Production activities: resource, technologies, environment and impacts. Water as a natural resource. Lithosphere, fossil fuels and renewable energy. Metals. Waste: the other side of progress. Quality and certification. Environmental management system. Micro-enterprise and innovation. Bio-economy and green economy: from theory to practice. Case Study of Tuscan Micro-Enterprise.
Climate change: drivers, scenarios,mitigation strategies critical resources, critical and new material and technologies.
Lectures by A.Romani: For the teaching materials send an email to annalisa.romani@unifi.it and CC chiara.vita@pin.unifi.it
==========
Lectures by S.Alessandri: the PDF version of the slides will be available on the Moodle platform or on a shared Google drive.
The following texts can be downloaded for free from the corresponding URLs listed below:
1) IPCC, (2014) Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp.
ISBN 978-92-9169-143-2
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full_wcover.pdf
2) Raven J et al. (2005) Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide; The Royal Society
ISBN 0 85403 617 2
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf
3) Jacobson M. Z., and M.A. Delucchi (2011). Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials. Energy Policy 39, 1154–1169.
doi: 16 /j.enpol.2010.11.040,
ISSN: 0301-4215.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf
4) United Nations, Framework Convention on Climate Change, FCCC/CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1 (2015) ADOPTION OF THE PARIS AGREEMENT.
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf
5) WHO (2011)
Guidelines for drinking-water quality - 4th ed.
ISBN 978 92 4 154815 1 http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44584/9789241548151_eng.pdf?sequence=1&ua=1
The following texts and web-sites (referenced in the slides) are to be considered as supporting material:
6) Sweet WV, Kopp RE, Weaver CP, Obeysekera J, Horton RM, Thieler ER, Zervas C (2017) Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States; NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 083
ftp://ftp.library.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/NOS/COOPS/TR/TR_NOS_COOPS_083.pdf
8) Sovacool B K (2008) Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey, Energy Policy, Vol. 36, p. 2950.
https://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf
9) Vujic J., R. M. Bergmann, R. Skoda, and M. Miletic (2012). Small modular reac-
tors: Simpler, safer, cheaper? Energy 45, 288 – 295.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421200093X
10) M.A. Delucchi, and Jacobson M. Z. (2011). Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transmission costs, and policies. Energy Policy 39, 1170–1190.
doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.11.045.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf
12) Energy, transport and environment indicators, 2015 edition, Statistical books
ISSN 2363-2372
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/7052812/KS-DK-15-001-EN-N.pdf/eb9dc93d-8abe-4049-a901-1c7958005f5b
13) Good J (2006) The Aesthetics of Wind Energy, in Human Ecology Forum, Human Ecology Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 Society for Human Ecology
http://trangwww.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her131/good.pdf
14) Cordell D (2010) The Story of Phosphorus Sustainability implications of global phosphorus scarcity for food security, Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 509 - Department of Water and Environmental Studies - Linköping University - Linköping
www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:291760/FULLTEXT01.pdf
15) 7.2) Main METALS, Aluminium, Iron, Copper, Steel
See the corresponding links in "The Essential Chemical Industry Online"
http://www.essentialchemicalindustry.org/metals.html
16) CRUDE OIL, Cracking and related refinery processes
http://www.essentialchemicalindustry.org/processes/cracking-isomerisation-and-reforming.html
17) European Commission, Annex to the Report on Critical Raw Materials for the EU
Report of the Ad hoc Working Group on defining critical raw materials
May 2014
https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/eip-raw-materials/en/community/document/annex-v-report-ad-hoc-working-group-defining-critical-raw-materials
18) European Commission, REPORT ON CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS FOR THE EU
Report of the Ad hoc Working Group on defining critical raw materials
May 2014
https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/raw-materials/specific-interest/critical_en
Obiettivi Formativi
KNOWLEDGE: The following topics related to production activities will be presented: resource, technologies, environment and impacts; air and water as a natural resources; lithosphere, fossil fuels and renewable energy; metals; waste (the other side of progress); quality and certification; Ecolabel System for touristic enterprise; environmental management system; micro-enterprise and innovation; Bioeconomy and green economy (from theory to practice). Case Study of Tuscan Micro-Enterprise and touristic Tuscan Micro-Enterprise.
COMPETENCE: To understand and describe the goods and the related production processes using appropriate conceptual tools and technical language.
SKILLS: The student will be able to describe the goods in terms of economic sustainability and green production, new technologies, green technologies and quality of products and production, energy and environmental charges associated with production processes. The student will be able to classify goods; distinguish the uses and weaknesses related to the use of natural resources, the main fossil fuels and renewable energies. The student will be able to recognize the properties of metals and of air and water as resources, to evaluate environmental impacts, environmental management system and the main voluntary certification schemes of products and production.
=========
Knowledge, competences and skills related with the lectures by S.Alessandri
The keywords resources and environment, together with the particular and difficult historical period we are living through, can be considered a good starting point for a high-education action to increase today the knowledge of our global environment and the environmental awareness of the decision makers, of the technicians and of the citizens of tomorrow.
The conceptual tools the characterize who studies and works in Economy, Social Sciences, Politics, Laws and Humanities, may not include those knowledge contents, related to Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Ecology and Environmental Science and Technology that build up the core of this course, where they are presented in an understandable form, focusing on an effective communication.
A great and lasting distance, because of communication problems and reciprocal misunderstanding, may arise between the economist, the policy and decision maker, the social and the human scientist and those who study the current environmental issues. The integration between these two worlds of knowledge, between Science and Humanities, is critically low although can be evaluated as instrumental and strategic to face a near future of environmental, demographic, social and economical crisis. For this reason the first aim of this course is to give a contribution to build up a set of operative information, knowledge, competence and skills to increase the evaluation capability of the attenders and their degree of critical reflectiveness and autonomy of judgement, making them able to set a fruitful and bilateral the communication with the specialist, the engineer, the technician, the researcher and the scientist who work in those field that are becoming more and more strategic for the future of the humankind and his only home-planet.
In Summary:
1) Knowledge
1.1) How the global environment works
1.2) How, how much and in how much time the climate is changing
1.3) What are the viable mitigation strategies
1.4) What is sustainability (economical, environmental and social)
1.5) What circular economy can do
2) Competence
2.1) To know how to design sustainable tourism systems, applying the contents listed above, with special attention to the following points
2.2) Water management
2.3) Safety related issues
2.4) Energy management
3) Skills
3.1) To be able to identify the relevant, reliable, scientifically correct source of information about the listed knowledge
3.3) To be able to self-update the related relevant knowledge and to extend them according to new and unexpected findings
3.4) To be able to evaluate innovative solutions and to tune and apply them to local situations
Prerequisiti
A good knowledge and understanding of written English.
An operative knowledge of a personal connected computer and of the usual software products for navigation, word processing, calculus and presentation.
Metodi Didattici
Lectures with slides.
Visits to case-study enterprises.
Modalità di verifica apprendimento
The exam is oral and usually lasts 30 minutes.
The student has to answer three-four questions, choosen by the teachers, on the following subjects:
1) resource, materials, technologies
2) environment, impacts, pollution, global warming
3) air and water quality, safety, sanitation, processing
4) fossil fuels and renewable energies
5) metals, critical materials, critical resources
6) waste, waste processing, recycling, reusing, circular economy
7) quality and certification, Ecolabel System for touristic enterprise, environmental management system
8) Bioeconomy, green economy, sustainability, LCA, ecological footprint.
9) Climate change, mitigation strategies and tourism systems
There is no difference between attending and non-attending students.
Programma del corso
A special attention is given to the integration of the different subjects in the main theme of the design and management of tourist systems.
Within this framework the course presents issues which are and will be more and more important either for the citizen of today and of tomorrow, or for those who study or work in the field of Humanities, Economy, Social Sciences, Politics, Law, in the framework of a new vision of environmental awareness and of the challenges that such professions have and will have to face.
CONTENTS
New technologies. Introduction to the environmental chemistry.
Renewable and non-renewable natural resources. Secondary raw materials and innovative raw materials. Classification of resources and stocks. Production cycles and environmental protection.Value of the environmental resources. Sustainable development principles for resources use. McKelvin diagram and Govett triangle model.
Air as resource. Air liquid and production of nitrogen, oxygen and noble gases. Air and pollution.
Green-house effect, greenhouse gases, global warming, climate change.
The atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature: history and trends.
The sea water acidification: chemical bases and recent findings.
Glacers, circumpolar lakes and permafrost melting: recent findings and trends in CH4 atmospheric concentrations.
Greenhouse gases emission by livestock production.
Physical and chemical properties of pure water. Water cycle. Industrial uses of the water.
Desalination technologies, multiphases and multiflash plants.
Osmotic pressure and reverse osmosis. Electrodialysis.
Drinking water purification technology. Characteristics of the drinking water (organoleptic, chemical and biological).
Water pollution. Acid rains.
Ozone layer. Ozone hole.
Critcal elements: lithium, lanthanides, uranium, phosphorus
Natural and artificial radionuclides in the environment and in the human body.
How tourist systems could be involved in radiological emergencies and how to manage them.
The life cycle assessment of a nuclear power plant combined with an energy analysis.
The Life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of solar thermal and solar PV.
The comparison of greenhouse-gas emissions of different power plants: combined cycle gas-fired, oil-fired, coal-fired, geothermal high-temp., hydroelectric, wind, nuclear, solar, biogas, biomass.
Hydroelectric power plants. Run-of-the-river hydroelectricity (ROR). Small hydro.
Micro hydro. Pico hydro. Traditional hydro. Wind power plants. The quiet revolution VAWT (vertical axis helical turbine). The World most powerful wind turbine Vestas' V164-8.0 MW prototype.
Nuclear power plants. Pressuruzed-Water Reactor. Westinghouse AP1000.
The Russian VVER. Small floating plants. The Radon in the environment. Distribution, concentration, exposure, risks. Radon in caves, speleology, tourism management.
Tourist system based on the relationship between energy production and landscape shaping.
Biomass and biofuel production. Environmental temporal technology, transfers in the airline industry. District for rail technologies, high speed, safety and security.
Introduction of the quality assurance. NLP (Neuro-Lingustic-Programming).
Physical, chemical and technological characteristics of the metals.
Iron cycle production process.
The close relation between innovation and certification: an empirical analysis in the Como's silk district.
Bioeconomy and Green Economy: From Theory to Practice. Case Study of a Tuscan Micro-Enterprise.
Copper: metal characteristics and production cycle.
Aluminium: metal characteristics and production cycle.
Quality: total quality and quality assurance.