Browsing by Subject "optimisation"

The plastic pollution has become a massive problem in the Arctic, affecting aquatic, and terrestrial ecosystems, the cryosphere, and the atmosphere. One of the solutions proposed by the Arctic Council is to improve waste management by using renewable and sustainable materials. This is where bioplastics reveal their importance. They can be bio-produced by microorganisms from organic waste, they are biodegradable and can be reused. Their production relies on a circular economy system making it sustainable. Here lies the relevance of developing the bioplastic bioproduction and technology. The present research focused on the development of a specific production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) from organic waste, in collaboration with the start-up Dionymer (Bordeaux, France). First, the purpose of the study was to up scale the process from the fermentation of chemical volatile fatty acids in flasks (400 mL culture medium) to 2 L bioreactors (BR) by characterizing the main differences in the two processes. Secondly, the research consisted in implementing and testing different set-up for the BR to enhance and improve bioplastic and biomass yields, including aeration and agitation. The characterization of the culture parameters differences between BR and flask pointed out; a higher viscosity of the medium at the end of the process, a darker PHA product and a lower final optical density (OD) (8 versus 12) respectively. Secondly, the focus was on the increase of the OD in BR and finding the origin of the stress, to do so, the following parameters were tested; - three aerations strategies; pO2<10%, <20% and >20%; - two agitations blades; marine and Rushton with baffles; - two aerations spargers; circular and micro. The results revealed that; the pO2 needs to be higher to 20% and it may be linked with the reduction of stress induced to the cells; the marine blades increased the OD and reduced the medium viscosity; the impact of the micro sparger seemed to improve aeration and tent to be very sensitive to antifoam agent that reduced the aeration of the medium. So far, the optimum BR set-up seemed to include the use of marine blades and a pO2 above 20%. More experiments of optimization still need to be performed to unsure a stable and higher production performance.

The aim of this work is to develop and optimise an atmospheric inverse modelling system to estimate local methane (CH4) emissions in peatlands. Peatlands are a major source of CH4 regionally in boreal areas and they have significance on a global scale as a soil carbon storage. Data assimilation in the inverse modelling system is based on an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) which is widely used in global and regional atmospheric inverse models. The EnKF in this study is an implementation of the EnKF used in the global atmospheric inversion model CarbonTracker Europe-CH4 (CTE-CH4) applied to local setting in the peatland. Consistency of the methodology with regional and global models means that it is possible to expand the system in scale. Siikaneva fen in Southern Finland is used as a testbed for the optimisation of the system. Prior natural CH4 fluxes in Siikaneva are acquired from the HelsinkI Model of MEthane buiLd-up and emIssion for peatland (HIMMELI) which simulates exchange of gases in peatlands. In addition to the peatland fluxes, anthropogenic fluxes at the site are estimated as well in the inversion. For the assimilation of atmospheric CH4 concentration observations, the CH4 fluxes are transformed into atmospheric concentration with a simple one-dimensional box model. The optimisation of the system was done by changing parameters in the model which affect the data assimilation. In model optimisation tests it was discovered that the performance of the modelling system is unstable. There was large variability in the produced estimates between consecutive model runs. Model evaluation statistics did not indicate improvement of the estimates after the inversion. No exact reason for the unstability was able to be determined. Posterior estimates of CH4 fluxes for years 2012–2015 did not differ much from prior estimates and they had large uncertainty. However, evaluation against flux measurements showed reasonable agreement and posterior concentration estimates were within the uncertainty range of the observed concentration.