The paper presents the results of tests carried out on a Romanian farm with the purpose of assessing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions specific to agricultural activities. GHG emissions from the agricultural sector come mainly from the livestock sector, manure management, land cultivation and fertilization. The tests carried out mainly focused on the CO2 , CH4 and N2O emissions generated from related manure storage activities as well as the emission level identified in animal shelters. For a correct interpretation of the results obtained, at the same time with the measurement of the GHG concentration, the weather parameters were measured: temperature, humidity and wind direction. The results obtained revealed the presence of these compounds in the air in the animal shelters and in the ambient air (CO2 and CH4) in concentrations that are in the range identified in similar studies around the world. The pollutant dispersion in the air leads to a reduction in the pollutant concentration with increasing distance from the observed source as well as the measurement points at 50, 100 and 500 m, that reaches values below the detection limit of the instrument for CH4 and N2O, whereas in the case of CO2 it reaches the level of the usual concentration in the ambient air.

The research aimed to provide an optimized method for the determination of phosphorous concentration in different types of solid waste using inductive coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) technique. The analyzed waste matrices are: a) vegetable waste (P1), b) ash from the incineration of medical waste (P2) c) sewage sludge (P3) and d) sludge from the meat processing industry (P4). The results obtained by the ICP-MS method were compared with the UV-VIS spectrophotometric method for the determination of total phosphorus. In the case of using the colorimetric method by UV-VIS technique, lower results were obtained compared to the ICP-MS method due to the interferences given by the reagents used to determine the total phosphorus. The interferences given by other elements (metals) were also investigated and the performance parameters were determined such as detection limit, quantification limit, recovery and expandend incertainty using ICP-MS technique.

The aim of this work is to apply an ion-chromatography method which was initially developed for the determination of sulfur content in fuels, on other classes of samples as municipal waste and oil and sewage sludge. With respect to their physical properties and texture, solid waste materials as municipal waste, are typically strongly heterogeneous and thus, sample preparation can be critical in obtaining reliable analysis results so that, particle size reduction and homogenizing of the municipal waste was an important step in conducting the experiments. The homogenization of the samples was performed by cutting and then grinding the material in two steps: first a reduction of the particles to diameters passing a 10-mm sieve and secondly to diameters passing a 2-mm sieve. The sulfur extraction from the homogenized waste samples was carried out by the combustion method in the calorimetric bomb. Sulfur as sulfate anion was then analyzed by ion-chromatography and gravimetric techniques and the results were compared. Depending on the nature and sulfur content of the sample, the repeatability standard deviation sr and the relative repeatability standard deviation RSD of the results were of the same order of magnitude for the both gravimetric and ionchromatography methods and they were in the range of about 0.01-0.05 % for sr and in the range of about 3.23-6.25 % for RSD.

Résumé. Bien que les mesures de teneur en eau soient largement utilisées dans l'industrie, les considérations métrologiques quant à cette mesure ne sont pas complètement abouties de sorte à fournir des mesures fiables et traçables au SI. Afin de remédier à ceci, le projet de recherche conjoint, Joint Research Project SIB64 "METefnetMetrology for moisture in materials", est actuellement en cours, et contribue au programme européen de recherche en métrologie European Metrology Research Programme. Le projet METefnet a pour objectifs de développer et d'améliorer l'approche métrologique de ce sujet. Ceci inclus notamment: le travail sur de nouvelles méthodes de référence pour évaluer la fraction massique en eau, l'amélioration des mesures mettant en oeuvre la méthode primaire de type titration Karl Fischer, le développement de nouveaux matériaux de référence certifiés présentant une très bonne stabilité et permettant une traçabilité au SI, le développement de nouveaux étalons de transfert, la réalisation d'études visant à quantifier et réduire les effets liés à la prise d'échantillon, son transport et sa manipulation, le développement d'une nouvelle méthode pour étalonner les instruments mesurant l'humidité de surface, et l'amélioration des méthodes d'estimation d'incertitudes de ces mesures. Ce travail, réalisé dans le domaine de la métrologie de l'humidité au sein des matériaux, couvre à la fois le mesurande décrit comme étant spécifiquement la teneur en eau, seule, dans les matériaux, mais également un mesurande plus large pouvant inclure l'eau ainsi que d'autres liquides ou composés organiques volatiles; ceci afin de bien mettre en exergue la différence qui peut être observée entre ces deux mesurandes. Le projet global a pour objectif de soutenir une action de dissémination et de traçabilité au système SI des mesures de teneur en eau dans les matériaux avec une exactitude optimale et de développer une infrastructure métrologique cohérente pour ce type de mesures. Le travail technique ainsi que les dernières avancées vous sont ainsi présentées.

Sewage sludge from urban wastewater treatment plants come from different stages of wastewater treatment and are considered as waste, falling under the waste regulations. In order to reduce the negative environmental impacts, the removal of sewage sludge on landfill is considered as the last waste management option. One of the sludge management alternatives is to recover energy from the sewage sludge by incineration in waste incinerators or co-combustion in cement or thermal power plants. The use of sewage sludge as a source of renewable energy is an ecologically and economically efficient option, both in the EU and Romania sludge management strategy. Total organic carbon is a key environmental indicator for soil, sludge and sediment and a parameter for characterizing sludge for energy recovery. The paper presents the methodology for total organic carbon determination from acidified sludge samples by dry combustion, in an oxygen atmosphere using FlashEA 1112 Series Analyser. From the experimental laboratory researches the following aspects were highlighted: the interdependence between the total organic carbon content and the heating value of sludge samples, an important factor for energy recovery/elimination by incineration, co-combustion and utilization as secondary raw materials in cement plants.