Browsing by Author "Bortone, Immacolata"

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    Discontinuous permeable adsorptive barrier design and cost analysis: a methodological approach to optimisation
    (Springer, 2017-09-19) Santonastaso, Giovanni Francesco; Bortone, Immacolata; Chianese, Simeone; Di Nardo, Armando; Di Natale, Michele; Erto, Alessandro; Karatza, Despina; Musmarra, Dino
    The following paper presents a method to optimise a discontinuous permeable adsorptive barrier (PAB-D). This method is based on the comparison of different PAB-D configurations obtained by changing some of the main PAB-D design parameters. In particular, the well diameters, the distance between two consecutive passive wells and the distance between two consecutive well lines were varied, and a cost analysis for each configuration was carried out in order to define the best performing and most cost-effective PAB-D configuration. As a case study, a benzene-contaminated aquifer located in an urban area in the north of Naples (Italy) was considered. The PAB-D configuration with a well diameter of 0.8 m resulted the best optimised layout in terms of performance and cost-effectiveness. Moreover, in order to identify the best configuration for the remediation of the aquifer studied, a comparison with a continuous permeable adsorptive barrier (PAB-C) was added. In particular, this showed a 40% reduction of the total remediation costs by using the optimised PAB-D.
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    Odorous emission reduction from a waste landfill with an optimal protection system based on fuzzy logic
    (2018-07-02) Di Nardo, Armando; Bortone, Immacolata; Chianese, Simeone; Di Natale, Michele; Erto, Alessandro; Santonastaso, Giovanni Francesco; Musmarra, Dino
    Effective landfill management and operation require an accurate evaluation of the occurrence and extent of odour emission events, which are among the main causes of resident complaints and concerns, in particular in densely urbanised areas. This paper proposes a fuzzy optimal protection system (FOPS) based on fuzzy logic to manage odour production from a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill. The case study is a MSW landfill in an old quarry site located 6 km north-west of Naples city centre (Italy). The aim is to reduce the odour nuisance in the area surrounding the landfill where there are several sensitive receptors. FOPS is based on logical relationships between local atmospheric dynamics, number and intensity of odour pollution events detected by certain fixed receptors and odour emission rate via an optimal fuzzy approach. Such system allows to start, in real time, established mitigation actions required to further reduce the odorous emissions from the landfill itself (e.g. spraying of perfumed substances and activation of extraction wells), especially when weather conditions might not be favourable and cause by causing a higher odour perception. The fuzzy system was coupled with the air pollutant transport software CALPUFF to simulate the odour dispersion in the considered area taking into account both different odour emission rates and local weather conditions. FOPS results show that this approach can be very useful as, by measuring the odour concentrations, a significant reduction of the odour exceedances over the thresholds fixed, to minimise the olfactory harassment, was observed in the whole area studied.
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    An optimized configuration of adsorptive wells for the remediation of an aquifer contaminated by multiple aromatic hydrocarbon pollutants
    (Elsevier, 2019-08-02) Bortone, Immacolata; Chianese, Simeone; Erto, Alessandro; Nardo, Armando Di; Crescenzo, C. de; Karatza, Despina; Santonastaso, Giovanni Francesco; Musmarra, Dino
    Adsorptive wells arrays are an innovative outline of Permeable Reactive Barrier (PRBs) made of a definite number of passive deep wells opportunely distributed in the aquifer, known as PAB-D (Discontinuous Permeable Adsorptive Barrier). They are generally located downstream the contaminated groundwater flow and perpendicularly to the groundwater flow direction. Being PAB-D wells filled with adsorbing media, whose hydraulic permeability is higher than the surrounding media, the array will create a targeted capture zone, which will force the contaminated water to pass through the whole PAB-D, allowing for both the interception of the contaminant plume and its treatment. In this work, an optimized configuration of PAB-D is presented, for the in situ-remediation of an aquifer simultaneously contaminated by benzene and toluene. The design optimization of the PAB-D was performed by using COMSOL Multiphysics®, in which numerical simulations reproduced the transport and the adsorptive phenomena occurring inside the aquifer and the barrier itself. The proposed technique was applied to the remediation of an aquifer located in an urban area in the north of Naples (Italy), in proximity of numerous landfills, where the contamination was spread over an area of 0.10 km2. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the PAB-D, being both pollutant plumes intercepted and their concentrations reduced below their correspondent Italian regulatory threshold values. The best array configuration of PAB-D resulted made of 741 wells, each having a diameter of 0.6 m, which was also compared with a continuous barrier (PAB-C) showing a reduction of about 49% of the volume and 35% of the overall remediation cost.
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    A scheme for anaerobic digestion modelling and ADM1 model calibration
    (Associazione Italiana Di Ingegneria Chimica (AIDIC), 2022-11-30) Liu, Yanxin; Jiang, Ying; Bortone, Immacolata
    Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a technology that produces biogas, also known as renewable natural gas, from organic waste materials under the activity of anaerobic microorganisms. In recent years, an increasing attention on energy produced from renewable resources has led to the need and development of tools helping with improving the process performance and design of AD, such as the Anaerobic Digestion Model No.1 (ADM1). ADM1 is a process-based model that can predict the biogas yield and identify potential prohibitions in the AD process from the properties of the feedstock and inoculum. Initial values of state variables and model parameters need to be calibrated when applying ADM1 to a particular feedstock. In this study, an ADM1 model using differential algebraic equations (DAE) system, called DAE ADM1, was developed. Specifically, the influence of the initial values of AD process state variables on the calibration of model stoichiometric and kinetic parameters were investigated, by comparing them with literature data, by highlighting their high impact on the model setup.