Journal Clean WAS (JCleanWAS)

High food waste generation in Malaysia that reached up to 15, 000 tonnes per day assign for major problems towards environment, economy and social aspect. Alternative method had been studied for the past years, but composting was seen among the best possible solution to treat this matter. Composting not only has an environmentally method but it also produces a valuable end product that will benefit in agricultural sector. Further studies had been done in this paper to represent their macro and micro nutrient quality as well as their bioavailability towards plant and the analysis of data collected in both CHNS analyser and mathematical method using ultimate analysis. This study also applied enhanced composting process with its segregation, drying, grinding and standard aeration time. Each container has been rotated for 5 minutes yet different resting time was applied which are 25, 55, 155 minutes namely A, B, C and D within 2 hours period. Result shown that overall Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N) and Sulphur (S) concentration increases as the higher aeration was applied while the Hydrogen vice versa. The highest elemental percentage distribution recorded is carbon (31%) while the lowest recorded is S (0.115%). The data collected from Ultimate Analysis was seen not applicable to be use as it has the same content as food waste after composting. The compound molecular formula recorded was C29H7N5S. Regarding ratio of carbon to nitrogen results, it was found that it ranged from 5.39 to 5.71% for different compost treatment under study, where the lowest value of C and N ratio (5.39%) for sample C and the highest value (5.71%) was obtained for sample B with all has the same C/N ratio which is 6: 1 which suitable range in application of soil amendment. Therefore, this study found a significant relationship between chemical factors and compost formation which contribute to better analysis, especially to food waste management.

Atmospheric particles in the surface air including aerosol and dust were collected using high volume air sampler (HVAS) for obtaining the activity levels of 210Pb and 210Po over Malaysian waters during the EPSP’09 Scientific Expedition. The average mass concentration of total suspended particles (TSP) in maritime air was 33 ± 2 µg/m3 (ranged from 13 ± 1 to 74 ± 4 µg/m3). Based on previous literatures, it has been suspected that the haze episodes were mainly due to forest and peat bog fires as well as vehicle and industrial emissions during dry period, especially during southwest monsoon. Consequently, the activity levels of 210Pb and 210Po in maritime particles were relatively in proportion with the TSP concentrations. Meanwhile, the temporal variation of 210Po/210Pb activity ratios in the aerosol samples perhaps related to the difference of residence time airborne particles and contribution from different sources of radionuclides in which 210Pb and 210Po are not in secular equilibrium. The highest TSP concentrations and 210Pb and 210Po activities were closely related to warm and dry period during southwest monsoon.

The importance of this study is that it is deals with the Barada River pollution with hydrocarbons (crude oil and its derivatives), as well as evaluating the ability of different types of Micrococcus sp. to bioremediation of hydrocarbons. Ten strains of Micrococcus sp. were isolated from the water samples from Barada River in Damascus, and these isolated were classified depending on Bergey’s manual to four species: M. luteus, M. lylae, M. flavus, and M. antarcticus. The crude oil dependent growths of these isolates were assessed for 15 days at 30°C by monitoring the gradient fluxes in pH, optical density OD and total viable count TVC in the medium. The result was statistically supported by applying the One-way ANOVA test and the Paired sample t-test. The results showed that activity of species was best at the concentration of 2% of crude oil, and the species of M. lylae was best in dealing with crude oil, although this superiority between species was not supported at the statistical studying. In general, the different species of Micrococcus sp. have a good ability to deal with the different concentrations (1, 2 and 3%) of crude oil. And this supports research which encourages the use of this genus in the bioremediation. This research was indicated to the ability of M. lylae to deal with different concentrations of crude oil, which was not mentioned in previous research.