Assessing bioplastics biodegradability by standard and research methods: Current trends and open issues

Bioplastics are currently and increasingly used as substitutes of conventional plastics; furthermore, they are mainly utilised in order to cope with problems related to plastic-based pollution. Certified international standard methods identify the criteria a bioplastic must comply with in order to be labelled as compostable and/or biodegradable. In addition, this is particularly the case when operating under the conditions that are expected in full-scale waste facilities. However, biodegradat...

Boosting the circularity of waste management: pretreated mature landfill leachate enhances the anaerobic digestion of market waste

Adequate waste management is essential not only to ensure healthy living conditions but also to mitigate climate change. Accordingly, the research on developing strategies to boost the circularity of waste management systems is ongoing. In this context, two waste streams are concurrently managed to recover energy and materials in the present study. Specifically, real leachate collected from a full-scale mature landfill site was preliminarily treated through active filtration to remove inhibit...

Reactive and Hydraulic Behavior of Granular Mixtures Composed of Zero Valent Iron

A Review of the Hydraulic Performance of Permeable Reactive Barriers Based on Granular Zero Valent Iron

Permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) based on the use of zero valent iron (ZVI) represent an efficient technology for the remediation of contaminated groundwater, but the literature evidences “failures”, often linked to the difficulty of fully understanding the long-term performance of ZVI-based PRBs in terms of their hydraulic behavior. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the long-term hydraulic behavior of PRBs composed of ZVI mixed with other reactive or inert materials. The l...