Abstract
Life cycle assessment impact characterization factors often do not consider the spatial and tempo-ral differences in environmental impact. These can be significant for those emissions whose impacts can vary with such regional factors as climate, land use, population density, or weather. The formation of groundlevel ozone from tropospheric ozone precursors is one typical life cycle impact category where the spatial and temporal effects can be significant. this paper will review a methodology for developing spatial and temporal life cycle impact assessment character-ization factors and demonstrate the approach using a case study of the production and use of bio-fuels in the United States.

Abstract
Many widely used drugs now present an environmental problem because they are not removed by biological waste water treatment plants and thus can enter environmental aquatic system where they can have detrimental effects. Therefore, our laboratory pays attention to development of electroanalytical methods capable to detect low concentrations of drugs in aquatic environment. One example of our effort is the determination of the levodopa inhibitor pharmaceutical Benserazide using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), DC voltammetry and flow injection analysis (FIA) at carbon paste electrodes (CPE). Benserazide as the inhibitor of aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase is used for the treatment of Parkinsons disease. Carbon paste electrodes offer high sensitivity, wide choice of compositions tailored to analytes of interest and quite reasonable reproducibility. As optimum media for calibration dependences, BR buffer pH 4 and 0.1M H3PO4 have been selected, with best carbon paste composition consisting of spectrographic graphite with mineral oil as the pasting liquid. The calibration dependences were measured in the concentration range of 4-10"8 - 1-10"4M Benserazide. The lowest limit of detection of 6.10-8 M Benserazide (S/N = 3) was found for DPV in BR buffer pH 4. The attempts to further decrease the limit of detection by adsorptive stripping voltammetry were not successful. The results of voltammetric behavior of Benserazide were used also for FIA determination of this analyte.

Abstract
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are efficient and non polluting electrical power sources based on the oxidation of a fuel (hydrogen, small organic molecules) in the anode and the reduction of oxygen in the cathode. However, there are still significant challenges for their complete development, and one of them is the large potential loss in the conventional Pt anode caused by low levels of carbon monoxide, when reformed hydrogen is used as the anode reactant. In this work, the performance of H2/O2 proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) fed with CO-contaminated hydrogen is discussed for anodes with M/C materials (where M = Mo, Cu, Fe e W) in the gas diffusion layer and Pt/C, PtRu/C, PtFe/C, PtMo/C, PtW/C, PdPt/C, and PdPtRu/C in the catalyst layer. Materials have been characterized by XRD (X-ray diffraction) and in situ XANES (X-ray absorption near edge structure) and EXAFS (extended X-ray absorption fine structure) measurements. Electrochemical investigations have been made with cyclic voltammetry and steady state single cell polarization measurements with the catalysts forming gas diffusion electrodes and the system supplied with pure oxygen in the cathode and hydrogen, without and with 100 ppm CO, in the anode. DEMS (Differential electrochemical mass spectrometry) has been employed to verify the formation of CO2 at the PEMFC anode outlet. The CO tolerance of the alloyed materials is discussed in terms of the so called bifunctional or electronic mechanisms, and the possibility of occurrence of the water gas shift process. For most bimetallic electrocatalysts (PtRu/C, PtFe/C, PtMo/C, PdPtRu/C, and PtW/C), which presented high CO tolerance, DEMS results have shown that the production of CO2 starts at lower hydrogen electrode overpotentials as compared to Pt/C, confirming the occurrence of the bifunctional mechanism. On the other hand, XANES results indicate an increase in the Pt 5d-band vacancy for the bimetallic catalysts, particularly for PtFe/C, this leading to a weakening of the Pt-CO bond, helping to increase the CO tolerance (the electronic effect). For PtMo/C and PtRu/C, the formation of CO2 is observed even when the cell is at open circuit, confirming some elimination of CO by a chemical process, most probably the water gas shift reaction. For the PdPt/C catalysts, no CO2 formation is seen at the PEMFC anode outlet, indicating that the CO tolerance is improved due to the existence of more free surface sites for H2 electrooxidation, probably due to a lower Pd-CO interaction compared to pure Pd or Pt. Finally, it is seen that the diffusion layers formed by Mo/C e W/C introduce good CO-tolerance, and this was attributed to the CO removal by parallel occurrence of the water-gas shift reaction and the bifunctional mechanism.

Abstract
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a commonly accepted technique for determining the environmental sustainability of a product or process. The goal of this research is to complete a cradle to gate LCA of wood based hemicellulosic bio-ethanol from a modified Kraft mill that produces pulp and paper using Eco-LCA, Open LCA, and commercial SimaPro software. The system boundary of this study may change depending on data availability. An LCA of wood based bio-ethanol has already been achieved using SimaPro, but such LCA technique only accounts for emissions and non-renewable resources. Other LCA programs consider land usage in their evaluation, and end-point impact assessments also exist that incorporate multiple factors. Eco-LCA and Open LCA are newly developed models that offer a more complete approach to LCA. Eco-LCA, a free LCA model available to the public, considers ecosystem goods and services, referred to as natural capital, which accounts for the environmental impact of a process on natural goods and services such as water, soil, wood, and grass. Eco-LCA uses an inputoutput model to assess a system, resulting in a more comprehensive outlook that requires only simple resource input data, rather than specific information about the emissions from individual processes. SimaPro requires setting a boundary for the types of factors that will be included in the LCA and specific emissions data from each individual process, therefore potentially yielding different results than the Eco-LCA evaluation. The results of Eco-LCA and Open LCA will be compared to the results of SimaPro LCA, particularly in green house gas emissions and net energy consumption. The discrepancies between the three models will be reported to determine the model that reflects better representation of the environmental impacts of bio-ethanol.