A methodology to empower citizens towards a low-carbon economy. The potential of schools and sustainability indicators.

Environmental empowering to control resource consumption and environmental impacts is critical to engage citizens to adopt more sustainable habits. This study demonstrates the potential benefits of innovative approaches based on sustainability indicators towards a low-carbon economy. A methodology to measure and promote sustainability in schools has been proposed and evaluated, aiming at showing the environmental performance and informing of potential environmental savings. The methodology, titled ClimACT, has two main purposes: measuring the environmental performance of schools through a school sustainability index based on measurable indicators in the areas of transport, procurement, green spaces, indoor air quality, energy, water and waste; and encouraging students, teachers and families towards an energy-efficient and low-carbon pathway through a structural procedure based on roles, activities and progress evaluation. The approach, applied to 39 pilot schools from Portugal, Spain, France and Gibraltar, achieved promising and encouraging results. All schools deployed the methodology successfully, achieving measurable environmental benefits in 95% of cases, with an average improvement of 10% in the global performance of schools after one year. Moreover, the 5112 surveys applied to school communities, before and after the methodology implementation, highlighted how the sustainable indicators had a significant influence on the daily lives of families, leading to improvements of their behaviour, with an average increase of 20% in indicators regarding good practices in transport, energy, water, waste and citizenship. The environmental empowering through measurable indicators is a step forward a low-carbon economy. This methodology is open and adaptable to all sectors and requirements.

Performance of biomorphic Silicon Carbide as particulate filter in diesel boilers.

Biomorphic Silicon Carbide (bioSiC) is a novel porous ceramic material with excellent mechanical and thermal properties. Previous studies have demonstrated that it may be a good candidate for its use as particle filter media of exhaust gases at medium or high temperature. In order to determine the filtration efficiency of biomorphic Silicon Carbide, and its adequacy as substrate for diesel particulate filters, different bioSiC-samples have been tested in the flue gases of a diesel boiler. For this purpose, an experimental facility to extract a fraction of the boiler exhaust flow and filter it under controlled conditions has been designed and built. Several filter samples with different microstructures, obtained from different precursors, have been tested in this bench. The experimental campaign was focused on the measurement of the number and size of particles before and after placing the samples. Results show that the initial efficiency of filters made from natural precursors is severely determined by the cutting direction and associated microstructure. In biomorphic Silicon Carbide derived from radially cut wood, the initial efficiency of the filter is higher than 95%. Nevertheless, when the cut of the wood is axial, the efficiency depends on the pore size and the permeability, reaching in some cases values in the range 70-90%. In this case, the presence of macropores in some of the samples reduces their efficiency as particle traps. In continuous operation, the accumulation of particles within the porous media leads to the formation of a soot cake, which improves the efficiency except in the case when extra-large pores exist. For all the samples, after a few operation cycles, capture efficiency was higher than 95%. These experimental results show the potential for developing filters for diesel boilers based on biomorphic Silicon Carbide.