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The increase of biowaste generation has reached critical levels in many countries. The European legislation introduced the biowaste treatment and the organic recycling as central theme of its political agenda with the aim to promote the sustainable exploitation of this peculiar waste. The most utilized technologies applied to the biowaste treatment are based on the biological processes targeting to produce biogas or, more recently, biomethane to be used as fuel. The production of biomethane allows to produce a substitute of the fossil methane with a yield of about 0.07gCH4/gbiowaste; the remaining fractions are waste coming from the pretreatment/refining steps, solid digestate or stabilized compost, and leachate. The sustainable treatment of these fractions is a mandatory issue to treat the biowaste in a reliable and sustainable integrated process since their amount is more than 85% and the impact of their treatment on environment and economy of the overall treatment process can be quite relevant. This chapter focused on the so-called smart facility that integrates processes based on thermochemical processes with the biological one targeting to increase the overall sustainability, the flexibility regarding the input biowaste composition, and the independency by the external factors affecting the waste trading.

Waste-to-Energy is one of the key technologies for sustainable waste management. The book by Laura Mastellone offers a comprehensive overview of the various processes for thermal waste treatment such as incineration, pyrolysis, and gasification. It is instrumental for understanding objectives, functioning, residues, and environmental impacts of thermal processes. "Waste Management and Clean Energy Production from Municipal Solid Waste" is worthwhile reading for any expert in the field of resources and waste management.

"Gasification processes can play a key role in the clean energy production from fossil and non-conventional fuels because of its transformation in a synthetic gas (syngas) rich in hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Fluidized bed reactors, both bubbling and circulating, allow use a catalytic or reacting solid material in partial or total substitution of the bed in order to promote the dehydrogenation of the fuel. The catalyst has, depending on the operating conditions of reactor and of fuel type, a strong influence on the hydrogen yield; otherwise, the effect of catalyst add to a fluidized bed can decrease with time due to progressive deactivation. The experimental tests demonstrated that the utilization of a low-cost bed material (olivine), recognized in the literature as a good catalyst for gasification process of biomass and plastics, allows enhancing the de-hydrogenation of a polymer used as fuel (PE) by producing an hydrogen-rich syngas and a coke phase. The tests also indicated that the olivine underwent a chemical interaction with the CnHm intermediate products so that it was not capable to catalyse the de-hydrogenation process for long time because of unavoidable loss of metals diffused and linked to the carbonaceous solid (coke)."

The traditional methods for production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) utilize graphite, carbon monoxide or hydrocarbons for the construction of the carbon skeleton of CNT, and different kinds of metals as catalysts. Moreover, all these methods usually require critical operating conditions that are very expensive, and then strongly restrict the fields of applications of these nanostructures This paper reports the experimental results obtained by applying a new technique for a continuous, mass production of high-quality multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), based on fluidized bed pyrolysis of different polymers [Arena et al., 2006]. Analytical characterization of the nano-structured materials obtained by feeding polyethylene has been carried out by means of TG-DTA, SEM and TEM, Raman and X-ray. The chemical mechanism of the CNTs synthesis is also described with reference to the catalytic effect of metal nanoparticles.

In the Campania region, an area in the south of Italy with 5.7 million inhabitants and a production of about 7,900 tonnes of municipal solid waste per day, an emergency situation was created by inappropriate waste management policy and practice. In order to support decisions regarding future solutions for this crisis, reliable, transparent, and impartial strategies and concepts are needed. For this purpose, six waste management scenarios have been defined and quantitatively assessed by means of substance flow analysis (SFA). The scenarios are based on firm objectives and recent legislation for waste management and take into account regional waste production and composition as well as existing waste treatment infrastructure. They are evaluated and compared with the status quo in view of reaching the goals of waste management. For each scenario, the following material flows were quantified: wastes that would be sent to different processes, such as those of mechanical-biological treatment, incineration, or anaerobic digestion; treatment residues (in mass and volume) to be diverted to landfills; materials recoverable by recycling processes; and energy obtainable by waste-to-energy and anaerobic digestion plants. The results demonstrate that a future waste management system that is based on a combination of more recycling, thermal treatment, anaerobic digestion, and improved landfilling reaches the objectives of waste management much more closely than the present, inadequate system. ©2009 by Yale University.

Several risks impend on the environment, on public and private properties, on strategic and priceless infrastructures in any inhabited area of our planet. They are generated by different sources, both natural and anthropogenic, and have different relevance depending on the synergy between the generated events and on the peculiar interaction with the region where they break out. The evaluation of risks related to different sources is generally done through independent analyses, adopting disparate procedures and time-space resolutions. In most of cases, only qualitative estimates of the risk level are available. Such a strategy of risks evaluation has some evident major drawbacks: 1) it is difficult, if not impossible, to compare risks of different origins; 2) the implicit assumption of independence of the risk sources leads to neglect possible interactions among threats and/or ‘cascade’ effects. In practice, this means that a potential ‘multi-risk’ index could be higher than the simple aggregation of single risk indexes calculated considering each source as independent from the others. A joint analysis and quantification of all the anthropogenic and natural risks which can affect a territory (multi-risk approach) is a basic factor for the development of a sustainable environment and land use planning as well as for a competent emergency management before and during catastrophic events (Durham, 2003). Multi-risk evaluation is a relatively new field, until now developed only partially by experts with different backgrounds (engineering, statistics, seismology, toxicology etc.). Among the few works on this field we quote the UNDRO study (1977), the KATANOS report (1995), Granger et al. (1999), Van Westen et al. (2002), Ferrier and Haque (2003), Grunthal et al. (2006), Blong (2003). However the problem of interaction among different threats is not approached, even in these cases. Objective difficulties in the quantification of risk and thus of multi-risk exist. The first is that scientists of various disciplines do not use a common terminology. In some cases scientists dealing with different types of environmental risks assign different definitions even to the same term. Other difficulties are mostly due to different practices (qualitative and quantitative) and spatial and temporal resolutions that make hard the comparison among different risks. In this document, we propose a new quantitative procedure for multi-risk assessment that makes easier the comparison among different threats and accounts for possible triggering effects. We consider only the major threats typical for Southern Europe, which were the objectives of the EC FP6 NaRaS (Natural Risk Assessment) Project. Forest fires, snow avalanches, wind storms, heat waves are not specifically considered, although the general methodology we propone can be applied to evaluate risk related to these adverse events. In this part of the document, a clarification of the used terminology and a homogenization of the concepts used by the scientists and practitioners in the different risks areas are proposed. This effort does not aim at providing ‘the solution’ of the lack of homogeneity in terminology, but just at being a useful reference to clarify the meaning of the terms used here. At the end of part 1, we report the principles and rationales that stand behind our procedure for multi-risk assessment. In part 2, a short description of the most advanced procedures generally adopted to estimate individually natural and anthropogenic risks representing major threats for Southern Europe is provided. In part 3, we tackle directly the problem of multi-risk assessment applying innovative procedures and protocols to the case study of a town close to Naples (Casalnuovo). The multi-risk problem is split in two distinct phases: in a first phase, the whole set of risks is homogenized to facilitate their comparison ranking; in the second phase, we explore in detail possible “triggering” effects, showing how they can increase significantly the risk in a specific site. We want to underline that the logical sequence of the multi-risk procedure is contained in Parts 1 and 3, which are self-consistent. Part 2 contains several details on the actual way to compute different parameters. Anyway it can be omitted by readers who are interested only in the logical process we have followed. Italy and Indonesia started a cooperation project in 2005-2006 to cover issues for the mitigation of volcanic risk. In this project, the west area of Sumatra was identified as the area for intervention. In particular, the Marapi volcano was considered. This volcano has shown frequent eruptive activity over recent decades, with the last eruption occurring in 2004. Although its activity is of moderate intensity, it creates a civil protection problem, because since 1980 it has resulted in several injuries and a number of deaths among the tourists who visit the summit crater area. To monitor the activity of Marapi volcano as part of this project, a broadband seismic network has been implemented that consists of four stations based on Guralp GMG 40T sensors with period of 60 s and on GAIA2 data-loggers, which are produced at the INGV. The instrumentation was brought from Italy and was installed by a working group comprising Italians and Indonesians. In addition to the instrumentation in the field, it was necessary to set up a monitoring centre in the Bukittinggi Observatory, which is near the north-western slopes of the Marapi volcano. This is equipped with computers for data acquisition, analysis and archiving. The system for seismological monitoring that has been realized atMarapi volcano is an important tool in the prevention of the risk associated with this volcano, and it is providing a rich dataset that will be of great use for the characterization of the seismicity of the Marapi volcanic structure and the surrounding area. A preliminary analysis of the data recorded during the period 19/10/2006 - 24/11/2008 evidences that the volcano shows VT and LP seismicity. In August 2007 were also recorded signals probably attributable to small explosive activity in the summit area.