The Emerging Issue of Solid Waste Disposal Sites Emissions in Developing Countries: The Case of Brazil

While the main concerns with municipal solid waste in developed countries like the European Union and the United States are to reduce and recycle the energy recover in order to drastically reduce the residues disposal to landfill, for developing countries the targets on waste management are much more basic. This seems to be the case in Brazil that with a new regulation, it still attempts to eradicate the inadequate waste disposal for open dumps. Thus, the aim of this paper is to depict the context, the criteria and discuss the strategies used for: the municipalities achieve the goals and adhere the plan;choice and configuration of disposal sites;and economic instruments adopted and bringing the whole scenario to discussion, including methane emissions inventory thru the case study of the Rio de Janeiro State. The Rio de Janeiro State municipal solid waste management scenario has drastically changed in last five years from 9% of residues sent to adequate destinations, to the perspective of eradication of open dumps before the end of 2014. The results indicate that only adequate disposal of waste is mandatory with the prevalence of the sanitation approach. The evidences also indicate that planning goals to reduce waste are modest and the landfill gas recover is generally accepted as the optimal solution. This paper concludes that, unless the stakeholders add to the plan a more aggressive policy to increment, the competitiveness of other waste technologies that favor the landfilling reduction and energy recover, Rio de Janeiro State will face the increase of landfill numbers and sizes, management cost, environmental and leachate impact, post-closure care expenses, contaminating life-span, and methane emissions.

Photobioreactor of Microalgas for CO_(2) Biofixation

Microalgae are unicellular organisms capable of photosynthesis, turning sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) into rich biomass. Precisely because of this definition, in recent years various sectors have been targeting their ability to reduce CO2 emissions and the capacity of simultaneously synthesize biomass which can be later used to produce bio-fuels. Besides being considered fast-growth microorganisms, microalgae have a diverse biochemical composition with similar characteristics to traditional biomass. In this context, the present work aimed to evaluate the biofixation of CO2 by the microalgae Monoraphidium sp., cultivated in a closed-window type photobioreactor, as well as characterization of microalgal biomass produced in relation to the total lipid content (TL), lipids converted into biodiesel (LCB), carbohydrates and proteins. The results achieved showed that the best result was obtained after 24 h of cultivation, where for each gram of biomass produced approximately 1.2 g of CO2 were consumed. In the growth phase the average biomass productivity in the Janela photobioreactor was 58 mg·L-1·day-1 concluding that microalgae culture systems could be coupled to the chimneys of large industries emitters CO2 using this gas, resulting from combustion processes, in the process of photosynthesis. The biomass Monoraphidium sp. produced had a content of lipids converted into biodiesel of approximately 8.36% ± 2.69%, carbohydrates 32% ± 3.37% and proteins 34.26% ± 0.41%.