Atmospheric pollution: the bio-economy for the Indian system

The atmospheric pollution and the consequent climate changes affect the environmental and social balances worldwide. The commitments of the governments are insufficient to achieve the goals set by the Paris Agreement. In Europe, a Green New Deal is being discussed and in India a National Program for clean air is at the center of attention. In addition to the main strategies, it will be useful to spread good practices of sustainable development. This is also one of the main goals set by the Enabling Project coordinated by FederUnacoma and Itabia

The effects of air pollution are evident worldwide according to the forecasts, unheard for years, of the international scientific community. The global climate crisis is progressively worsening with more frequent extreme events such as droughts and floods, hurricanes and fires, ice melting, the rising of sea and ocean waters, desertification and so on. All these events have a huge impact not only on the environmental level but also on the social one. According to a survey published by the World Bank, if concrete actions of climate mitigation and sustainable development are not implemented, in the next few years there will be massive migratory flows of about 145 million people. In order to address all these emergencies, the current commitments declared by the various States are insufficient to center the goals of the Paris Agreement (2015) to contain the global temperature increase below 2. As illustrated in the program document presented by the new President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, among the priorities set by the new European executive is the Green New Deal, an ambitious strategy to turn Europe into a continent with a minimum climate impact. To this end, the EU will promote international negotiations to ensure that the other important world economies are involved in the mitigation of climate changes. An exemplary context, where urgent interventions are necessary and require concrete actions is India, where the environmental issues are intertwined with the demographic ones. The Indian Ministry of the Environment announced, at the beginning of 2019, the first National Program for clean air. This is a five-year plan to drastically reduce polluting emissions. A large part of the Indian population (1 billion and 370 thousand inhabitants) suffer from a strong air pollution, which is out of control in the main cities. According to the data supplied by the World Health Organization, today India is one of the countries with the worst air quality in the world and its high levels of smog lead to serious deceases and deaths (more than one million per year). In the vast Indian territory are located 14 out of the15 most polluted cities on a global scale. This huge problem, such as that of water emergency (with water shortages in the south and floods in the north part of the country), should be faced with sustainable development plans. The push towards the economic growth, supported by the current government, should direct the production system towards the highest decarbonisation of the economy by promoting energy production from renewable sources and the use of natural resources for a bio-based industry. Instead, India not only makes a large use of fossil fuels (45% of coal used worldwide) but it dissipates large a­moun­ts of resources as the farmers burn residual biomass from agriculture directly in the field to prepare sowing, thus ignoring government regulations. According to the governmental monitor SAFAR, satellite photos capture on a daily basis the images of numerous fires, which contribute to aggravate the pollution in New Delhi and in other urban centers. A perspective of circular economy would suggest to exploit these biomasses by avoiding fires in the field and directing them to more useful uses that could also increase the income of the farmers themselves. Fortunately today, around the world, there is no lack of virtuous industrial models for a rational use of residual agricultural biomass, from which it is possible to take inspiration. Starting from this aspect, the H2020 ENABLING Project, coordinated by FederUnacoma and Itabia, has set the objective to identify and spread the best practices produced by companies, that starting from the exploitation of the residual biomass are able to produce and trade, within the broad sphere of bio-economy, a wide range of innovative and environmentally friendly materials. As an example, with regard to the Indian situation, two case studies concerning the use of herbaceous and wooden residues are reported below.

The first case regards Presspaglia, an Italian company operating in the green building sector with the production of bio-bricks obtained from wheat combined with other components (e.g. clay). From the exploitation of a by-product available in large quantities throughout Southern Italy, and particularly in Puglia, an innovative technological material has been developed for the building sector, contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gases and to the improvement of people’s quality of life. This company, founded in 2012, is therefore able to have a positive impact on the building sector by improving energy efficiency and by activating forms of circular bio-economy. For these reasons, the company has received several awards “for the ability to offer local and renewable artifacts with a constant attention to reducing the impacts along the entire life cycle of products”. All products are renewable, recyclable and biodegradable in case of disposal.

The second case is that of Fiusis (in Puglia), a thermoelectric power plant with a power of 1 MW which is fed exclusively with the pruning of olive trees cultivated in the area surrounding the plant. To this end, more than 2,000 local farms are involved in the supply plan of the powerplant and, as a consequence, they cease to burn the residual biomass from their olive trees in the field. Thanks to Fiusis, the combustion of these biomasses (about 10,000 tons per year) is carried out through sophisticated technologies that allow – as certified by the ARPA Puglia (Regional Agency for the Protection of the Environment) – to contain emissions well below the limits set by the law, with values corresponding to half of the national minimum average. Furthermore, Fiusius’ CEO Marcello Piccinni is creating the conditions to bring back the ashes from biomass combustion in the fields. 

Still in the issue of the exploitation of the agricultural biomass, a relevant front – on which in Italy several interesting research lines are being developed – is that of the anaerobic digestion to obtain bio-gas and bio-methane even from poorly fermentable matrices, such as lignocellulosic ones. The increase of the overall efficiency of the anaerobic digestion is the subject of many research activities, technological development, and demonstrations that the ENEA (National Agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development) carried out in the Biomass and  Technologies for Energy Laboratory directed by Vito Pignatelli. In this perspective, an experimental platform has recently been created on the advanced processes of the anaerobic digestion on a scale useful for preliminary assessments of the technical and economical feasibility of projects.

The experimental platform is currently composed of a pilot CSTR digester with a 1 m³ volume from an experimental device with pulsed electric fields, aimed at increasing the production of bio-gas from biomasses with a high content of lignocellulosic material. This technological system is equipped with other sampling points to allow an accurate evaluation of the fermentation processes that are being studied.

In the future, ENEA’s research will go further and the platform will be implemented with the addition of other components, including an electrolyser powered by photovoltaic panels to produce  hydrogen and used for the scale-up of biological methanation processes (conversion in methane of the CO2 contained in the bio-gas) by specific micro-organisms or microbial consortia.

The ENEA experimental platform on advanced processes of anaerobic digestion will therefore represent a flexible and modular system, able to experiment different and innovative process configurations, by testing technological solutions that can be proposed on the international market for a possible upgrading of the existing plants.

In conclusion, relevant pushes towards a sustainable development can come from the agricultural sector through innovative forms of circular economy. All this is being successfully tested and implemented in Italy and it could also be applied in other countries, such as India.