cities, public transportation is often considered as a less polluting alternative compared to the private vehicle, in view of the potential to reduce, per passenger, the emissions of GHG and air pollutants. The study area was the city of Uberlândia and the objects of study were the trunk lines of the Sistema Integrado de Transporte (SIT). The emissions of NOx, PM and CO2 were estimated through the bottom-up approach which used the route of each bus line and also fuel consumption obtained through simulation from the TSIS software. The software has some result limitations, there are no report about the emission of pollutants by bus, and it is not able to change specifications for the fuel used by the fleet. The results obtained through calculations of pollutants and GHG emission by the bottom-up approach show that the emission is higher when using fuel comsuption obtained in simulation than using distance. For the results considering fuel and distance there was a reduction in emissions comparing ethanol and diesel.

Carbon Inputs from Miscanthus Displace Older Soil Organic Carbon Without Inducing Priming Soil Carbon Sequestration Below Miscanthus

Peer reviewed

Bioenergy and climate change mitigation : an assessment

Date of Acceptance: 08/05/2014 Acknowledgements The authors are indebted to Julia Römer for assisting with editing several hundred references. Helmut Haberl gratefully acknowledges funding by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Global Change Programme), the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF, proVision programme) as well as by the EU-FP7 project VOLANTE. Carmenza Robledo-Abad received financial support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.

Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions

The views expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not represent those of a particular governmental agency or interagency body. This analysis was initiated at a Global Carbon Project meeting on NETs in Laxenburg, Austria, in April 2013 and contributes to the MaGNET program (http://www.cger.nies.go.jp/gcp/magnet.html). G.P.P. was supported by the Norwegian Research Council (236296). C.D.J. was supported by the Joint UK DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). J.G.C. acknowledges support from the Australian Climate Change Science Program. E.Ka. and Y.Y. were supported by the ERTDF (S-10) from the Ministry of the Environment, Japan.

Biochar has no effect on soil respiration across Chinese agricultural soils

Acknowledgements This work was supported by NSFC (41371298 and 41371300), Ministry of Science and Technology (2013GB23600666 and 2013BAD11B00), and Ministry of Education of China (20120097130003). The international cooperation was funded under a “111” project by the State Agency of Foreign Expert Affairs of China and jointly supported under a grant for Priority Disciplines in Higher Education by the Department of Education, Jiangsu Province, China; The work was also a contribution to the cooperation project of “Estimates of Future Agricultural GHG Emissions and Mitigation in China” under the UK-China Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN). Pete Smith contributed to this work under a UK BBSRC China Partnership Award.

Spatially explicit estimates of N2O emissions from croplands suggest climate mitigation opportunities from improved fertilizer management

Acknowledgements We are grateful to Stefan Seibert for advice on reconciling the Monfreda datasets of yield and area and the Portmann dataset for irrigated area of rice. We thank Deepak Ray and Jonathan Foley for helpful comments. Research support to J.G. K.C., N.M, and P.W. was primarily provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Institute on Environment, with additional support from NSF Hydrologic Sciences grant 1521210 for N.M., and additional support to J.G. and P.W. whose efforts contribute to Belmont Forum/FACCE-JPI funded DEVIL project (NE/M021327/1). M.H. was supported by CSIRO's OCE Science Leaders Programme and the Agriculture Flagship. Funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

In-situ infrared spectroscopy as a non-invasive technique to study carbon sequestration at high pressure and high temperature

We would like to thank EPSRC for a Doctoral Training Grant (G.A.M) and the Erasmus programme for supporting the study visit to Turin (R.W). We would also like to thank Dr. Federico Cesano for SEM/EDX measurements and for fruitful discussion. Dr. Jo Duncan is thanked for his tremendous insight during XRD interpretation.

Bioenergy and climate change mitigation : an assessment

Date of Acceptance: 08/05/2014 Acknowledgements The authors are indebted to Julia Römer for assisting with editing several hundred references. Helmut Haberl gratefully acknowledges funding by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Global Change Programme), the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF, proVision programme) as well as by the EU-FP7 project VOLANTE. Carmenza Robledo-Abad received financial support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.

(Table S1) Radiocarbon dates of organic matter from Lena Delta ice wedges

Relative to the past 2,000 years, the Arctic region has warmed significantly over the past few decades. However, the evolution of Arctic temperatures during the rest of the Holocene is less clear. Proxy reconstructions, suggest a long-term cooling trend throughout the mid- to late Holocene, whereas climate model simulations show only minor changes or even warming. Here we present a record of the oxygen isotope composition of permafrost ice wedges from the Lena River Delta in the Siberian Arctic. The isotope values, which reflect winter season temperatures, became progressively more enriched over the past 7,000 years, reaching unprecedented levels in the past five decades. This warming trend during the mid- to late Holocene is in opposition to the cooling seen in other proxy records. However, most of these existing proxy records are biased towards summer temperatures. We argue that the opposing trends are related to the seasonally different orbital forcing over this interval. Furthermore, our reconstructed trend as well as the recent maximum are consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing and climate model simulations, thus reconciling differing estimates of Arctic and northern high-latitude temperature evolution during the Holocene.

Permanent open water surfaces in central Siberia from ENVISAT ASAR wide swath data 2003/2004, link to shapefile

Permanent water bodies not only store dissolved CO2 but are essential for the maintenance of wetlands in their proximity. From the viewpoint of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting wetland functions comprise sequestration of carbon under anaerobic conditions and methane release. The investigated area in central Siberia covers boreal and sub-arctic environments. Small inundated basins are abundant on the sub-arctic Taymir lowlands but also in parts of severe boreal climate where permafrost ice content is high and feature important freshwater ecosystems. Satellite radar imagery (ENVISAT ScanSAR), acquired in summer 2003 and 2004, has been used to derive open water surfaces with 150 m resolution, covering an area of approximately 3 Mkm**2. The open water surface maps were derived using a simple threshold-based classification method. The results were assessed with Russian forest inventory data, which includes detailed information about water bodies. The resulting classification has been further used to estimate the extent of tundra wetlands and to determine their importance for methane emissions. Tundra wetlands cover 7% (400,000 km**2) of the study region and methane emissions from hydromorphic soils are estimated to be 45,000 t/d for the Taymir peninsula.

A 2.8 Ma sedimentological, geochemical and palynological record of sediment core ICDP5011-1 in Lake Elgygytgyn, NE Russia

The reliability of Arctic climate predictions is currently hampered by insufficient knowledge of natural climate variability in the past. A sediment core from Lake El'gygytgyn (NE Russia) provides a continuous high-resolution record from the Arctic spaning the past 2.8 Ma. The core reveals numerous "super interglacials" during the Quaternary, with maximum summer temperatures and annual precipitation during marine benthic isotope stages (MIS) 11c and 31 ~4-5 °C and ~300 mm higher than those of MIS 1 and 5e. Climate simulations show these extreme warm conditions are difficult to explain with greenhouse gas and astronomical forcing alone, implying the importance of amplifying feedbacks and far field influences. The timing of Arctic warming relative to West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreats implies strong interhemispheric climate connectivity.

Relative abundance of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea in bacterial mat Cascadia margin off Oregon

The microbially mediated anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) is the major biological sink of the greenhouse gas methane in marine sediments (doi:10.1007/978-94-009-0213-8_44) and serves as an important control for emission of methane into the hydrosphere. The AOM metabolic process is assumed to be a reversal of methanogenesis coupled to the reduction of sulfate to sulfide involving methanotrophic archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) as syntrophic partners which were describes amongst others in Boetius et al. (2000; doi:10.1038/35036572). In this study, 16S rRNA-based methods were used to investigate the distribution and biomass of archaea in samples from sediments above outcropping methane hydrate at Hydrate Ridge (Cascadia margin off Oregon) and (ii) massive microbial mats enclosing carbonate reefs (Crimea area, Black Sea). Sediment samples from Hydrate Ridge were obtained during R/V SONNE cruises SO143-2 in August 1999 and SO148-1 in August 2000 at the crest of southern Hydrate Ridge at the Cascadia convergent margin off the coast of Oregon. The second study area is located in the Black Sea and represents a field in which there is active seepage of free gas on the slope of the northwestern Crimea area. Here, a field of conspicuous microbial reefs forming chimney-like structures was discovered at a water depth of 230 m in anoxic waters. The microbial mats were sampled by using the manned submersible JAGO during the R/V Prof. LOGACHEV cruise in July 2001. At Hydrate Ridge the surface sediments were dominated by aggregates consisting of ANME-2 and members of the Desulfosarcina-Desulfococcus branch (DSS) (ANME-2/DSS aggregates), which accounted for >90% of the total cell biomass. The numbers of ANME-1 cells increased strongly with depth; these cells accounted 1% of all single cells at the surface and more than 30% of all single cells (5% of the total cells) in 7- to 10-cm sediment horizons that were directly above layers of gas hydrate. In the Black Sea microbial mats ANME-1 accounted for about 50% of all cells. ANME-2/DSS aggregates occurred in microenvironments within the mat but accounted for only 1% of the total cells. FISH probes for the ANME-2a and ANME-2c subclusters were designed based on a comparative 16S rRNA analysis. In Hydrate Ridge sediments ANME-2a/DSS and ANME-2c/DSS aggregates differed significantly in morphology and abundance. The relative abundance values for these subgroups were remarkably different at Beggiatoa sites (80% ANME-2a, 20% ANME-2c) and Calyptogena sites (20% ANME-2a, 80% ANME-2c), indicating that there was preferential selection of the groups in the two habitats.

Characteristics of samples obtained during Pokhodsk 2012-2013 campaigns in the joint Russian-German POLYGON Project

Polygonal tundra, thermokarst basins and pingos are common and characteristic periglacial features of arctic lowlands underlain by permafrost in Northeast Siberia. Modern polygonal mires are in the focus of biogeochemical, biological, pedological, and cryolithological research with special attention to their carbon stocks and greenhouse-gas fluxes, their biodiversity and their dynamics and functioning under past, present and future climate scenarios. Within the frame of the joint German-Russian DFG-RFBR project Polygons in tundra wetlands: state and dynamics under climate variability in Polar Regions (POLYGON) field studies of recent and of late Quaternary environmental dynamics were carried out in the Indigirka lowland and in the Kolyma River Delta in summer 2012 and summer 2013. Using a multidisciplinary approach, several types of polygons and thermokarst lakes were studied in different landscapes units in the Kolyma Delta in 2012 around the small fishing settlement Pokhodsk. The floral and faunal associations of polygonal tundra were described during the fieldwork. Ecological, hydrological, meteorological, limnological, pedological and cryological features were studied in order to evaluate modern and past environmental conditions and their essential controlling parameters. The ecological monitoring and collection program of polygonal ponds were undertaken as in 2011 in the Indigirka lowland by a former POLYGON expedition (Schirrmeister et al. [eds.] 2012). Exposures, pits and drill cores in the Kolyma Delta were studied to understand the cryolithological structures of frozen ground and to collect samples for detailed paleoenvironmental research of the late Quaternary past. Dendrochronological and ecological studies were carried out in the tree line zone south of the Kolyma Delta. Based on previous work in the Indigirka lowland in 2011 (Schirrmeister et al. [eds.] 2012), the environmental monitoring around the Kytalyk research station was continued until the end of August 2012. In addition, a classical exposure of the late Pleistocene permafrost at the Achchaygy Allaikha River near Chokurdakh was studied. The ecological studies near Pokhodsk were continued in 2013 (chapter 13). Other fieldwork took place at the Pokhodsk-Yedoma-Island in the northwestern part of the Kolyma Delta.