Recently, researcher’s abilities to elucidate the biogeophysical and biogeochemical mechanisms of complex biodeterioration processes occurring at monumental sites has been greatly revolutionized by use of molecular, physical and highly sophisticated so called high throughput next generation sequencing techniques. Such achievements are obvious in several areas of biotechnology and environmental science including geomicrobiological studies related to biodeterioration and bioconservation of ancient historic architectural monuments and artworks. Application of these techniques in studying architectural monuments and artworks is not just limited to predict the prevalence microbial diversity and identifying the mechanism of biodeterioration caused by inhabiting microorganisms, but also to provide in-depth molecular, biogeophysical and biogeochemical basis of how microorganisms respond to different environmental conditions to accelerate the process of biodeterioration, which in turn will offer tremendous opportunities to environmental scientists and researchers to formulate or device preventive and remedial safeguard techniques to control undesirable growth and survival of microorganisms on monuments and work of arts. Further evaluation studies and investigations are currently in progress to upgrade these molecular and physical strategies and to develop reliable approaches to better explain the various processes of biodeterioration and related phenomenon. A comprehensive description of techniques being successfully incorporated and applied in this regard is described in this review. Taken together, it can be anticipated that these techniques possess an astounding potential to turn around research related to geomicrobiological studies related to biodeterioration and bioconservation of monuments.

Eichhornia crassipes or water hyacinth is a free-floating plant, growing plentifully in the tropical water bodies. This invasive weed poses multiple hazards ranging from ecological and economical to social. It tends to endanger biodiversity, cause eutrophication, shelter pests, clog fresh waterways, affect agriculture and aquaculture, hamper shipping and recreational activities. Existing control methods have been insufficient to contain its aggressive propagation. Recently, it has been envisaged that successful utilization of this weed can solve the associated problems associated with them. It is being speculated that the huge biomass can be used in waste water treatment, heavy metal and dye remediation, as substrate for bioethanol and biogas production, electricity generation, industrial uses, human food and antioxidants, medicines, feed, agriculture and sustainable development. Towards this quest many approaches have been undertaken and partial success is achieved. If harnessed properly, this weed-based green technology can solve many of the issues our society faces now. In this context, the papers published in recent years have been reviewed, with the objective of creating public awareness and bolstering management and utilization of this cumbersome invasive weed.

The sugar industry needs to find efficient methods in clarifying the raw sugarcane juice in order to improve the quality of the clarified juice and to reduce or eliminate the usage of chemicals (lime). Conventional clarifiers use heavy equipment which lead to high operating costs and associated environmental problems. In sugar mills, ensuring the production of juice of consistently high clarity and low colour through the clarification process is a challenging task. The variations in the incoming juice characteristics due to differences in cane variety, soil and growing conditions, weather patterns and season make this task even more challenging. Membrane filtration promises superior quality juice with better clarity, much lower viscosity and noticeable colour removal. Ultrafiltration of clarified sugarcane juice can be done through spiral wound or flat sheet filtration systems using polymeric membranes or tubular filtration systems using ceramic membranes. This review evaluates the applications of membrane technology in sugar industry all over the world and the need for it in the Australian sugar industry. This is an important first step to identify the appropriate types and applications of membranes.

In this paper we present a review of Biofiltration, one of the air pollution control technologies (APCT) used to treat volatile organic compounds (VOCs) effectively. It also talks about the history of biofiltration, and also proposes few ideas for the future developments in the biofiltration research pertaining to VOC control. Moreover, the paper also discusses about various important physical, chemical and biological factors which affect the performance of a biofilter both directly and indirectly. This paper will be handier for those who are new to the field of biofiltration research for VOC treatment.

Over the last years anaerobic digestion has been successfully established as technology to treat organic wastes. The perspective of turning, through a low-cost process, organic wastes into biogas, a source of renewable energy and profit, has certainly increased the interest around this technology and has required several studies aimed to develop methods that could improve the performance as well as the efficiency of this process. The present work reviews the most interesting results achieved through such studies, mainly focusing on the following three aspects: (1) the analysis of the organic substrates typically co-digested to exploit their complementary characteristics; (2) the need of pre-treating the substrates before their digestion in order to change their physical and/or chemical characteristics; (3) the usefulness of mathematical models simulating the anaerobic co-digestion process. In particular these studies have demonstrated that combining different organic wastes results in a substrate better balanced and assorted in terms of nutrients, pre-treatments make organic solids more accessible and degradable to microorganisms, whereas mathematical models are extremely useful to predict the co-digestion process performance and therefore can be successfully used to choose the best substrates to mix as well as the most suitable pre-treatments to be applied.

Psidium cattleianum Sabine or strawberry guava is an exotic tropical plant belonging to Myrtaceae family. Generally, this ornamental shrub is prized for its aesthetic value. However, this low-profile plant is an untapped source of therapeutically relevant phytochemicals, evident from the structural investigations. The delicious tart ripe fruits can be eaten fresh, made into a plethora of food products and pectin can be extracted from the pulp. Ameliorative attributes of this shrub viz. antioxidant, antimicrobial and antiproliferative have been reported in recent times. On the other hand, this shrub has emerged as a habitat-altering pest in Hawaii, threatening the rare endemic flora. Releasing biocontrol agents into the wilderness to hinder the unchecked proliferation of this hardy shrub is being speculated and conducted, without any obvious success till now. In this mini review the industrial and pharmaceutical prospect of this little known plant will be discussed. It is believed that, this review will serve as a useful reference and encourage future research on hitherto unknown potential of this exotic plant.

Management of sewage sludge is going to be a big challenge in near future due to rapid urbanization and economic growth, in particular in Europe. The Routes project http://www.eu-routes.org (ref. # 265156) is addressed to discover new routes in wastewater and sludge treatment which allow: (a) to prepare sludge for agricultural utilization by transforming it in a very clean and stabilized product with respect to hygienic aspects and phytotoxicity; (b) to minimize sludge production by new solutions including the use of innovative processes based on metabolic uncoupling or of innovative reactors like microbial fuel cells or sequencing batch biofilter granular reactor; (c) to promote recovery of valuable materials from anaerobic digestion, i.e. biopolymers as polyhydroxyalkanoates and fertilizers; (d) to set up and prove at practical scale a novel technique for sludge disposal (wet oxidation) as sustainable alternative to the nowadays the most used incineration; (e) to minimize energy pumping by adjusting solid concentration, on a practical installation. The general objective of the Routes proposal is therefore to set up a portfolio of different solutions to be applied in different conditions and circumstances, strictly following the waste hierarchy of the EU Directive 08/98 on waste. The above solutions will be studied either in the laboratory or at practical scale, depending on the maturity of the technology, in order to provide the Commission, the technical and scientific community and end-users with applicable solutions and new routes for sludge management.

Reverse osmosis (RO) is the most preferable process for water recovery from secondary effluent (SE) because of its higher rejection of impurities with lower associated cost and higher quality of product. Fouling still is a major challenge during the water recovery due to higher contaminant loadings in SE and high rejection capability of this membrane. The presence of suspended solids, colloidal and organic matters, and high level of biological activities in SE further elevate fouling potentiality. This review was performed to identify major foulants causing hindrance in sustainable application of reverse osmosis and to present available pre-treatment options for these foulants. There are four fouling types present in RO namely; bio-fouling, inorganic/scaling, organic, and particulate fouling. Among them; bio-fouling is less understood but dominant since the pre-treatment options are not well developed. Other fouling mechanisms have been overcome by well developed pre-treatments. The major foulants for RO are dissolved and macromolecular organic substances, sparingly soluble inorganic compounds, colloidal and suspended particles, and micro-organisms. Some of these potential fouling water quality parameters (PFWQPs) are interrelated with each others such as electrical conductivity is a surrogate measure of total dissolved solids with established stable relationship. Most of these PFWQPs such as total suspended solids, turbidity, chemical oxygen demand can be removed by conventional pre-treatment; some such as colloidal particles and micro-organisms by modern options and even others such as endocrine disrupting compounds, pharmaceutical and personal care products are still challenging for current pre-treatments. These foulants need to be identified properly to integrate appropriate pre-treatments for minimizing fouling potentiality to increase water recovery at minimal costs.

Far-offshore wind turbines are attractive in view of harnessing high-speed winds and reducing impact on population. When the sea is hundreds of metres deep, drilling wind turbines down to the seabed is too expensive. Today’s bottom-mounted foundations could be replaced by floating platforms, which can minimise the lateral wave-loads acting on the wind turbine and reduce the foundation cost in deep water. Computer models capable of calculating the motion of a full floating wind turbine are at an early stage of development. An efficient strategy to minimise the computational cost is also lacking. This contribution highlights how the motion of a floating wind turbine, and its interaction with the ocean, can be predicted by means of computer-model simulations.

Mechanical–biological treatment (MBT) plants treat municipal solid waste (MSW), residual after source separation, with the aim to minimize the environmental impact associated with the residues landfilling and to add values to waste outflows for a potential utilization. MBT consists in a combination of mechanical processes (shredding, size, density and magnetic separation, densification, etc.) and biological treatment (aerobic or anaerobic degradation) of the organic fraction mechanically separated. In this work a review regarding the MBT input and outputs characterization is presented with the aim to evaluate the quality of them and the effectiveness of MBT plants to produce materials that can be utilized for material/energy recovery. A strong variability of the different flows characteristics, mainly due to the heterogeneity of the input MSW and to the different configurations of processing units employed in MBT plants, was highlighted. Therefore most suitable end-uses or disposal for the MBT outputs are site-specific and should be related to prior detailed characterizations of the materials able to identify specific quality classes defined by proper technical standards.