Current Environmental Issues and Challenges, 2014

Few books currently exist that cover such a wide spectrum of topics. The chapters dealing with air pollution from mobile sources, air pollution and health effects and air quality modelling fall into the air pollution category while the ones related to microalgae for carbon dioxide sequestration/biofuels production, fuel cells, and solar energy technology, respectively, can be ascribed to the energy topic. Several technologies to handle a wide spectrum of environmental pollutants are taken into account in numerous chapters. The chapter on biodiversity is clearly related to the conservation issue, while the water pollution subject is tackled by the chapter on water quality monitoring. Finally, a general analysis on green business, as well as a chapter on grid/cloud computing technology for collaborative problem solving and shared resources management conclude the work. Because of its breadth of coverage, this book is particularly useful as a graduate text.

Air Pollution and Health Effects.- Air Pollution from Mobile Sources: Formation, Effects and Abatement Strategies.- Air Quality Modelling and its Applications.- Fuel Cell Technology and Materials.- Engineering Aspects related to the Use of Microalgae for Biofuels Production and CO₂ Capture from Flue Gases.- Concentrating Solar Energy Technologies.- Probiotics for Environmental Sanitation: Goals and Example.- Dust Removal and Collection Techniques.- The Role of Catabolic Plasmids in Biodegradation of Petroleum Hydrocarbons.- On the Exploitation of Self-propagating High-temperature Reactions for Environmental Protection.- Glyphosate : Safety Risks, Biodegradation and Bioremediation.- Bioleaching of Metals as Eco-Friendly Technology.- Biodiversity.- Passive Sampling Technologies for the Monitoring of Organic and Inorganic Contaminants in Seawater.- A Review of Green Business.- Grid/Cloud Computing as new Paradigms for Collaborative Problem Solving and Shared Resources Management in Environmental Sciences.

Giacomo Cao got his Master Degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cagliari in February 1986 and his PhD also in Chemical Engineering at the University of Bologna in 1990. He became Assistant Professor in 1990, Associate Professor in 1992 and Full Professor in 2001. He has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, USA, in 1988, 1991 and 1992 and research associate at the same University in 1993. His principal research interests are chemical reaction and reactor engineering, synthesis of advanced materials, separation technology via ion-exchange resins, tissue engineering and environmental chemical engineering. He is co-author of 3 books, 1 edited book, more than 150 papers in refereed journals, 17 papers in refereed conference proceedings, 12 patents, 18 book chapters, 126 papers in conference proceedings. He has been the co-author of 239 presentations at national and international symposia.

  Roberto Orrù got his Master Degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cagliari in 1991 and his PhD degree in Metallurgical Engineering at the Polytechnic of Torino in 1997. He became Assistant Professor in 1998 and Associate Professor in 2002. His principal research interests are the synthesis and sintering of advanced materials and chemical reaction engineering. Since 1995, he has been mainly involved in the investigation of self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS), Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) and Ball Milling (BM) processes from both the theoretical and the experimental point of views both in Italy and USA (University of California, Davis) where he spent about 2 years as visiting scholar and visiting scientist,. The scientific activity in these and other topics is documented by more than 80 papers published in refereed journals, 4 patents and over 130 presentations at national and international conferences.