Cleaner production, journey not destination

Vinod Kumar Sharma

Cleaner production is the strategy, which is to avoid generating pollution in the first place. It frequently cuts costs, reduces risks and identifies new opportunities. Cleaner production can be the most efficient way to operate processes, produce products and to provide services. Costs of wastes, emissions and environmental and health impacts can be reduced and benefits from these reductions and new markets can be realised.

Potential cleaner production options are production processes, products and services.

Production processes: Conserving raw materials and energy, eliminating toxic raw materials and reducing the quantity and toxicity of all emissions and waste.

Products: Reducing negative impacts along the life cycle of a product, from raw materials extraction to its ultimate disposal.

Services: Incorporating environmental concerns in to designing and delivering services.

Cleaner production (CP) is defined by the United Nation Environment Program (UNEP) as a continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy to processes, products and services to improve eco-efficiency and reduce risks to humans and environment. Application of CP has demonstrated clearly that it helps to use resources efficiently, reduce costs and waste. Concept of cleaner production leads the role of an efficient energy use in industrial and commercial sector and its implication to reduce humans risk and protect the environment.

The discharge of pollutants and wastes also represents an economic cost to the company. Inefficient processes lead to loss of expensive chemicals, wastage of water and energy, and give rise to undesirable quality variations and off-specification products. Opportunities may be missed for recovery of valuable by-products from industrial unit operations. The cost of wastewater treatment itself depends directly on the quantity of waste produced - less waste means smaller treatment plants and lower operating expenses. The application of cleaner production concepts to a processing industry brings an overall view of the operation and considers not only improved process equipments but also alternative chemicals and improved operating procedures.

For older plants there are usually many possibilities for immediate optimisation of operations through more effective housekeeping, keeping plants in good working order, improved methods of handling and minor process changes to reduce losses. The use of energy, waste and emission audits can pin point the areas that particularly need attention. Audit procedures have become standard practice in many companies. The possibility of replacing older plants by more efficient new equipments should also be thoroughly investigated.

Careful handling and use of processing chemicals can only be achieved if proper workplace procedures are introduced and shop-floor personnel are adequately trained. Even with more efficient processes and better handling there will generally be some effluents and some waste residues. Adequate treatment processes exist for most common pollutants. Effective control of fugitive emissions remains an expensive operation. Safe disposal depends on adequate pre-treatment of residues, and if possible the use of special industrial land fills for the stabilised residues. The range of potential environmental impacts and issues are now so large that addressing them one at a time is no longer effective. The industrial and commercial sectors need to adopt an integrated environmental management plan that is clearly explained to employees. Environmental and safety training should be provided to all employees. Regular environmental audits and reporting should be carried out by the management itself. The use of industry guidelines and self-regulatory procedures can do much to encourage better performance across the entire industrial and commercial sector

Complex environmental issues demand a comprehensive integrated approach to tackle the problems of pollution. Reductions in the use of energy, water and other raw materials along with waste minimisation and elimination should be the highest priority. Cleaner production covers both product and manufacturing processes. This implies that all types of resources along the entire product life cycle should be used as optimally as possible to reduce environmental impacts.

Simple good housekeeping measures can deliver cleaner processes but a review of the existing process technology may be needed. Examples of options include water conservation by counter current washing, recovery of used chemicals such as size, caustic, dyes and grease, replacement of high BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) chemicals by low BOD ones, heat recovery from effluents. Segregation and separate treatment of specific effluent streams is more efficient than attempting to treat combined and complex effluents. Such a strategy will provide opportunities to reuse or recover heat or chemicals and reduce the size of the treatment plant facility.

Physico-chemical or Biological treatments are the most commonly employed methods for industrial liquid waste treatment. Flow equalisation tanks and appropriate pre-treatment units must be constructed to remove toxic substances such as chemical additives and dyestuffs from the waste streams. Residues from industrial operations include sludges from biological or physico-chemical units and waste materials from the production processes. Disposal alternatives include a range of options such as land filling, anaerobic digestion or incineration.

The government should develop a clear policy framework for environmental control. This should include a statement of what environmental standards apply to the industrial and commercial sector covering all environmental and safety issues. Government policy and regulations should wherever possible encourage a preventive cleaner production approach as a complement to the traditional discharge and emission standards for sustainable industrial growth in Nepal.

Open source software

Sudan Jha

The term open source refers to software in which the source code is freely available for others to view, amend, and adapt. Furthermore, open source is generally more stable than proprietary software. Open source software (OSS) is also more secure and less vulnerable to many viruses that are circulating on the Internet. However, the most compelling feature of OSS is that, although there may be some distribution and setup costs, the software is essentially free.

The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, adapt it, and fix bugs. And, this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing. This rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only very few programmers can see the source. OSS can be very important for a developing country like Nepal. Access to source code will encourage and promote local capacities for software modification and redistribution. It promotes an environment for technical and systems development, as well as the ability to learn, innovate and invent, while stimulating local software industries. More importantly, it promotes independence from foreign software companies and reduces an outflow of funds.

How can it be implemented in our country? Large economic powers like banks, large corporations, INGOs either shelve old computers in the stores or keep them idle (most of them being the 32-bit computers like 386, 486, low end computers). These computers can be reused by customising them by open source operating system (like Linux, Minix, FreeBSD, UNIX variants). With the customised versions, these PCs can be sent to remote villages to educate people, who cannot afford expensive computers. They can also be useful to offices at remote places where the economy is at a lower level.

Likewise government offices, big corporations, INGOs, banks spend millions of rupees each year to buy expensive software from other countries (mainly USA). But interestingly, nearly all software that can be purchased from the market has equivalent free software available in the "Open Source" platform.

Recent examples in the Open Source Movement: GNU/Linux, and a number of useful software that come along with them, are clearly attracting interest. Here are some of the examples:

Pakistan will soon install some 50,000 low cost computers in schools and colleges nationwide. These will be PII computers. Proprietary software for these PCs is of low cost. The use of GNU/Linux is the reason for the overall low price. Pakistan is seriously considering the use of Star Office software as well, saving thousands of rupees over using more expensive and proprietary office software.

In Thailand, all the BIOS setups, command prompt, command processors of the operating system, have been developed in the Thai language. Likewise, the word processor, spreadsheet, and database have been developed in the Thai language. Now, uneducated people can get benefits from using them.

Part of the problem in installing OSS is due to the lack of technical skills to spread GNU/Linux sufficiently. Furthermore, the predominance of pirated versions of proprietary operating systems makes the need for innovation and study of options a low-priority. Although OSS is being used by some users, it is yet to be widely spread.

Governments are seen to prefer open systems: More than two dozen countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America, including China and Germany, are now encouraging their government agencies to use OSS - developed by communities of programmers who distribute the code without charge and donate their labour to debug, modify and otherwise improve the software. Indeed, the advantages of OSS/FS to governments are clear. No government wants their computing infrastructure controlled by one company. Thus, many countries have started considering favouring OSS/FS in some way like in Peru, the UK, and Taiwan.

As an example: South Africa plans to save 3 billion Rands a year (approximately US 338 million), by increasing spending on software that stays in their country, and developing programming skills inside the country. South Africa reports that its small-scale introductions have already saved them 10 million Rands (approximately US 1.1 million). Indeed, so many governments have begun enacting preferences for OSS/FS that Microsoft has sponsored an organisation called the Initiative for Software choice. The motive of this organisation is to forbid governments from considering software licenses when they procure software and to encourage standards that lock out OSS/FS. The initiative also establishes that there should be a fair, competitive market for computer software, both proprietary and Open Source.

NASA team turns focus to photos of re-entry

Innvestigators looking into the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia are examining close-up pictures of the craft taken by a telescopic military ground camera as it plunged into the atmosphere, officials of the U.S. space agency said Friday.

The images, which reportedly show possible damage to the shuttle’s left wing, could be key evidence in discovering why the shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry last Saturday, killing its seven-member crew.

Michael Kostelnik, an official of the shuttle program, told a news conference that the agency had received the air force pictures and was examining them along with other evidence. But he refused to comment on the content of the images taken by the ground camera, other than to say they were of "very poor resolution."

Kostelnik said it would be speculative to comment on what the pictures show because they were subject to different interpretations.

During re-entry, Columbia’s automatic pilot struggled to control the craft by moving its wing control surfaces and firing guiding rockets in an attempt to compensate for unusual drag coming from the left wing, officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. During this period, unusual temperature readings were seen in different areas of the wing, indicating heat was getting into these structures from an unknown source, they said.

The existence of the images was first reported by the respected industry journal Aviation Week Space Technology, which described them as showing a jagged area on the front edge of Columbia’s left wing some 60 seconds before the shuttle broke up more than 200,000 feet (61,000 meters) above Texas. The magazine said sources close to the accident investigation said the pictures show serious structural damage near the point where the left wing joins the main body of the shuttle.

This is near the area where a piece of insulating foam from the shuttle’s big fuel tank appeared to strike the wing during launch. NASA had been studying the foam impact as a potential cause of damage to the insulating tiles that protect the shuttle during its fiery return to Earth, but said Thursday that its analysis had downgraded the foam impact as a leading candidate for triggering events that led to the accident.

If the military images do show wing damage in the area of the foam impact, the issue would have to be re-examined.

Kostelnik also disclosed that teams searching for debris from the accident had found a large section of one of Columbia’s wings in eastern Texas. The wing piece, which he called "a significant discovery," was taken to a military installation in Fort Worth.

"We do have a large piece of one of the wings," Kostelnik said. "It is not clear which wing this is," he continued, "Obviously the structure is very important."

Meanwhile, the accident investigation board created by NASA arrived at Houston’s Johnson Space Center to begin its examination. The board is headed by retired Admiral Hal Gehman, who led the probe into the 2000 terrorist bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen. The other seven members include four military officers, safety experts from the Department of Transportation and the director of NASA’s Ames research center.

Responding to criticism from members of Congress and others that the board was not independent enough from NASA, the space agency’s administrator, Sean O’Keefe, said Thursday that the board’s charter had been modified to give the group more independence and to allow Gehman to appoint new members.

Late Thursday, NASA said it would add a third civilian to the board, Roger Tetrault, who is retired from McDermott International. The agency also issued a revised charter for the board, which specifies that the board will produce a final written report within 60 days, much less than the time that civilian authorities take on a major airliner crash study.

Warren E. Leary/International Herald Tribune

Future of radio, DAB

FM is not a new name for Nepalese, at least for residents of Kathmandu. With several FM broad casting stations, Kathmandu is familiar with it. After the establishment of FM stations it rapidly gained popularity amongst youngsters. With good quality of sound, it faded the AM (Radio Nepal) and reached the peak of popularity.

Frequency Modulation (FM) is one of the best and renowned methods of broadcasting. It was developed in 1940s, and ever since it is known for the less noise and better sound quality than Amplitude Modulation (AM).

Although FM is better it is not the best. AM and FM are analog methods of modulating and broadcasting. As we are now in the age where everything is slowly being converted to digital, the best method of broadcasting has now changed to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB).

The DAB system was developed within the Eureka 147 project. And, is currently in use across Canada, Australia, and parts of Asia. DAB being digital, is almost immune to the sort of noise, interference, and multipath fading. While traveling in a car you may have noticed the hiss and plops of the FM signal as you drive along. This is caused by multipath interference. When the FM signals bounce off buildings, trees, and hills, it arrives at the receiver out of phase with the main signal. So, in mobile receivers the quality of FM/AM signal is not consistent, due to multipath interference. But DAB is revolutionary because the DAB receiver sorts through the myriad multipath signal and other disturbances to enhance the main signal. This means that even in most difficult listening environments like in the center of a city with high rise apartments, the DAB signal remains absolutely perfect.

DAB is not just a new system to provide compact disk (CD) quality audio reception to mobile and stationary receivers. It also provides an opportunity to receive completely new services from programme providers. The program provider will have an option to transmit additional programme associated data (PAD) with the main signal. This might include comprehensive information about a piece of music being played, commercials, traffic information, paging, and electronic newspapers. Thus tomorrow’s radio programme will not only be audible but also become visible to the user.

Imagine the traffic information being provided in the radio to take an alternate route while you are driving and enjoying crystal clear music, or, the lyrics of your favorite music being displayed in your radio. It is also possible that DAB could one day transmit and receive computer files (e-mails and internet). Similar to pay TV channels, the DAB signal can be encrypted so there are possibilities of pay radio in the near future. DAB utilises the bandwidth of 1.5 MHz. Some may point the enormous bandwidth as its drawback but it is not. As several DAB signals can be sent through one frequency, the bandwidth is fully utilised. About six DAB channels can be transmitted using one frequency and without interchannel interference.

With the above mentioned qualities, DAB is emerging as the superior method of broadcasting. Recently, the United Kingdom allocated frequency spectrum of 217.5 MHz to 230 MHz (Band III) for DAB. Some countries are also utilising the frequency spectrum of L- Band (1.5 GHz). Over 250 million people around the world can now receive more than 585 different DAB services. DAB is the future of radio, and it will certainly be available in Nepal too.

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