Food waste generation is increasing at an exponential rate, affecting the environment, food security, and causing major economic issues worldwide. The main aim of the current research is to investigate a novel composting technology that is still in its early stages of development. The proposed composting technology combining thermophilic composting with the use of advanced automated processing reactors. Starting from a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the waste generated at retail-stores, the most significant difficulties associated to waste management as well as the main characteristics of the discarded waste were identified. The findings allowed to design and evaluate the real operating performance of an automated thermophilic composting prototype (working in a decentralized regime), with the goal of delivering a faster processing system, improving operational efficiency, reducing expenses, and lowering environmental impacts. The proposed operating technique showed a high capacity for pathogens and seeds removal, the waste input mass reduction of 88%, and efficiency in food processing (2235 kg of fruits and vegetables in a 14-days timeframe).

Inadequate production practices are widely used in aquaculture management, causing excessive water and energy usage, as well as ecological damage. New approaches to sustainable aquaculture attempt to increase production efficiency, while reducing the quantities generated of wastewater and sludge. The sustainable operating techniques are often ineffective, expensive, and difficult to implement. The present article proposes a zero-waste production system, designed for growing fish and vegetables, using a new circular operational concept that creates synergies between fish farming and horticulture. In order to optimize the operational flows with resources, products, and wastes in an integrated zero-waste food production cluster, a business model was designed associating three ecological production practices: a closed fishing pond, a technology for growing vegetables in straw bales, and a composting system. The design had the role to assist the transition toward multiple circular material flows, where the waste can be fully reintegrated into the production processes. A comparative evaluation was conducted in three alternative growing environments, namely, a soilless culture established in straw bales, a culture grown in soil that had received compost fertilizer, and the conventional farming technique. When compared to conventional methods, experiments showed a significant increase in the cluster’s cumulative productivity, resulting in a 12% improvement in energy efficiency, 18% increase in food production, and 25% decrease in operating expenses.

Starting from the influencing parameters of threshing and separation and implicit seed losses that occur within this process, this paper searched for and identified the optimal threshing regimes to minimize losses depending on the process parameters. The evacuation losses (p_ev) depend on threshing rotor speed (n) and implicit rotor peripheral speed (v_p), material feed speed (v_a), the space between the rotor and counter-rotor (δ), material feed flow (Q), material density (ρ), and the length of the threshing apparatus (L). As the parameters ρ and L are constant, the variation of losses in relation to each of the arguments was followed: v_p, Q, ρ, and v_a, respectively, for the minimization of losses by the variation of the loss function by two arguments each (represented graphically); the four arguments targeted being: v_p, v_a, ρ, and Q. Using these input parameters, it was possible to determine the optimal threshing regimes for the variation of losses in relation to the rotor peripheral speed, the feed flow, the space between the rotor and the counter-rotor, and the feed speed, so as to obtain a seed separation percentage (S_s) as close as possible to 100% (and implicitly the smallest threshing losses—towards zero) in relation to these parameters.

New global directions align agricultural land resources towards food production; therefore, marginal lands could provide opportunities for second-generation energy crops, assuming that in the difficult conditions of plant development, productivity can be maintained at relatively high levels. Sustainable bioenergy production on marginal lands represents an ambitious objective, offering high-quality biofuels without competing with the agri-food industry, since it allows successful feedstock production to be performed on unmanaged areas. However, marginal land feedstock production generally shows several agronomic, techno-economic, and methodological challenges, leading to decreases in the obtained quantities of biomass and profitability. Sweet Sorghum is a technical plant that has the needed qualities to produce large amounts of biofuels on marginal lands. It is a high biomass- and sugar-yielding crop, characterized by a high photosynthetic efficiency and low fertilizer requirement, is resistant to drought, and adapts well to different climate areas. Marginal lands and contaminated soils provide a favorable development environment for plants such as sweet sorghum; however, in-depth research studies on biomass productivity must be carried out, as well as advanced quality evaluation of the products, in order to develop combined technologies that use resources efficiently. The present study starts with a comparative evaluation of two sweet sorghum crops established on both marginal and regular lands, assessing plant development characteristics and juice production, and an evaluation of bioethanol generation potential. The vegetal wastes resulting from the processing were treated by pyrolysis, with the aim of maximizing the productivity of high-quality liquid biofuels and chemicals. The charcoal obtained in the thermal processes was considered as an amendment of the soil so that marginal land quality could be improved over time.

To accurately predict the impact of various species of plants on environment is a very difficult task, because their characteristics and specificities together with the external conditions of climate and fauna lead to very complicated systems that are difficult to analyze. The paper aims to assess two technical plants that may be used for the production of biofuels, namely Jerusalem artichoke and Sweet sorghum in evaluating fuel production efficiency and the possibility of being regarded as a viable solution for ecosystem conservation.

Water is the primary limiting factor in dryland crop production, therefore emerging approaches for preserving rainwater to be more accessible to plants, for extended periods of time, can significantly improve agricultural system efficiency. Furrow diking, a method involving compartmentalizing micro-basins to increase infiltration and soil water storage is one of the most promising water conservation solutions, particularly for sloping terrain. Moreover, furrow diking is associated with water conservation practices and regenerative agriculture as adaptive to dryland crop production. The present research study aims at improving the process of building soil compartmentalized segments using furrow diking technology, by designing and testing optimal geometries for the active soil modeling component. Three new constructive designs of a furrow diking active subassembly were built and tested in comparison with the standard version. In accordance with the considered quality indicators, the most efficient constructive shape was the curved rotor blade due to the higher volume of managed soil and fewer soil losses. Furthermore, the technology applied on three non-irrigated sunflower experimental crops grown on sloping land showed very good effectiveness with respect to the studied climatic and pedological conditions in southern Romania. When compared with non-compartmentalized crops, the most efficient rotor geometry design increased seed production by 11–13%. Water storage efficiency contributed the most to the yield increase, with moisture retention from the root zone improving by an average of 20%.