Recycled lubricants and pulp by-products as solutions to emission challenges in marine and off-road engines

A new study from the University of Vaasa, Finland, demonstrates that fuels refined from waste and industrial by-products can help reduce emissions in existing engine applications

University of Vaasa

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Project Researcher Michaela Hissa from the University of Vaasa.

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Credit: University of Vaasa

In her doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa, Michaela Hissa demonstrates that fuels refined from waste and industrial by-products can help reduce emissions in existing engine applications.

Electric and hybrid propulsion systems are developing rapidly, but they do not yet offer a practical alternative for the high-power engines used in marine and off-road applications. Therefore, more climate-friendly solutions must be developed within the constraints of the current engine fleet. Michaela Hissa’s dissertation in energy technology investigates how renewable naphtha, derived from crude tall oil, and marine gas oil refined from recycled lubricants, can serve as alternative fuels.

– When blended with fossil diesel, renewable naphtha burns efficiently and reduces smoke emissions. Marine gas oil, on the other hand, decreases hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions. Both fuels significantly reduced particulate emissions, which are hazardous to human health, says Hissa.

The studied fuels are derived from industrial side streams: renewable naphtha is a processed product of crude tall oil from the pulp industry, while marine gas oil is produced from used lubricating oils classified as hazardous waste. Scaling up their use requires a functioning collection and refining infrastructure.

– Lubricating oils are needed in a wide range of rotating machinery, from power plant turbines and paper machines to engines in vehicles, off-road machines, and ships. As a result, large volumes of used oil are generated globally, Hissa explains.

Strong foundation in Finland for wood-based fuels

The fuels examined in the study are classified as drop-in fuels, meaning they require no significant modifications to existing engine systems. This makes them attractive as transitional solutions.

– The number of existing marine and off-road engines is substantial and replacing them won’t happen overnight. To reduce emissions, it is essential to find solutions that support the transition without requiring the replacement of the entire infrastructure, Hissa notes.

In the future, wood-based residues may play a significant role as raw material for renewable fuels. Finland’s forest industry provides a strong foundation for their development and use. However, availability, cost-effective production, and competitive pricing remain key issues for large-scale deployment.

– In the future, engines will need to adapt to an increasingly diverse range of fuels. Therefore, more research is needed to understand how different fuels behave in engines, Hissa concludes.

Doctoral dissertation

Hissa, Michaela (2025) Ignition and combustion studies of alternative engine fuels. Acta Wasaensia 558. Doctoral dissertation. University of Vaasa.

Publication pdf

Public defence

The public examination of M.Sc. (Tech.) Michaela Hissa’s doctoral dissertation “Ignition and combustion studies of alternative engine fuels” will be held on Wednesday 20 August 2025 at 12:00 UTC+3 in auditorium Nissi at the University of Vaasa, Finland.

It is also possible to follow the defence online:
https://uwasa.zoom.us/j/63868303247?pwd=3jDgaa4Jy5eD2fBStKN85rrEQqMX5I.1
Password: 985742

Docent, D.Sc. (Tech.) Mika Huuhtanen (University of Oulu) will act as opponent and Professor Seppo Niemi as custos.

 

FAU lands $700,000 U.S. EPA grant to monitor water quality in Lake Okeechobee

Florida Atlantic University

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Natalia Malina, Ph.D., principal investigator and an assistant professor in FAU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. 

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Credit: Florida Atlantic University

Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science has been awarded a $700,000 grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Gulf of America Division to support a novel research project aimed at advancing water quality monitoring in one of Florida’s most critical freshwater ecosystems.

Led by Natalia Malina, Ph.D., principal investigator and an assistant professor in FAU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, the three-year project titled, “Developing an Approach for Monitoring of Emerging Contaminant Phototransformation in Freshwater Lakes,” will focus on understanding how common contaminants – such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals and personal care products – change after being released into freshwater environments.

These substances often undergo phototransformation, breaking down and forming new chemical products when exposed to sunlight in surface water. Alarmingly, these new products are frequently more persistent or more toxic than their original compounds.

“Lake Okeechobee is not just Florida’s largest freshwater reservoir; it serves as a vital resource for millions of people and supports the ecosystems that surround it,” said Malina. “This funding will allow us to develop a much-needed approach to monitor not only which contaminants are present in the lake water, but how they transform over time and space. These transformation products are often of greater environmental and health concerns than the original chemicals, and most current monitoring programs don’t account for the transformation processes. Our work will help close that gap.”

Over the course of the project, Malina’s team will deploy passive sampling devices across eight stations throughout Lake Okeechobee to capture seasonal and annual variations in contamination. The research will also incorporate cutting-edge chemical analysis, including carbon isotope ratio measurements, to determine degradation processes and identify which phototransformation mechanisms are occurring in real-time. This will enable researchers to predict which contaminants are likely forming dangerous byproducts – all without the need for complex screening of unknown compounds.

This research comes at a critical time, as water systems throughout the U.S., particularly in regions impacted by agricultural runoff and urbanization, face increasing pressure from “emerging contaminants.” These include a wide range of chemicals that enter waterways through farming, industry, household use and wastewater. While some of these compounds are regulated, many are not, and their transformation products are often invisible to standard monitoring tools.

“Current environmental monitoring frameworks are simply not designed to track what happens to contaminants after they enter the water,” Malina said. “With our new approach, we’ll be able to link the presence of certain compounds to specific transformation mechanisms, and from there, assess their potential environmental and health risks. Our findings can help guide the development of future regulations that consider the risks associated with the contaminant transformation process in aquatic ecosystems.”

Lake Okeechobee, covering more than 730 square miles in southern Florida, serves as a crucial water source for agriculture, municipalities and natural ecosystems including the Everglades. It is a Class I Potable Water Supply and is a source of water for approximately 8 million people. As such, maintaining the lake’s water quality is a public health and environmental priority.

Malina’s project will generate detailed data on contaminant concentrations, their seasonal patterns and how they evolve under environmental conditions – a dataset that could prove invaluable for scientists, regulators and policymakers alike.

“This vital grant from the EPA allows us to address a critical, and often invisible, threat to our water systems, and empowers innovative, solution-driven science that addresses real-world challenges,” said Valery E. Forbes, Ph.D., dean of the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. “Dr. Malina’s project fills a critical gap in how we detect and monitor chemical pollutants in our water systems – an issue with far-reaching implications. The insights gained will not only benefit Florida but also provide a scalable model for communities across the country. This is impactful science –advancing environmental protection, safeguarding public health and helping to ensure a sustainable future for clean water.”

In addition to advancing scientific understanding, the project will also offer hands-on research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students and contribute to the development of new tools and models that can be used by environmental agencies at both the state and national levels.

With fieldwork scheduled to begin this month and continuing through 2028, the project promises to deliver new insights into the fate of emerging contaminants and inform smarter, more adaptive strategies for managing freshwater resources in a rapidly changing world.

- FAU -

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, Florida Atlantic serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the Southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, Florida Atlantic embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. Florida Atlantic is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report, and holds the designation of “R1: Very High Research Spending and Doctorate Production” by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Florida Atlantic shares this status with less than 5% of the nearly 4,000 universities in the United States. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

 

WSU team unlocks biological process underlying Coho Salmon die-offs

Washington State University

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For years, scientists at Washington State University’s Puyallup Research & Extension Center have been working to untangle a mystery: Why do coho salmon in Puget Sound creeks seem to suffocate after rainstorms—rising to the surface, gaping, and swimming in circles before dying?

In 2018, the die-offs were linked to bits of car tires shed by friction and washed into the stormwater runoff. In 2020, researchers zeroed in on one particular chemical culprit, a tire preservative known as 6PPD.  

Now, research led by WSU PhD student Stephanie I. Blair has established the biological mechanism for how that toxin kills the fish, laying the groundwork for tests to find an alternative to 6PPD.

When 6PPD interacts with ozone, it becomes a toxic chemical known as 6PPD-quinone. Blair, working with a team from WSU and the University of Washington, demonstrated that 6PPD-quinone breaches the cellular walls that protect the brain and vascular system, known as the blood-brain barrier and the blood-gill barrier, causing oxygen deprivation.

“Prior to publication of this study nobody really knew what the event was that drove what they call ‘coho urban runoff mortality syndrome,’” said Blair, the lead author of the paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. “This is the first paper that gives a clear answer as to what’s happening.”

Understanding this makes it possible to design tests for potential alternatives to 6PPD, which is in virtually every automobile tire. The need for an alternative is growing with concerns over the environmental impact of the chemical. Studies are increasingly showing that, while coho are one of the most sensitive to 6PPD-quinone, it is also toxic for other fish and mammals, with possible effects on human health.

“We need those tools to be available so we can start screening for alternatives to 6PPD,” Blair said. “This tells us how to evaluate a potential substitute.”

Blair is in the home stretch of her PhD program at WSU. She is also working for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation; an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, she also uses her Ojibwe name, Negonnekodoqua.

Co-authors on the paper included Jenifer McIntyre, an associate professor of aquatic toxicology whose lab at WSU Puyallup has been at the forefront of this issue. McIntyre works closely with collaborators at UW and the U.S. Geological Survey Western Fisheries Research Center to understand the harmful impacts of 6PPD-quinone and work towards a replacement for 6PPD.

Coho, or silver salmon, are an iconic Northwest species: Born in freshwater streams, they swim hundreds of miles to the ocean, where they spend most of their lives. A tiny percentage make the arduous journey back upstream to spawn before dying.

Several coho populations are listed as threatened or endangered, which has implications for the environment, economy, politics and treaty fishing rights of Northwest tribes.

Blair, who began working in the lab in 2018, has focused on trying to understand the cardiovascular response behind the die-offs. In lab experiments on fish exposed to stormwater runoff, she and McIntyre used fluorescent markers to demonstrate there were certain points at the blood-brain and blood-gill barriers that were “leaky”—something was crossing through the cardiovascular firewall.

They suspected that 6PPD-quinone was the cause, and the current paper confirms it. Researchers exposed fish to runoff collected from a state highway near Tacoma and, separately, to  concentrations of 6PDD-quinone typical for a runoff event. Fish exposed to both exhibited the behaviors associated with the die-offs, and subsequent examinations showed substantial disruption of the brain-blood and gill-blood barriers.

“Every single time the coho show the surfacing symptoms and the loss of equilibrium, it always has blood-gill and blood-brain barrier disruption,” Blair said. “You will always find that. Every single time you have a sick fish from exposure to 6PPD-quinone, this is very causually linked.”

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.5c01559 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Blood–Brain and Blood–Gill Barrier Disruption in Coho Salmon Exposed to Roadway Runoff and 6PPD-Quinone

USA

Curbing the CNA workforce shortage

Certified nursing assistants are leaving the workforce because of lack of resources, advancement opportunities

University of Georgia

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As the American population ages, the nation faces a crisis in its long-term care system — a shortage of certified nursing assistants.

A new study from the University of Georgia College of Public Health suggests that a lack of resources and advancement opportunities may be exacerbating the problem.

CNAs make up about one-third of all staff in nursing homes. But they provide about 90% of direct care, from helping with eating, bathing and mobility to providing companionship and monitoring for signs of illness.

“I don’t think most people realize what a CNA does on a day-to-day basis, how oftentimes they are really the go-to person for nursing home residents,” said Curt Harris, co-author of the study and the director of the UGA College of Public Health’s Institute for Disaster Management.

And the number of CNAs is dwindling.

The workforce shortage is not new, the researchers said. But it was intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which nursing homes lost more than 220,000 employees, including many CNAs. This led to reduced quality of care for residents, heightened stress for remaining staff and an escalating cycle of burnout and attrition.

“The crisis just continues to build upon itself and grow and grow and grow,” said Austin Dobbs, study co-author and emergency preparedness manager in the Institute for Disaster Management. “Something has to change. It can’t keep going the way it’s going because the system can’t sustain itself.”

Lack of awareness, financial constraints also play a role in CNA shortage

The study identified challenges in compensation, recruitment and retention as key factors in the shortage.

Direct resident care can take a physical and emotional toll, Harris said, and CNAs often lack access to mental health resources.

“The amount of care that they provide and the amount of baggage that they take home with them leads to significant turnover,” Harris said.

Barriers to training, a general lack of awareness of the career, financial constraints and accessibility of certification tests all lead to lower CNA retention.

And it doesn’t end once a CNA enters the workforce.

Insufficient career advancement opportunities, as well as disrespect from colleagues and residents, hamper retention in the field, according to the study.

Advocacy, increased access to training key to addressing CNA shortage

Advocacy for CNAs and other members of the long-term care facility workforce is key, according to the researchers. Pushing for improved access to training, setting up tracks for career advancement and supporting initiatives to increase pay and funding support are a few examples, Dobbs said.

Other potential solutions include building on grant-funded work like the Georgia CNA Career Pathway Initiative, which addressed early barriers to the workforce. This also led to the CNA Virtual Skills Evaluation program, which helps CNAs overcome testing barriers. As a result of this program, more than 6,000 Georgia CNAs took their skills evaluations virtually, increasing access to the field.

"You don’t need a degree to be an advocate. You just need to care.”

—Curt Harris, College of Public Health

“What is keeping disaster at bay is the incredible individuals that are working out in the field right now: from CNAs in the field, students studying to become CNAs, those training them in the training programs across Georgia and beyond in the United States,” Dobbs said. “They are the heroes in the story. But they need support. Be an advocate for those who are caring for your loved ones.”

“You don’t need a degree to be an advocate,” Harris said. “You just need to care.”

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Journal

The Gerontologist

DOI

10.1093/geront/gnaf126 

Article Title

A Looming Disaster: The Certified Nursing Assistant Staffing Shortage

 

UMass Amherst-led team finds rapidly changing river patterns in High-mountain Asia pose a challenge for region’s energy future

The increase in water coming from melting glaciers has consequences for billions of people who depend on this water for drinking, agriculture and electricity generation

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Upper Bhotekoshi River, Nepal

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Credit: Jonathan Flores, UMass Amherst

AMHERST, Mass. — An international team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has tracked changes in more than 114,000 rivers in High-mountain Asia over a 15-year period. The paper, published in AGU Advances, reported that nearly 10% of these rivers saw an increase in flow, with an increasing proportion of that water coming from glacial ice melt compared to precipitation.  

 

This water serves billions of people from China, India and Southeast Asia to Turkmenistan; is sensitive to climate change; and plays a key role in the sustainable development of this region through hydroelectricity generation.  

 

Using satellite observations and computer models from 2004 to 2019, the team found that 11,113 rivers experienced an increase in river discharge, or the amount of water flowing through them at any given time.  

 

“We’re seeing these rapid changes, which is consistent with a lot of other studies. We’ve just given it a finer lens and therefore assess it more concretely and quantitatively than it’s ever been done before,” says Colin Gleason, UMass Amherst Armstrong Professor of civil and environmental engineering. 

 

The smaller, upstream rivers of the Syr Darya Basin (which spans parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan), Indus Basin (Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan), and China’s Yangtze and Yellow River basins were most affected by these increases. 

 

One issue with this increase occurring in upstream rivers is that it can disrupt hydropower, which is critical for the energy security in the region. “For example, in Nepal, about 80% of their energy sources are coming from hydropower,” says Jonathan Flores, UMass Ph.D. student and first author on the paper. 

 

Increased river flow subsequently increases stream power. This may sound like a benefit for hydroelectricity, but in reality, it means that the river can push more and larger pieces of sediment downstream. 

 

“The dams are designed for specific stream power or discharge,” Flores says. “With that design, it has a limit for energy generation as well. The capacity and the energy supply stay the same, but the sediment that is clogging up the turbines and reducing the capacity of the reservoir increases.” This, ultimately, limits the amount of energy a plant can generate or raises the cost of doing so. 

 

Their research also traced the source of this increased water. Depending on the region, these changes were driven by different factors.  

 

“There are hot spots that we found out in the region,” says Flores. The eastern part of the Indus is getting wetter because of increased precipitation and changes in monsoon patterns. 

 

Overall river discharge in the western part of High-mountain Asia, namely the Syr Darya, Amu Darya and Western Indus rivers, increased by 2.7% year over year, with an increasing proportion of that water coming from glaciers. Every year, 2.2% more of the water discharge in a river can be attributed to glacial melt rather than precipitation.  

 

High-mountain Asia is referred to as the “Third Pole” in China, making it a key area of climate change research. “The first things to respond to warming climate are snow and ice,” says Gleason. “You see it in Greenland, you see it in Antarctica, and you see it here.”  

 

The shift will have significant consequences for water use. Gleason describes water as a bank: Precipitation is like paycheck. It makes deposits into your checking account that you use for your day-to-day withdrawals. “Your glacier is like your savings account,” he says. “You really don’t want to touch it. It just kind of drips your low interest rate over time. If there’s a year-on-year percent increase in flow coming from a glacier, it would suggest that, if those trends continue at that pace, you could be looking at diminishing glacial water stocks.” 

 

Gleason highlights that planners will need to consider the shift because glacial water is more seasonally predictable than precipitation. “The real effect is: it changes the stability of how much water is coming into your hydro system. If you’re building a drinking water or hydropower system reliant on glaciers providing a stable water supply, are you ready for that stable supply to change, and will the glacier even still be there 100 years from now?” 

Upstream, Koshi River, Nepal

Credit

Jonathan Flores, UMass Amherst

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Journal

AGU Advances

DOI

10.1029/2024AV001586 

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Accelerating River Discharge in High Mountain Asia

Article Publication Date

13-Aug-2025