Leaving Trains and Airplanes

Saturday, June 13^th, 2015 7:38 am

It could be almost any Saturday morning, from the way the ambulances blast their EDM sirens, from the way the low, dull horn of the cruise ships making port resounds around the old stone walls. My eyes are heavy, rimmed with dark circles as I blink from the bright. It is almost refreshing to open the window and let the warm morning air hit me like a freight train. The city screams with activity: a Ryanair plane lands over the port: car horns blare their angry yells.

I feel the rush: the voices in my ears telling me to go and look and see before the sand falls from the hourglass, and I board a plane to another new place.

Saturday, June 13^th, 2015 7:26 pm

"I’m standing here –uhm- on the edge of a cliff where the Sella Del Diavolo is. The ocean, right where it breaks, right where it turns into waves that slam the rocks below, is the exact same and perfect color of someone’s eyes. Everything I’ve seen today I just want to share with you. I want to take you on this hike, so that you can see what I see, so that you can feel what I feel.

So we’ve been walking for almost an hour now: it would be I guess a hike if there wasn’t a massive trail marked with spray-painted green dots paving our way back to society. It is really pretty up here: I’ll give them that. We’re on the downhill slope I guess. My feet ache from the open blisters on my pinky toes: the right one throbs in time with my heartbeat and breaths. I catch flickers of feral cats and kittens as I wander past the danger signs and out to the ledge of the cliffs. Its where I’m standing now, on the ledge of a cliff that makes the hills of San Francisco seem younger than a newborn.

We saw the Spanish stuff: a dilapidated lookout tower and lighthouse. We climbed on its bones like children at the first playground of summer. Further down I stumbled upon and almost fell into the Punic cistern. The iron slats and chain link cover had rotten and wasted, leaving open holes along the 27 meter gash in the earth. I searched, but couldn’t find the Roman cistern. Perhaps it was for the best: better to not find it than find it via a short stop and a sudden stop.

Sunday, June 14^th, 2015 12:24 pm

With only a few hours left before the group leaves for the festival, I feel panicked. Too much work, too little time, too much to see. The panic rises from my belly, pressing on my chest. It claws its way up my throat, leaving acid gashes on my insides. I swallow it down like a shot of jet fuel, and chase it with all my happiest thoughts.

Breathe, Katie

Sunday, June 14^th, 2015 2:04 pm

Breathing. Also known as not panicking.

It’s almost time to go. I have to stop myself from choking up when I think of how little time I have left here. I’m so excited to see new places, but so very sad to leave. 

Guest Speaker: Dr. Tiziana Lai

Today we heard from Dr. Tiziana Lai, of the University of Cagliari. Her talk was interesting and raised a few concerns, so I thought I would write about her presentation. Dr. Lai lectured on the generation and management of end-of-life vehicles in Italy. First, she explained that the EU produces 6.5 million tons of end-of-life vehicle waste per year and of that, Italy generates 0.9 tons. Italy’s management of end-of-life vehicles is on par with the EU’s recycling and recovery, but both failed to meet the 95% goal by 2015. According to the European Union’s direction, this 95% goal should include 85% reuse and recovery, and 10% waste to energy.

End-of-life vehicles are first depolluted, then they are scrapped and shredded to produce automotive shredder residue (ASR). The residual mix is divided into two fractions: heavy and light fraction. The heavy fraction consists of mainly of glass and metals, which make up approximately 25% of the ASR. It also includes soil and sand, which can make up anywhere between 0 and 2.5% of the ASR. The light fraction of the ASR is made up of the plastics, textiles, and rubber. These elements make up 75% of the ASR.  

In Italy most ASR is place in a landfill, but there are other ways to improve this. To improve recycling, mechanical sorting could help to better manage the ASR, metals make up 13% of the automotive shredder residue, and can be extracted from the mix for reuse. The fine, heavy components of the ASR can be used as building materials. Plastics make up 45%, but they must be separated in to separate types in order to recycle. This presents a challenge, as many different plastics can be found in an end-of-life vehicle.

Another option is to use the ASR for thermal recovery. This can be done using the usual methods of co-combustion, pyrolysis, or gasification. However, ASR can also be used as an alternative fuel source for the cement and foundry industries. This interested me, as it presented a waste to energy option which benefited a specific industry, rather than just to society as a whole. This presents a unique market opportunity, in which these industries could profit from a mutual agreement.

Of course, there are limits to these options. There exists a risk of corrosion due to HCl in any area involved with end-of-life vehicles. Where thermos-chemical treatment occurs, high ash and varying moisture content are issues. End-of-life vehicles and in particular their ASR, could increase the heavy metal concentration in an area, resulting in extra costs for decontamination. Luckily, there are some methods to improve the management of end-of-life vehicles. Dr. Lai suggested the separation of the finest fractions, the removal of PVC via density separation to prevent it from burning, and finally the washing of the residue to remove the leachable fractions. She also discussed her own research, which involved the pretreatment of end-of-life vehicles via washing before final disposal. Her research showed a 60% removal rate of DOV, COD, and TKN.

Finally, she discussed a life cycle analysis of vehicles as a whole. Specifically, a more sustainable design could result in a vehicle made of fewer, greener materials. This reminded me of my Sustainable Business Practices class, which I took this last semester at NEU. Dr. Lai highlighted what I believe is a key aspect of sustainable waste management: source reduction. This is something I felt was under-represented on this dialogue, but it rests at the top of the hierarchy. Designers should design for sustainable disposal.  This would also reduce the amount and intensity of the waste management techniques, of which she suggested a combination of both mechanical separation and thermal recovery.

Sunny Days and Mermaid Charm

I think I have sun poisoning, and no I am not on webmd. Before you laugh off my dubious diagnosis, keep in mind that I spend approximately nine hours at Poetto beach. Poetto is seven miles of crystalline water, fine sand, and everybody and their brother George – I mean Fabio.

It’s a tough life I lead.

I walked in over a hundred feet, maybe even a hundred yards out to sea, and swayed with starfish and the moon snail egg casings, waist-deep and wonderstruck. I dived down to the ocean floor, burrowing my belly into the sand. I opened my eyes, and before me lay the gray floor. Its ridges snaked to my left and right, forming hundreds of tiny Grand Canyons that shifted in the tides to match the ripples and waves from above.

I quickly run out of air. My untrained lungs ache after ten seconds of submersion, and I surface with all the Little Mermaid charm I can summon.

Ariel is to Mermaid as Catarina is to Scuttle the Seagull.

Everywhere I look I spy the drama in the landscape. If the Sardinian landscape as a play, it would most certainly be the entire collected works of William Shakespeare. The Devil’s Saddle was the background to my weekend, present and looming as I wandered the beach looking for starfish and seashells.

It’s hard to believe we’re leaving in a week, it’s even harder to believe that so much time has passed. The people here are so sweet and kind, so generous with their laughter and their kindness. I love the welcoming atmosphere, and I know I’ll miss it when I’m home. 

Villaservice Industrial Site Visit and Commentary

Today we drove up to the Villaservice Plant, located just outside of Villacidro. After some confusion over parking, we disembarked and wandered inside for a presentation and video about the plant. Villaservice is a four part operation: landfilling, anaerobic digestion, composting, and waste water treatment.

It was originally a landfill. The first landfill was opened in 1993, and closed in 2006, this landfill accepted all of the municipal solid waste (MSW), as it was developed before the new laws were enforced. Once it was closed, a new landfill was opened. It currently only accepts the non-organic fraction of the waste, as well as the sludge from the anaerobic digestion plant. It is due to close in the next year, so a new one is currently under construction. The biogas is collected from the landfills, but because less organic fraction reaches the landfill, this is expected to decrease over time.

The anaerobic digestion plant began its service in 2002, and until 2009 accepted unsorted household waste. Once the regulations called for the separation of municipal solid waste, only the organic fraction was accepted. As of 2013, it was operating at an annual 12.3 Gg under capacity. Before the separation laws, the MSW was put through a rotating trammel screen and exposed to an electromagnet. This sorted the organic from the inorganic. Next, the waste went through wet mechanical treatment, which included the use of a hydro-pulper and a hydro-cyclone to create the organic slurry. From there, the slurry went through several centrifuges in order to produce biogas, liquid discharge (which is then sent to the wastewater treatment plant), and solid discharge (which is sent to the landfill).

The composting plant was functional in 2010, with a capacity of 51.3 Gg/yr. Its components are kitchen waste, green waste, sewage sludge, and digestate. As of 2013, it was operating 38 Gg/yr under capacity.   

This visit has left me with some questions:

Why are some parts of the plant operating under capacity? Is this a problem of collection? What is happening?

The total consumption of the plant is 3.7 million kWh of electricity, but the plant only produces 2.3 million kWh of electricity. Of that production, 639,000 kWh is transferred to the grid. How does the plant operate when it requires an additional 2 million kWh of electricity to function? Why do they sell their power, when their operation seems unsustainable?

The speaker mentioned problems heating the anaerobic digestion tanks, but if both the landfill and the digestion plant create biogas, why are their problems heating the tanks? Couldn’t the heat be collected and used to ensure optimum biogas production?  

Why does Villaservice landfill their mixed municipal solid waste, when it could otherwise be incinerated for energy recovery? Why did they stop placing the bails in distinct areas of the landfill, for ease of mining later?  

In terms of the composting plant, what sort of losses do they take per ton of compost? If the first composting plant took a loss of 118 euro per ton, what sort of loss does Villaservice take? Do they have plans for future profitability, in the event of the cancellation of government subsidies? Once the landfilling process is discontinued (either by reaching the third landfill’s capacity or by their illegalization), how does Villaservice plan to use its batches of compost?

Maybe I didn’t quite understand some of the points the speaker made, but there seems to be a lot going on at this plant. The potential for inefficiencies got my industrial engineering brain turning, and I came up with a scenario…

I think if I were to implement a system in the United States, I would create a waste management plant based on the layout of Disneyland. Walt Disney designed Disneyland with what has come to be known as a “hub and spoke” method. Given that the United States collects all of its MSW together (except in some places where they collect recyclables separately), I would place a receiving and sorting building in the middle as the hub, and place the managing plants around it. I would then decide the location of each of the separate managing facilities. I would plan to have composting, anaerobic digestion, landfilling, waste to energy, wastewater treatment, and recycling. Some things clearly need to be placed together, for this I made an activity relationship chart, and then a finalized suggested layout:

Hindsight and Pride

Friday, May 29, 2015 9:37 am

Cramped /krampt/

adjective

Uncomfortably small or restricted.

With my elbows pressed against the seat and window, my legs jammed up on the seat in front of me, and my laptop bent almost closed due the angle, I was feeling rather cramped as I typed my paper on the bus.

Some humor in the early morning hours.

We’re leaving Cagliari, heading to the east to the high mountains and the most rural villages. It is shaping up to be a packed weekend, and my head spins whenever I try to comprehend the distances we’ve traveled.

Maybe I should stop typing (trying), I’m getting carsick.

Saturday, May 30, 2015. 2:49 am

I can’t write. I’m trying: my fingers ache and tremble, gnarled with an arthritis that spreads slowly through my knuckles and up my wrists. My heart is clumsy, and no helmet protects it when it stumbles and stutters, when it trips and falls. So maybe I won't write tonight, maybe I'll open my window and lean out into my cinderblock and colored plaster city, and watch the moon rise. 

Sunday, May 31, 2015 3:11 pm

Hindsight is 20/20, or so they say. For me it’s still 20/300 no matter which way I’m looking, even when my eyes are seeing straight back through my skull.

And that’s why I wear contacts. I correct the blurred tints and darks into mountains and valleys that grew as we left the bread basket plains and headed to the Province of Nuoro.

Sometimes it builds inside me. Sometimes I itch with a restlessness rooted so deep within my bones that they contort from the pressure. Suddenly my bright flares up like a kiln and the glass in my eyes melts under the sparks; the fear vaporizes: gone without glancing back.

In the last two days, I was privledged with the culture of a people who wear their spirituality and their pride in their clothes and traditions.

In the last two days, I spoke my thoughts, without fear of consequence or retribution, with a voice that sounded like someone I once saw in my smile.

In the last two days, I climbed a mountain to the edge of the timber line, and gazed upon a wooded horizon, wearing arch-less shoes that have wandered many a mile. 

In the last two days, I saw the stars in all their bright, and wondered if they could see me too.

In the last two days, I wandered the path and witnessed the two million year struggle of a river dreaming of finding the ocean

.

In the last two days, I boarded a vessel and sailed on the sea and, wind stinging my eyes and a shy sun peeking out from the clouds, I saw what fear made me miss.

In the last two days, I dove off a cliff into a crystal clear, salty green sea, and swam with friendly fish and fishy friends.

Are you proud of me? Can you see me? Can you see my pride, my bliss?

I am. I can. I do. 

Landfilling 101 (Ew. Gross..)

There is nothing quite like off-roading in a bus. I highly recommend it. Today we traveled to Ecoserdiana Landfill, to the north of Cagliari. The gates were nestled between two hillsides, rising well above the road. Shrubs and wildflowers and dried grass covered them, and they were framed by the surrounding countryside.

The two female engineers get on the bus, and immediately point out that the two hills are closed landfills, one from 2000 and the other from 2012. The first was opened in 1980 as one of the first sanitary landfills in the area. Originally it was not fitted with pipes to collect the methane gas produced by the organic components of the municipal solid waste, so in the 1990s it was retrofitted with the necessary requirement to collect the biogas.

This landfill is currently equipped to handle industrial waste, some types of hazardous waste, and bottom ash from waste to energy incinerators. Most landfills in Sardinia are no longer allowed to accept municipal solid waste. Because of this, Ecoserdiana faces a challenge in their future. Without organic waste, new landfills will not produce near enough biogas to keep their biogas combustion to energy plants running. As a result, Ecoserdiana has begun research into implementing an anaerobic digestion plant on site, and has already installed a small solar farm.

 

The current functioning landfill takes up a relatively vast area. Because of the composition of the waste the landfill accepts, the waste was almost entirely soot, ash, and chunks of construction waste. Surprisingly not much of a smell. This particular landfill is built over an old MSW landfill, and as such the top vents have to be built up with the rising waste. They are closed now, so only the biogas from the bottom vents makes it to the energy plant.

Sometimes this dialogue surprises me. This subject is not my forte; in fact it is so far our of my wheelhouse sometimes I feel as if I am swinging at air. However, every once in a while, if I squint, or look down, I find something you don't get to see everyday: hope.

Following the River, Wandering to the Sea

The bus rocked me out of another nap, the lurch sent me flying into the window pane, and I knocked my head into the glass. 

It's another overcasted day, and the cumulus clouds (nuvole, in Italian, as I've been told) drag race across the sky. The bus tilts again as we round another corner on a switchback, the railing disappears, and suddenly I'm hanging over a gorge: suspended over half a mountainside. That's one heck of a wakeup call. I catch snatches of a stream: white and furious at some instances, others a small moment of tranquility before the engine shifts and we lumber around the bend. The mountain path followed the little river for over a half hour, and I sat with my eyes glued to the window, following it like a starving paparazzi, waiting for the perfect snapshot. 

I am fascinated by water. It's ebbs, eddies, waves, and ripples stun and awe me. I suck it dry from my camelback, from the carafes and decanters at the restaurants, even the garden hose. Man craves water like a lover. We write songs to praise her. We dance to entice her to fall upon us. We build temples to her. We came upon a Roman temple, built to the god Antas. It is believed that there was once a spring that was believed to heal and cleanse its worshipers. In typical Roman (human) style, they built the hulking mass in the stolen style of the Greeks, and directly on top of a Nuragic shrine. For thousands of years, how many people prayed and begged for a miracle, for guidance? How many stood where I dumbly stood - yawning from my afternoon nap - with a motive and a purpose? How can I even begin to comprehend their humanity, when their lives we so unlike my own? 

The human body is comprised of 60% water. I guess that’s something in common, but I drink so little you can just subtract 15% or so.

The water moves mountains. It cuts away at the hills and shapes ridges and valleys. Every crevice of the mountains has its own river bed, now dry from the early summer heat. How old the stone is here? At Porto Flavia the shale practically crumbled to my touch, like compressed wood or shards of sand. Imagine mining through that. You’d be 15 kinds of dead under the mountain, trapped under the tons of collapsed rock. Luckily the port is carved of clay and limestone. Unluckily for the creators of the port, hydraulic mining wasn’t invented until the 1850s during the California gold rush. Yay chisels and mallets.

An ant moves 50 times its own weight all by itself; the current world record for a dead lift is 1155 lbs, only 4 times that particular human weight. I think of the time it took to create this port, to quarry in to the mountains in search of silver, gold, zinc, and iron. Humanity has moved mountains, in both the good sense and the bad. The abandon town on Ingurtosu sits crumbling atop the mountain, despite an inhabitance of over a thousand a mere 40 years ago. How odd is it to think our stones may still stand, even when we move on and others replace us. I can imagine it now: a valley oak, gnarled and blue-gray, growing skyward in my living room: its brown autumn leaves covering the stained oak floorboards, its roots twisted into our rotting plumbing. I wonder, if you turned down the hall and stumbled over the foliage into my old bedroom, if my stuffed bunny Oswald would still be sitting on my bed.

Maybe the force of the blow to my head was enough, or perhaps the engine's rumbling din knocked enough to my nerves cells senseless, and I'm still dreaming. It's hard to believe that everything, between the shallow, turbulent stream to the cavernous boreholes drilled into stone so old it crumbles to touch, exists.