Table of contents

Materials and their role in a circular economy: engineering applications

Sustainable development depends on significant improvements in the efficient use of resources. It requires a holistic global life cycle perspective from producers to end consumers, especially in a closed loop fashion. Consequently, communities, governmental and business organisations have sought methods for the reuse, recycling, remanufacturing and recovery of products and materials, thereby extending their useful life and reducing quantities of waste. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target "doing more and better with less", which means that decreasing resource utilization, degradation, and pollution along the entire life cycle, together with an increase in lifestyle quality, can improve the social benefits of economic activities. The resulting paradigm shift has been popularly and broadly termed as the circular economy (CE).

The series of International Conferences on Resource Sustainability (icRS) allows researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas on latest development in resource sustainability. icRS 2021 virtually held from University College Dublin (Ireland), 6^th in the series, aims to provide rich opportunities for collaboration between researchers and industrial practitioners in order to advance the critical role of materials in CE as it pertains to underdeveloped, developing and developed economies. At icRS 2021, we will particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions that involve natural sciences, and engineering applications.

List of Conference Chairs, Local Organizing Committee, Program Committee, Award Committee, Advisory Committee, Scientific Committee are available in this pdf.

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering have been peer-reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.

• Type of peer review: Single-blind

Single-blind reviewing.

117 submitted full conference papers were reviewed independently by the 30 members of the scientific committee. The six members of the local organising committee also helped with the review process. The acceptance was granted to the papers with the positive reply of two independent reviewers. The reviewers were asked to rate each manuscript with regards to the following criteria: technical, presentation, quality, and English language. The submissions with low ratings were rejected with some comments to improve for their future publication endeavours in other avenues. 10 papers were desk rejected by the conference science committee chair and co-chair due to being out of scope. In 69 instances, the submitted papers were asked to be revised and submitted for another round of reviews. The second round of the review process was conducted by the chairs of various icRS2021 committees to make sure that the comments of the original reviewers were considered by the authors.

• Conference submission management system:

Aventri

• Number of submissions received:

117

• Number of submissions sent for review:

107

• Number of submissions accepted:

73

• Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received X 100):

62%

• Average number of reviews per paper:

2

• Total number of reviewers involved:

36

• Any additional info on review process: -

• Contact person for queries:

• Name : Pezhman Ghadimi Affiliation: University College Dublin Email : icrs2021dublin@gmail.com

Upcycling – creation or modification of a product from used or waste materials, components, and products for higher quality or value – incorporates multiple strategies for increasing material efficiency and provides other environmental, economic and social benefits. With a growing concern for the environment, the past few years have seen a growth of upcycling practitioners and businesses, yet despite such a growth, upcycling largely remains a niche and requires scaling-up to have a significant impact on the environment and society. For scaling up upcycling, several promising interventions have been suggested. This paper evaluates two of these: community event and upcycling plaza. Two case studies (on "Art with Upcycling" co-creation family event in Leicester, UK, and Seoul Upcycling Plaza in Seoul, South Korea) have been conducted using questionnaire, observation and interview studies. The results show that the community event made positive psychological impact on participants, and that many programmes run by the upcycling plaza were perceived as successful by stakeholders. Based on the aforementioned positive impact, these two interventions are recommended for prototyping, piloting and monitoring in other cities and countries for scaling up global upcycling.

Cementitious wastes generate at an increasing rate and are generally disposed of in landfills, creating harmful environmental impacts. Therefore, enhancing potential pathways to recycle such wastes is critical. In this study, two ways of introducing cementitious wastes in one-part alkaline cement binders (ACBs) are presented: as solid precursors and as activators. A mixture of fly ash and blast furnace slag as the solid precursors and a blend of thermally treated sodium hydroxide and waste glass as the alkali activator were used to cast ACBs by just adding water similar to ordinary Portland cement. Glass powder-based activator showed 70% of efficiency in creating crystalline sodium silicate which dissolves in the binder phase to enhance the production of hydration products. Reasonable compressive strengths of the hardened paste were reported resulting in a dense microstructure with the curing age. Therefore, in this study, the increasing involvement of cementitious wastes in one-part ACBs is confirmed.

This paper reviews potable water issues affecting river dwelling communities and assesses the use of Rainwater Harvesting techniques to help meet potable water requirements. The study specifically explores river communities on the periphery of the city of Belem, where there is no potable mains water supply. This interdisciplinary study reviews the socioeconomic context of the different organisational stakeholders as well as analysing technical data to ascertain the effectiveness of the systems in practice. Surveys indicate nearly half of residents consume water from sources potentially contaminated by raw sewage and mining effluent with detrimental impacts to public health. This paper reviews previous local studies and describes ongoing attempts to derive locally appropriate rainwater collection and treatment processes. This includes attempts to construct and trial organic material-based rainwater filters that comprise of different mixes of sand, gravel and activated carbon derived from by-products of local fruit processing industries, namely acai harvesting.

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management Systems are constantly changing and innovating around the world. Thus, this work aimed to develop a methodology that allows identifying and understanding the main drivers, barriers and possible pathways for innovative waste management that accelerate the urban sustainability transition and how the political, social and institutional factors can impact operational, economic and environmental indicators in a municipality. The work was developed through a case study in the city of São Paulo (Brazil). It made it possible to identify the main actors involved in the processes of elaboration and conduct of public waste management policies, as well as operational impacts (97.79% of waste sent landfill), economic (US$126,51/ton.msw) and environmental (370.06 kg CO2eq/ton.msw), contributing to the definition of criteria for the construction of Integrated Solid Waste Management methodology. The results also made it possible to highlight guidelines and practices for the improvement of MSW public policies.

Research on Industry 4.0 has only begun to analyse its environmental and social impacts, while technological and economic analyses dominate the current academic debate. However, merging the current debate for a more sustainable industrial value creation with the developments in the context of Industry 4.0 is vital given its benefits beyond merely economic considerations. In response to the scarcity of extant research, this paper analyses research publications and gives insights using an empirical approach. Qualitative-empirical data from 33 expert interviews within German manufacturing enterprises are used to extend the current state of literature in this field. In particular, company-internal and company-external benefits from an environmental and ecological point of view are uncovered, along with drivers and requirements to approach the potentials. Further, the results are discussed against the background of extant publications in the field. The paper closes with recommendations for managerial practice and suggestions for future research.

Sewage sludge management is a pivotal process in the path toward sustainability, broadening the scope of wastewater treatment from removing pollutants to recycle and recover resources. Water utilities can choose among several management options and treatment technologies. The paper focuses on the possible influence of civil society stakeholders on the decision-making process of water utilities, and to investigated it, inductive case studies were conducted in Italian water utilities adopting different management options. The analysis allowed us to capture the richness of observations and make interesting variables possible shaping the relationship emerged, as the role of regulatory uncertainty. The first results show how the investigated water utilities look at other Countries for robust solutions and select the less risky in terms of civil society's acceptance. Communication and involvement of civil society appear to be an important asset to mitigate possible negative relationships.

The aim of this paper was to discuss the use of Life Cycle Cost (LCC) in the assessment of electricity generation systems. To that end, it was conducted a systematic literature review. EndNote, Mendeley and Excel spreadsheets were used to manage references, while the VOSviewer and Microsoft Power Business Intelligence software tools were used to create visual maps. Europe seemed to stand out regarding the number of studies, while there was a lack of LCC studies in America, Asia and Oceania. Concerns seem to have switched from being only about the source for producing electricity to how to diversify the energy system including renewable energy in the energy mix. Overall, there seems to be a shortage of recent studies regarding the LCC of electricity generation systems, which requires further contributions to enable better decision-making.

Additive manufacturing (also referred to as 3D printing) technologies have found applications in a wide range of industries such as aerospace and automobile, due to their superior manufacturing capability and design freedom enabled by the layer-wise fabrication method. Over the past decade, the adoption of additive manufacturing has evolved from rapid prototyping and tooling to rapid manufacturing of end-use products, which, on the other hand, introduced new challenges for reducing the environmental impacts and enhancing resource sustainability of additive manufacturing from a lifecycle perspective. In current literature, some research efforts have been conducted on waste recycling aiming to close to material loop and relieve the environmental consequences caused by both pre- and post-consumer wastes generated from additive manufacturing. This article provides an overview of the state-of-the-art on additive manufacturing waste recycling and identifies critical gaps for future research in this field.

Accelerated mineral carbonation is a promising CO₂ sequestration technology that is strongly linked to concepts of sustainability and Green Chemistry, and its process requirements apply principles of reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, and materials characterization. The present work aimed to develop educational tools for including accelerated mineral carbonation in chemical engineering curricula. To this end, an experimental investigation laboratory procedure and a design project outline have been conceived. As a way to further engage students in this learning experience, the process conditions for the laboratory work are varied between groups of students, and the experimental data obtained are pooled to be used by every group for the subsequent design exercise. This is meant to give students motivation to generate accurate data that they knew would be useful for the entire class and, at the same time, provide students with the opportunity to use data generated by colleagues, much in the same way the design work is done in the industry. In the design project, students use the experimental data obtained by themselves and classmates on the accelerated mineral carbonation of wollastonite, to determine if this is a feasible process for industry to sequester carbon dioxide, in view of mitigating climate change. Also, they use the experimental data, acquired using a range of process conditions, to study the effect of the process variables (CO₂ pressure and mixing rate) on the carbonation kinetics and mass transfer rate. The focus of our previously published article was on the experimental investigation, while the focus of this conference paper is on the design project.

Climate change, globalization or marine debris are on the spot of concerns for the most society. Particularly, fisheries are impacted by these and other issues. On the framework of the European Atlantic area, NEPTUNUS project (EAPA_576_2018) tries to provide opportunities for the transition to the circular economy of the seafood and aquaculture sectors by means of a consistent methodology for products eco-labelling and defining eco-innovation strategies. Furthermore, this project will provide key actions for resource efficiency based on life cycle thinking and the nexus water-energy-food, incorporating producers, policy makers and consumers in the decision-making process. This review addresses, therefore, the threats and challenges of the current Atlantic fisheries, the methodologies and actions to be face them and the expected results of the NEPTUNUS project

Electrification is often highlighted as the future for transportation sector as it is considered as a zero-tailpipe emission. However, environmental impacts related to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) exist. The aim of this article is to identify the trade-off between batteries' weight and vehicle's autonomy from an environmental perspective in the BEVs' development as electrified mobility will consume more critical materials but reducing tailpipe emissions. Thus, a focus on climate change and resources has been done using a life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Large vehicles (D-segment) for BEVs and their fossil thermic counterparts have been assessed for two time horizons (2019, 2030) in Europe. Our linear programming world energy-transport model, TIAM-IFPEN, has been used in order to assess demand and import dependency on materials through to 2050. Results show that BEVs can generate higher impacts than their inherent conventional ones and that criticality assessment should be done in order to get a complete view of BEVs' deployment.

Concrete containing primary raw resources such as sand and gravel can be replaced by recycled aggregate concretes (RAC). But recycling processes are energy-consuming and thus energy resources are consumed. To investigate the resource consumption and overall environmental impact related to the life cycle of RAC, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to compare ten RAC foundation structures with two foundation structures containing just natural aggregate (NA). This paper presents the characteristics of two types of RAC for the foundation with various replacement rates of NA (30%, 50%, 100%). Various concrete mixtures were designed with the three replacement ratios of natural gravel, the two amount of cement and the two effective water-cement ratios. Unsurprisingly, the NA foundation structures have smaller crude oil consumption. The NAC I 16/20 foundation consumed 84 kg of crude oil. Contrarily, this foundation has the biggest consumption of natural aggregate (7.6 t). Moreover, the RAC foundation structures have beneficial impacts in the Metal depletion category. For example, the impact of the RAC I C30_V1 foundation is -31,7 kg Fe eq. Most of the RAC foundation structures demonstrated the overall environmental impact lower than NA foundation structures, suggesting that RAC could be suitable replacements for standard concretes.

Bioenergy is a renewable energy obtained from biomass and its main benefits are the reduction of greenhouse gases and the reduction of waste disposal. A common problem in feasibility analysis is the biodigester location due to biomass availability and its spatial dispersion. Therefore, decisions regarding to biodigester location is an important aspect of feasibility design when multiple biomass producers are involved in clusters. Studies in this research field of biodigester location address different methodologies, such as mathematical programming, multicriteria approach, scenario analysis, and Geographic Information System (GIS). This paper presents the state-of-the-art in the biodigester location decisions considering clustering situations. To accomplish that, a systematic literature review using Prisma approach was carried out. As results, a set of feasibility opportunities was arranged after reading 24 papers, allowing to identify that the main methodologies used for biodigester location decisions were mathematical programming (41,16%), followed by multicriteria approaches (29,16%) and GIS (12,50%).

The loss of ultrafine particles has been one of the biggest problems in mineral recovering during concentration process. One alternative to solve this problem is the use of biological raw material in processes like flotation, coagulation and flocculation, however, there are few studies related to ore treatment involving the bioflocculation process. This research aims at a study of the processing of ultrafine hematite particles using the biosurfactant extracted from the yeast Candida stellata. The bioflocculation experiments will be evaluated by jar-test assay, evaluating the influence of parameters like pH, solid concentration and biosurfactant concentration. The interaction of the bioreagent onto the mineral surface will be evaluated by FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-red) analyzing the functional groups absorbed and surface tension measurement. This research aims as a sustainable route for the recovery of ultrafine hematite particles using a biodegradable material with high efficiency meeting with the requirements demanded for this purpose.

Conventional flotation shows low recovery of the fine particles due to the low probability of bubble-particle adhesion and collision, what can be solved with the electroflotation process. Electroflotation uses oxygen and hydrogen microbubbles (<100µm) generated from water electrolysis. In addition, this process can become a biotechnology using a biosurfactant. The present work aims to evaluate the recovery of hematite fine particles from an iron ore using the electroflotation process with a biosurfactant obtained from Rhodococcus opacus. The tests were conducted with an iron ore (-38+20μm) in a Partridge-Smith modified electroflotation binary cell. The parameters used in these tests were current density (16 mA/cm²), agitation (300rpm), electrolyte concentration (0.2mol/L), conditioning time (5min) and flotation time (10 min). The pH range between 3 and 11, biosurfactant concentration (50 to 800mg/L) were evaluated and up to now, the results show that the electroflotation process was able to concentrate the hematite of the iron ore.

This paper deals with the task of waste energy recovery and effective price setting of waste-to-energy plants. Its main contribution is the invention of a new approach to pricing of waste disposal in a particular waste management network. This novel method, which is based on a problem of finding the Nash equilibrium, takes into account the amounts of waste production of cities, capacities of waste-to-energy plants and their locations. The best response dynamics algorithm enables the computation of Nash equilibrium for a game of waste-to-energy plants in a normal form with numerous players and multiple strategies in comparison with other standard algorithms. The algorithm is able to find the Nash equilibrium for a sufficiently big step size between possible gate fees. The results of this work are applicable in the forecasting of prices of waste-to-energy plants' services for real waste management networks.

The ecological and sustainable development of urban transportation system is critical to improving the overall quality of life and achieving the goals of climate protection and sustainable development. The study focused on factors from level of social and economic development, the quality of transport service and urban ecological environment to develop a comprehensive assessment indicator system. A novel method for evaluating the ecological sustainable transportation system based on the radial basis function neural network(RBFNN)was proposed. Results of comparative experiments between RBFNN and the conventional BP neural network (BPNN) showed that the accuracy of RBFNN was 8.3% higher than that of BPNN while the training time was 27.2s lesser and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was 0.15 smaller. In the case of Shenzhen, China, the proposed model gave a reasonable evaluation, which implied that RBFNN brought forward a new perspective for further research.

The construction industry is one of the world's largest consumers of energy (ca. 40%) and natural resources (ca. 40%). Norwegian statistical data shows that waste from construction, rehabilitation and demolition is steadily increasing. Norway alone generated approximately 1.9 million tonnes of waste in 2017, around 1% more construction waste compared to 2016. Of this, only 34% of the waste was recycled, which is 8% less than in 2016, and 34% below the EU's requirements (70% reuse and recovery of all non-hazardous construction and demolition waste). There are on-going initiatives in Norway to address this and realise 'waste free' construction sites, with an ambition to contribute towards global, national and regional environmental impact reduction targets. The aim of this paper is to discuss challenges and opportunities for waste free construction sites in Norway and lessons learnt from Norwegian fossil and emission free construction sites. This paper concludes that Norwegian waste-free construction is ambitious but possible.

One of the biggest challenges in the mineral scenario is concentrating and removing fine particles, as consequence of that, there are a high concentration of mineral inside the Ganga and this reality needs to be changed. Seeking to contribute significantly, this research used the process of DAF (dissolved air flotation), because in this process the bubbles are less than 100 µ, what is fundamental because the fines and ultrafine particles. For the pretreatment was used the biosurfactant Tanfloc SG as much as flocculant and coagulant. Other techniques such as FTIR (Fourier-Transform infrared), Zeta potential and contact angle was used to show the mineral and the biosurfactant characteristics. As a conclusion, the IEP (isoelectric point) was close to pH 8,5 for Tanfloc, but for hematite, with Tanfloc the pH went down to 5,3-6,5 and the DAF depends the biosurfactant concentration, the best results were between 140 and 175 mg/L.

This paper constructs the photoluminescent concrete pavement (PhotoCP) mixing the photoluminescent material (Strontium-Aluminate) with recycled waste glass and transparent acrylic to visible the neighbourhood streets without streetlights. The non-destructive analyses of photoluminescent materials were conducted using the X-Ray Fluorescence, X-Ray diffraction, and Scanning Electron Microscopy instruments to understand the behaviour of atoms in photoluminescent materials when they interact with radiation. The compressive strength test examined the load bearing capacity of PhotoCP. A 30cm x 230cm test bed was constructed at a neighbourhood street in Peshawar, Pakistan to assess the impact of photoluminescent materials on lighting the neighbourhood street. The non-destructive analyses and compressive strength test show that PCP specimens have good interlocking capability, structural strength and durability. The testbed experiment observed the illuminance of PhotoCP for a period of 6 to 8 hours with highest lumen intensity of 1-3 lux from sunset to 8:30 pm.

This study ventures to further sustainable manufacturing by showing how a cascade recycling approach can be utilised by a plastic cosmetic packaging company. Three reprocessing cycles were assessed from product quality, environmental, financial and social points of view. It is shown how the cascade approach did not negatively affect the quality of the produced parts and when compared to a no-recycling scenario, the proposed three-cascade recycling approach results in 28.1% less costs and 29.3% less carbon footprint. The labour increases up to a maximum of 7 hours per 50,000 products. When compared to a conventional in-house recycling scenario, the proposed approach would reduce the costs by 11.7% and the carbon footprint by 12.9%.

Design for Recycling and Design for Reuse are two different approaches which can be employed separately or concurrently. When designed for reuse, products are typically more robust in order to increase their probability to be used more than once. If reuse is not possible, it is essential that dematerialisation and recycling are applied. This study assessed the environmental impacts resulting from reusable, recyclable and dematerialised plastic cosmetic packages. Life cycle assessments of different versions were conducted, to identify what features are responsible for such impacts. Findings showed that removing components which are made from resourceful materials, and which render the package to be reusable, resulted in a 74% reduction in environmental impacts only when the packaging materials are fully recycled. Hence this study concludes that in such cases, reuse should be given prominence, as recycling would only depend on the user and the infrastructure in place.

Along with China's ambitious strategy for shale gas development, water contamination risks with shale gas extraction has aroused great attention. Meanwhile, an innovative water management mechanism called as 'River Chief System' has been popularizing around China to improve the river water quality efficiently. Could this mechanism be available in shale gas water risk management?And how could it be adapted to improve the sustainable development of shale gas?Therefore, this paper starts by a discussion on the logic of River Chief System' success and worries; then, a comprehensive examination of current multi-channel governance system of shale gas in China is presented to explore the dilemmas in its water governance; and a causal loop model is built to clarify interrelations among these dilemmas. The result identifies that River Chief System's superiorities which can be learned are mainly reflected in clear responsibility, authority and multi-sectoral collaboration system. However, its temporary "campaign-style" character, over-reliant on the commitment and capability of river chief, blurred evaluation mechanism has hindered its expanding in the long run. Accordingly, 5 policy implications based on River Chief System for the sustainable improvement of shale gas is presented.

With the advantages of non-renewable energy conservation and environmental protection, solar energy technology has been widely used worldwide. Data shows that solar systems has been increasingly installed from 2006 to 2016 in Australia. However, impacting factors on Australian solar system installation remain unknown. Therefore, this paper provides a spatial regression analysis to identify the factors that influence households to install the solar panels. Solar installation maps of 2006, 2011, and 2016 are compared to investigate the changes and development of solar distribution. Besides, cluster maps are analyzed to investigate the cluster area distributions. Through analyzing statistical variables such as regression coefficient, p-value, z-value, and Moran's I value, it can be concluded that educational qualification, population, and household composition have substantial positive relevancies to the installation of solar systems. It also shows that the low solar installation cluster areas mainly distribute at the center of Australia.

Greenhouse gas emissions lead to global warming, which has been widely concerned by the international community. Further strengthening energy conservation and emission reduction is an urgent need to deal with global climate change. As a responsible big country, China has been formulating strong policies and measures to achieve the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction. Taking the evolution process of China's new energy policy as an example, based on the policy tool theory and using the content analysis method, this paper studies the structural evolution of China's new energy policy from 1995 to 2021. The results show that: (1) With the passage of time, the frequency and intensity of policy combination from the central government to local governments gradually increase; (2)In the use of new energy policy tools, Central government departments and local government departments mainly use mandatory command and control tools, supplemented by economic incentives and social autonomy tools (3) According to the different tasks of energy conservation and emission reduction, the eastern coastal provinces tend to use more applicable and flexible economic incentives, while the central and western provinces tend to use command and control tools. Based on the change trend of China's new energy policy from 1995 to 2021, this study predicts that in the next 10 years, the mandatory tools will be the first policy tools to be used, and the mixed tools and voluntary tools will be appropriately added to promote China's goal of carbon peak and carbon neutralization.

Analyzing urban land use and cover change and its influence factors are of great significance for understanding the situation of regional development and environmental constraints and for evaluating the ability of sustainable development. This paper calculates the three-dimensional ecological footprint and total factor productivity of research cities, these cities have significant individual differences,Yinchuan, Shizuishan, Yan 'an, Yulin, Ganzhou, Shaoguan etc. are energy resource areas and comparing to those Guangzhou, Dongguan, Wuzhong, Qingyuan etc. are non-energy resource leading cities. The HLM model is used to decompose the influencing factors of three-dimensional ecological footprint. The study shows the important role of total factor productivity in regional and urban sustainable development. Also, the study shows the inter-group differences of three-dimensional ecological footprint produced by cities with different population sizes. And the inter-group difference of urban three-dimensional ecological footprint under the influence of total factor productivity. Result shows that land, population and technology factors have different impacts on three-dimensional ecological footprint. Also, relying mainly on mining areas of energy resources and other industries dominated areas of mining land proportion and industrial structure differences did not lead to the influence of different ecological footprint, energy resource area in affecting factors, the ecological footprint is still a total factor plays the leading role of ecological rate, population and real GDP, There is no obvious negative externality effect of mining activities on the value of regional ecological products, and the regional ecological carrying capacity keeps improving.

The objectives of our study were to evaluate i) the soil fertility and fractionation of Ba, Cd, Cu, and Zn in the topsoil layer (0-0.20 m depth); and ii) production and concentration and accumulation of Ba, Cd, Cu, and Zn in the components of Eucalyptus trees at 36 months after sewage sludge (SS) application, with or without mineral P fertilizer, compared to mineral fertilization. Application of SS (at N criteria) with P increased soil organic matter and heavy metal concentrations, which were mostly bound to the oxidic and organic matter fractions. SS provided Eucalyptus production and heavy metal concentrations and accumulation in the trunk, branches, and leaves similar to mineral fertilization for high wood production. The application of SS (at N criteria) supplied with P increased soil heavy metal, fertility, and Eucalyptus production, without risk of environmental contamination.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques support environmental tools based on the growing availability of data and information, aligning the concepts of data modeling and analysis. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an environmental tool that requires a large volume of data to measure the performance of a product and to simulate the proposed scenarios to improve its performance. This research reviewed studies using AI techniques and their intersection with LCA from data mining. This study identified some AI techniques used in LCA studies. However, there is a lack of LCA literature using AI techniques, despite the benefits of integrated modeling. The results show that different AI algorithms are used to build LCA models. The AI algorithms of the studies act from the identification of the problem to the solution stage, therefore the integration between AI and LCA makes it possible to build predictive models of machine learning to enable assertiveness in decision making.

Each year renewable energy generation increases notably with solar panel installations, but these panels have a limited lifespan and will produce between 2 and 4 million metric tons of waste by 2040. Similarly, there are currently between 20 to 70 million hard-disk drives (HDDs) reaching end-of-life (EOL) annually. The circular economy (CE) strives to recycle and reuse materials that are rare and expensive to obtain, minimizing waste. However, studying the potential circularity of photovoltaics (PV) and HDDs requires various data, for instance, on the maturity of the secondhand markets. In this context, the objective of the present study is to identify the current state of secondhand PV and HDD markets. After conducting a literature review, an automated data collection process was set up for that purpose. The analysis of the literature and collected data assess the maturity of the secondhand PV modules and HDDs markets and highlight differences between them.

The expectations about the increase of solid waste generation are a global concern in order to mitigate the negative impacts caused by this scenario. Recent experiences show advantages in applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Urban Solid Waste (USW) management. Although, developing countries face many structural and governance barriers that limits the real potential of applying these technologies. This study presents a worldwide outlook about the application of AI in USW management and identifies the reality of Latin America countries in this new context. It is especially important to improve monitoring and to create data management platforms. Also, this study collaborates on the minimization of possible technological boundaries posed to Latin America region and besides, it can be considered a reference study for countries in similar conditions.

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a standardized way of quantifying the impact of a product or system on the environment. This study evaluates the environmental impact of 1 tone of clay roof tiles, produced in production plant in Serbia, defined and grouped by use of Product Category Rules (PCR). The purpose of this study is to determine: (1) life cycle stages of the product which have the major impact on the environment expressed as environmental impact categories; (2) the processes of clay roof tile production which have the most important effects on the environment also expressed as environmental impact categories. The LCA analysis has been conducted with the One Click LCA software, developed by Bionova Ltd, Finland. All processes have been modelled based on the inventory data given in the Ecoinvent database (v3.6). According to the results in this study and observed from the aspect of the product life cycle, the production process has the major impact on the environment, and from the aspect of the resources used, the major impact on the environment has the consumption of energy and the use of raw materials.

The ecosystem services approach involves classifying, describing and assessing the monetary value of natural resources in terms of the benefits that humans can derive from nature. An ecosystem services assessment has been developed and applied to the sediment management aspect of a harbour development for a scale typical for Ireland. Two sediment management techniques have been analysed for the sediment generated from dredging for the project; wetland creation and the widely practised disposal at sea. The wetland creation approach is consistent with the eco-friendly concept of 'Building with Nature' and also the circular economy. The ecosystem services assessment applied to the disposal at sea option yielded a negative overall monetary value (-€191,878/year) and the wetland creation option resulted in a positive overall monetary value (€1,403,275/year). These assessment results indicate that a 'Building with Nature' solution beneficially using dredged sediment can provide significant monetary benefit in the form of ecosystem services, for a sediment management project of this scale. This ecosystem services approach can contribute significantly to assessment of a sediment management projects and can inform stakeholders and policy makers of the benefits of 'Building with Nature' solutions.

A jet engine that works near the ground and generates high thrust at low speed can experience the flow separation from the ground surface up to its inlet and, as a result, the formation of a famous vortex. This vortex extended from the ground surface to the fan inlet is known as the inlet vortex. In the present study, a jet engine model scaled down by 1/30 relative to the real jet engine with 3 million hexahedral elements is simulated using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The obtained results agree with empirical relationships, and the inlet vortex can be analyzed in scales much lower than the original prototype. Also, the inlet vortex gets weakened by increasing free stream velocity and completely degraded at higher velocities. By understanding how this phenomenon occurs and can be dealt with, the Foreign Object Damages (FOD) such as compressor surge, fan vibration, and particle ingestion into the engine core can be prevented.

Limited water resources, especially in Iran, which has an arid/semi-arid climate, highlight the need for accuracy in managing and controlling the consumption of this vital fluid. Although many approaches have been developed to reduce Non-Revenue Water (NRW) in water distribution systems, less attention has been paid to optimal prioritization for water meter replacement. In this research, an algorithm has been presented for the purposeful replacement of customers' water meters to increase the company's revenue. Gavankola village has been selected as a rural network in northern Iran with a high NRW rate (58%) as a case study. Examining the customers' water consumption in 20 periods, it was found that after replacing the water meter, the billed metered consumption (BMC) doubled and the revenue from it increased up to 5 times. Moreover, the study of two economic indicators and NRW revealed that class C water meters are less economical than class B water meters, even though they more effectively reduce apparent losses.

This research focuses on improving the extraction of wind energy as one of the main renewable energy sources, in vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). In the current study, 5 turbine types with identical geometrical structures but with completely different blades have been analysed in various wind speeds. The numerical study was performed in two and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) modes using the finite volume method. The solution results were obtained in an unsteady state and assuming incompressible fluid flow. Also, k-? SST turbulence model was employed for modelling the turbulent flow. To ensure that the numerical results are valid, the numerical results were compared with experimental data, and it was found that the numerical and experimental results are in good compatibility. Among the simulated turbines, the S1046 airfoil had the maximum coefficient of performance, a larger operating range, and a higher average efficiency compared to other turbines. For all of the airfoils, the results showed that the coefficient of performance reduces in a specific range of rotor blade tip speed ratio. Since the 2D results were in good agreement with the 3D results, 2D simulations can be used in the designing and optimizing processes of VAWTs.