Abstract: Flaring emissions during abnormal operating conditions such as plant start-ups, shut-downs, and upsets in chemical process industries (CPI) are usually significant. Flare minimization can help to save raw material and energy for CPI plants, and to improve local environmental sustainability. In this paper, a systematic methodology based on plant-wide dynamic simulation is presented for CPI plant flare minimizations under abnormal operating conditions. Since off-specification emission sources are inevitable during abnormal operating conditions, to significantly reduce flaring emission in a CPI plant, they must be either recycled to the upstream process for online reuse, or stored somewhere temporarily for future reprocessing, when the CPI plant manufacturing returns to stable operation. Thus, the off-spec products could be reused instead of being flared. This can be achieved through the identification of viable design and operational strategies during normal and abnormal operations through plant-wide dynamic scheduling, simulation, and optimization. The proposed study includes three stages of simulation works: (i) developing and validating a steady-state model of a CPI plant; (ii) transiting the obtained steady-state plant model to the dynamic modeling environment; and refining and validating the plant dynamic model; and (iii) developing flare minimization strategies for abnormal operating conditions of a CPI plant via a validated plant-wide dynamic model. This cost-effective methodology has two main merits: (i) employing large-scale dynamic modeling and simulations for industrial flare minimization, which involves various unit models for modeling hundreds of CPI plant facilities; (ii) dealing with critical abnormal operating conditions of CPI plants such as plant start-up and shut-down. Two virtual case studies on flare minimizations for start-up operation (over 50% of emission savings) and shut-down operation (over 70% of emission savings) of an ethylene plant have been employed to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed study.
Abstract: Currently, in Colombia is arising a problem related to collecting used lubricant oils which are generated by the increment of the vehicle fleet. This situation does not allow a proper disposal of this type of waste, which in turn results in a negative impact on the environment. Therefore, through the comparative analysis of various heuristics, the best solution to the VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem) was selected by comparing costs and times for the collection of used lubricant oils in the city of Pereira, Colombia; since there is no presence of management companies engaged in the direct administration of the collection of this pollutant. To achieve this aim, six proposals of through methods of solution of two phases were discussed. First, the assignment of the group of generator points of the residue was made (previously identified). Proposals one and four of through methods are based on the closeness of points. The proposals two and five are using the scanning method and the proposals three and six are considering the restriction of the capacity of collection vehicle. Subsequently, the routes were developed - in the first three proposals by the Clarke and Wright's savings algorithm and in the following proposals by the Traveling Salesman optimization mathematical model. After applying techniques, a comparative analysis of the results was performed and it was determined which of the proposals presented the most optimal values in terms of the distance, cost and travel time.
Abstract: Physical activity as a part of people’s everyday life reduces the risk of many diseases, including those induced by lifestyle, e.g. obesity, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, coronary heart disease, degenerative arthritis, and certain types of cancer. That refers particularly to professionally active people, including the early senior group working on non-manual positions. The aim of the study is to evaluate the relationship between physical activity and the socio-economic status of non-manual workers from Wroclaw—one of the biggest cities in Poland, a model setting for such investigations in this part of Europe. The crucial problem in the research is to find out the percentage of respondents who meet the health-related recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the volume, frequency, and intensity of physical activity, as well as to establish if the most important socio-economic factors, such as gender, age, education, marital status, per capita income, savings and debt, determine the compliance with the WHO physical activity recommendations. During the research, conducted in 2013, 1,170 people (611 women and 559 men) aged 21–60 years were examined. A diagnostic poll method was applied to collect the data. Physical activity was measured with the use of the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire with extended socio-demographic questions, i.e. concerning gender, age, education, marital status, income, savings or debts. To evaluate the relationship between physical activity and selected socio-economic factors, logistic regression was used (odds ratio statistics). Statistical inference was conducted on the adopted ex ante probability level of p
Abstract: Web-expanded steel beams provide an easy and economical solution for the systems having longer structural members. The main goal of manufacturing these beams is to increase the moment of inertia and section modulus, which results in greater strength and rigidity. Until recently, there were two common types of open web-expanded beams: with hexagonal openings, also called castellated beams, and beams with circular openings referred to as cellular beams, until the generation of sinusoidal web-expanded beams. In the present research, the optimum design of a new generation beams, namely sinusoidal web-expanded beams, will be carried out and the design results will be compared with castellated and cellular beam solutions. Thanks to a reduced fabrication process and substantial material savings, the web-expanded beam with sinusoidal holes (Angelina™ Beam) meets the economic requirements of steel design problems while ensuring optimum safety. The objective of this research is to carry out non-linear finite element analysis (FEA) of the web-expanded beam with sinusoidal holes. The FE method has been used to predict their entire response to increasing values of external loading until they lose their load carrying capacity. FE model of each specimen that is utilized in the experimental studies is carried out. These models are used to simulate the experimental work to verify of test results and to investigate the non-linear behavior of failure modes such as web-post buckling, shear buckling and vierendeel bending of beams.
Abstract: Manufacturing companies invest a significant amount of sales into material resources for production. In our sample, 58% of sales is used for manufacturing inputs, while only 24% of sales is used for salaries. This means that if a company is looking to reduce costs, the greater potential is in reduction of material costs than downsizing. This research shows that manufacturing companies in Croatia did realize material savings in last three years. It is also shown by which technologies they achieved materials cost savings. Through literature research, we found research gap as to which technologies reduce material consumption. As methodology of research four regression analyses are used to prove our findings.
Abstract: This paper deals with the problem of two-dimensional (2-D) recursive doubly complementary (DC) digital filter design. We present a structure of 2-D recursive DC filters by using 2-D symmetric half-plane (SHP) recursive digital all-pass lattice filters (DALFs). The novelty of using 2-D SHP recursive DALFs to construct a 2-D recursive DC digital lattice filter is that the resulting 2-D SHP recursive DC digital lattice filter provides better performance than the existing 2-D SHP recursive DC digital filter. Moreover, the proposed structure possesses a favorable 2-D DC half-band (DC-HB) property that allows about half of the 2-D SHP recursive DALF’s coefficients to be zero. This leads to considerable savings in computational burden for implementation. To ensure the stability of a designed 2-D SHP recursive DC digital lattice filter, some necessary constraints on the phase of the 2-D SHP recursive DALF during the design process are presented. Design of a 2-D diamond-shape decimation/interpolation filter is presented for illustration and comparison.
Abstract: Renewable energy resources, which can supplement space and water heating for residential buildings, can have a noticeable impact on natural gas consumption and air pollution. This study considers a technical analysis of a combined solar water heating system with evacuated tube solar collectors for different solar coverage, ranging from 20% to 100% of the total roof area of a typical residential building located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The alternative heating systems were conventional (non-condensing) and condensing tankless water heaters and condensing boilers that were coupled to solar water heating systems. The performance of the alternative heating systems was compared to a traditional heating system, consisting of a conventional boiler, applied to houses of various gross floor areas. A comparison among the annual natural gas consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) mitigation, and emissions for the various house sizes indicated that the combined solar heating system can reduce the natural gas consumption and CO2 emissions, and increase CO2 mitigation for all the systems that were studied. The results suggest that solar water heating systems are potentially beneficial for residential heating system applications in terms of energy savings and CO2 mitigation.
Abstract: This paper intends to identify and analyze customer adoption and attitudes towards mobile banking facilities. The study uses six perceived characteristics of innovation that can be used to form a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward an innovation, namely: Relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trailability, risk, and observability. Collected data were analyzed using Pearson Chi-Square test. The results showed that mobile bank users were predominantly males. There is a growing trend among young, educated customers towards converting to mobile banking in Sri Lanka. The research outcomes suggested that all the six factors are statistically highly significant in influencing mobile banking adoption and attitude formation towards mobile banking in Sri Lanka. The major reasons for adopting mobile banking services are the accessibility and availability of services regardless of time and place. Over the 75 percent of the respondents mentioned that savings in time and effort and low financial costs of conducting mobile banking were advantageous. Issue of security was found to be the most important factor that motivated consumer adoption and attitude formation towards mobile banking. Main barriers to mobile banking were the lack of technological skills, the traditional cash‐carry banking culture, and the lack of awareness and insufficient guidance to using mobile banking.
Abstract: Hybrid propulsion combines beneficial properties of both solid and liquid rockets, such as multiple restarts, throttability as well as simplicity and reduced costs. A nitrous oxide (N2O)/paraffin-based hybrid rocket engine demonstrator is currently under development at the Italian Aerospace Research Center (CIRA) within the national research program HYPROB, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research. Nitrous oxide belongs to the class of self-pressurizing propellants that exhibit a high vapor pressure at standard ambient temperature. This peculiar feature makes those fluids very attractive for space rocket applications because it avoids the use of complex pressurization systems, leading to great benefits in terms of weight savings and reliability. To avoid feed-system-coupled instabilities, the phase change is required to occur through the injectors. In this regard, the oxidizer is stored in liquid condition while target chamber pressures are designed to lie below vapor pressure. The consequent cavitation and flash vaporization constitute a remarkably complex phenomenology that arises great modelling challenges. Thus, it is clear that the design of the injection system is fundamental for the full exploitation of hybrid rocket engine throttability. The Analytical Hierarchy Process has been used to select the injection architecture as best compromise among different design criteria such as functionality, technology innovation and cost. The impossibility to use engineering simplified relations for the dimensioning of the injectors led to the needs of applying a numerical approach based on OpenFOAM®. The numerical tool has been validated with selected experimental data from literature. Quantitative, as well as qualitative comparisons are performed in terms of mass flow rate and pressure drop across the injector for several operating conditions. The results show satisfactory agreement with the experimental data. Modeling assumptions, together with their impact on numerical predictions are discussed in the paper. Once assessed the reliability of the numerical tool, the injection plate has been designed and sized to guarantee the required amount of oxidizer in the combustion chamber and therefore to assure high combustion efficiency. To this purpose, the plate has been designed with multiple injectors whose number and diameter have been selected in order to reach the requested mass flow rate for the two operating conditions of maximum and minimum thrust. The overall design has been finally verified through three-dimensional computations in cavitating non-reacting conditions and it has been verified that the proposed design solution is able to guarantee the requested values of mass flow rates.
Abstract: In the last decades, an increasing set of companies adopted lean philosophy to improve their productivity and efficiency promoting the so-called continuous improvement concept, reducing waste of time and cutting off no-value added activities. In parallel, increasing attention rises toward green practice and management through the spread of the green supply chain pattern, to minimise landfilled waste, drained wastewater and pollutant emissions. Starting from a review on contributions deepening lean and green principles applied to supply chain management, the most relevant drivers to measure the performance of industrial processes are pointed out. Specific attention is paid on the role of cost because it is of key importance and it crosses both lean and green principles. This analysis leads to figure out an original reference framework for integrating lean and green principles in designing and managing supply chains. The proposed framework supports the application, to the whole value chain or to parts of it, e.g. distribution network, assembly system, job-shop, storage system etc., of the lean-green integrated perspective. Evidences show that the combination of the lean and green practices lead to great results, higher than the sum of the performances from their separate application. Lean thinking has beneficial effects on green practices and, at the same time, methods allowing environmental savings generate positive effects on time reduction and process quality increase.
Abstract: Effective treatment of ground instability is essential when managing the impacts associated with historic mining. A field trial was undertaken by the Coal Authority to investigate the geotechnical performance and potential use of composite materials comprising resin and fill or stone to safely treat surface collapses, such as crown-holes, associated with shallow mining. Test pits were loosely filled with various granular fill materials. The fill material was injected with commercially available silicate and polyurethane resin foam products. In situ and laboratory testing was undertaken to assess the geotechnical properties of the resultant composite materials. The test pits were subsequently excavated to assess resin permeation. Drilling and resin injection was easiest through clean limestone fill materials. Recycled building waste fill material proved difficult to inject with resin; this material is thus considered unsuitable for use in resin composites. Incomplete resin permeation in several of the test pits created irregular ‘blocks’ of composite. Injected resin foams significantly improve the stiffness and resistance (strength) of the un-compacted fill material. The stiffness of the treated fill material appears to be a function of the stone particle size, its associated compaction characteristics (under loose tipping) and the proportion of resin foam matrix. The type of fill material is more critical than the type of resin to the geotechnical properties of the composite materials. Resin composites can effectively support typical design imposed loads. Compared to other traditional treatment options, such as cement grouting, the use of resin composites is potentially less disruptive, particularly for sites with limited access, and thus likely to achieve significant reinstatement cost savings. The use of resin composites is considered a suitable option for the future treatment of shallow mining collapses.
Abstract: Urbanization, population growth, climate change and the current increase in water demand have made the adoption of innovative demand management strategies crucial to the water industry. Water conservation in urban areas has to be improved by encouraging consumers to adopt more sustainable habits and behaviours. This includes informing and educating them about their households’ water consumption and advising them about ways to achieve significant savings on a daily basis. This paper presents a study conducted in the context of the European FP7 WISDOM Project. By integrating innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) frameworks, this project aims at achieving a change in water savings. More specifically, behavioural change will be attempted by implementing smart meters and in-home displays in a trial group of selected households within Cardiff (UK). Using this device, consumers will be able to receive feedback and information about their consumption but will also have the opportunity to compare their consumption to the consumption of other consumers and similar households. Following an initial survey, it appeared necessary to implement these in-home displays in a way that matches consumer's motivations to save water. The results demonstrated the importance of various factors influencing people’s daily water consumption. Both the relevant literature on the subject and the results of our survey therefore led us to include within the in-home device a variety of elements. It first appeared crucial to make consumers aware of the economic aspect of water conservation and especially of the significant financial savings that can be achieved by reducing their household’s water consumption on the long term. Likewise, reminding participants of the impact of their consumption on the environment by making them more aware of water scarcity issues around the world will help increasing their motivation to save water. Additionally, peer pressure and social comparisons with neighbours and other consumers, accentuated by the use of online social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, will likely encourage consumers to reduce their consumption. Participants will also be able to compare their current consumption to their past consumption and to observe the consequences of their efforts to save water through diverse graphs and charts. Finally, including a virtual water game within the display will help the whole household, children and adults, to achieve significant reductions by providing them with simple tips and advice to save water on a daily basis. Moreover, by setting daily and weekly goals for them to reach, the game will expectantly generate cooperation between family members. Members of each household will indeed be encouraged to work together to reduce their water consumption within different rooms of the house, such as the bathroom, the kitchen, or the toilets. Overall, this study will allow us to understand the elements that attract consumers the most and the features that are most commonly used by the participants. In this way, we intend to determine the main factors influencing water consumption in order to identify the measures that will most encourage water conservation in both the long and short term.
Abstract: The new methods as accelerated steam distillation
assisted by microwave (ASDAM) is a combination of microwave
heating and steam distillation, performed at atmospheric pressure at
very short extraction time. Isolation and concentration of volatile
compounds are performed by a single stage. (ASDAM) has been
compared with (ASDAM) with cryogrinding of seeds (CG) and a
conventional technique, hydrodistillation assisted by microwave
(HDAM), hydro-distillation (HD) for the extraction of essential oil
from aromatic herb as caraway and cumin seeds. The essential oils
extracted by (ASDAM) for 1 min were quantitatively (yield) and
qualitatively (aromatic profile) no similar to those obtained by
ASDAM-CG (1 min) and HD (for 3 h). The accelerated microwave
extraction with cryogrinding inhibits numerous enzymatic reactions
as hydrolysis of oils.
Microwave radiations constitute the adequate mean for the
extraction operations from the yields and high content in major
component majority point view, and allow to minimise considerably
the energy consumption, but especially heating time too, which is one
of essential parameters of artifacts formation.
The ASDAM and ASDAM-CG are green techniques and yields an
essential oil with higher amounts of more valuable oxygenated
compounds comparable to the biosynthesis compounds, and allows
substantial savings of costs, in terms of time, energy and plant
material.
Abstract: This paper applies recursive cointegration analysis to
examine the dynamic changes in Feldstein-Horioka saving-investment
(S-I) coefficients across China and the ASEAN-5 countries over time.
To the extent that the S-I coefficients measure international capital
mobility, the main empirical results are as follows. The recursive trace
statistics show that the investment- savings nexus varies in these six
countries. There is no cointegration between investment and savings in
three countries (China, Malaysia, and Singapore), which means that
the mobility of the capital markets in the three is high and that
domestic investment in them will be financed by the global pool of
capital. As to the other three countries (Indonesia, Thailand, and
Philippines), there is cointegration between investment and savings for
part of the sample period in the three, including before 2002 for
Thailand, before 2001 for Indonesia, and before 2002 for Philippines.
This shows these three countries achieved highly mobile and open
capital markets later.
Abstract: While the feature sizes of recent Complementary Metal
Oxid Semiconductor (CMOS) devices decrease the influence of static
power prevails their energy consumption. Thus, power savings that
benefit from Dynamic Frequency and Voltage Scaling (DVFS) are
diminishing and temporal shutdown of cores or other microchip
components become more worthwhile. A consequence of powering off unused parts of a chip is that the
relative difference between idle and fully loaded power consumption
is increased. That means, future chips and whole server systems gain
more power saving potential through power-aware load balancing,
whereas in former times this power saving approach had only
limited effect, and thus, was not widely adopted. While powering
off complete servers was used to save energy, it will be superfluous
in many cases when cores can be powered down. An important
advantage that comes with that is a largely reduced time to respond
to increased computational demand. We include the above developments in a server power model
and quantify the advantage. Our conclusion is that strategies from
datacenters when to power off server systems might be used in the
future on core level, while load balancing mechanisms previously
used at core level might be used in the future at server level.
Abstract: Reduction of energy consumption in built
infrastructure, through the installation of energy-efficient
technologies, is a major approach to achieving sustainability. In
practice, the viability of energy efficiency projects strongly depends
on the cost reimbursement and profitability. These projects are
subject to failure if the actual cost savings do not reimburse the
project cost promptly. In such cases, refinancing could be a solution
to benefit from the long-term returns of the project, if implemented
wisely. However, very little is still known about the effect of
refinancing options on financial performance of energy efficiency
projects. In order to fill this gap, the present study investigates the
financial behavior of energy efficiency projects with focus on
refinancing options, such as Leveraged Loans. A System Dynamics
(SD) model is introduced, and the model application is presented
using an actual case-study data. The case study results indicate that
while high-interest start-ups make using Leveraged Loan inevitable,
refinancing can rescue the project and bring about profitability. This
paper also presents some managerial implications of refinancing
energy efficiency projects based on the case-study analysis. Results
of this study help to implement financially viable energy efficiency
projects so that the community could benefit from their
environmental advantages widely.
Abstract: In this paper, a novel Linear Feedback Shift Register
(LFSR) with Look Ahead Clock Gating (LACG) technique is
presented to reduce the power consumption in modern processors
and System-on-Chip. Clock gating is a predominant technique used
to reduce unwanted switching of clock signals. Several clock gating
techniques to reduce the dynamic power have been developed, of
which LACG is predominant. LACG computes the clock enabling
signals of each flip-flop (FF) one cycle ahead of time, based on the
present cycle data of the flip-flops on which it depends. It overcomes
the timing problems in the existing clock gating methods like datadriven
clock gating and Auto-Gated flip-flops (AGFF) by allotting a
full clock cycle for the determination of the clock enabling signals.
Further to reduce the power consumption in LACG technique, FFs
can be grouped so that they share a common clock enabling signal.
Simulation results show that the novel grouped LFSR with LACG
achieves 15.03% power savings than conventional LFSR with LACG
and 44.87% than data-driven clock gating.
Abstract: Carefully scheduling the operations of pumps can be
resulted to significant energy savings. Schedules can be defined
either implicit, in terms of other elements of the network such as tank
levels, or explicit by specifying the time during which each pump is
on/off. In this study, two new explicit representations based on timecontrolled
triggers were analyzed, where the maximum number of
pump switches was established beforehand, and the schedule may
contain fewer switches than the maximum. The optimal operation of
pumping stations was determined using a Jumping Particle Swarm
Optimization (JPSO) algorithm to achieve the minimum energy cost.
The model integrates JPSO optimizer and EPANET hydraulic
network solver. The optimal pump operation schedule of VanZyl
water distribution system was determined using the proposed model
and compared with those from Genetic and Ant Colony algorithms.
The results indicate that the proposed model utilizing the JPSO
algorithm is a versatile management model for the operation of realworld
water distribution system.
Abstract: At the present time, awareness, education, computer
simulation and information systems protection are very serious and
relevant topics. The article deals with perspectives and possibilities of
implementation of emergence or natural hazard threats into the
system which is developed for communication among members of
crisis management staffs. The Czech Hydro-Meteorological Institute
with its System of Integrated Warning Service resents the largest
usable base of information. National information systems are connected to foreign systems,
especially to flooding emergency systems of neighboring countries,
systems of European Union and international organizations where the
Czech Republic is a member. Use of outputs of particular information
systems and computer simulations on a single communication
interface of information system for communication among members
of crisis management staff and setting the site interoperability in the
net will lead to time savings in decision-making processes in solving
extraordinary events and crisis situations. Faster managing of an
extraordinary event or a crisis situation will bring positive effects and
minimize the impact of negative effects on the environment.
Abstract: This paper describes how to dimension the electric
components of a 48V hybrid system considering real customer use.
Furthermore, it provides information about savings in energy and
CO2 emissions by a customer-tailored 48V hybrid. Based on measured customer profiles, the electric units such as the
electric motor and the energy storage are dimensioned. Furthermore,
the CO2 reduction potential in real customer use is determined
compared to conventional vehicles. Finally, investigations are carried
out to specify the topology design and preliminary considerations in
order to hybridize a conventional vehicle with a 48V hybrid system.
The emission model results from an empiric approach also taking into
account the effects of engine dynamics on emissions. We analyzed
transient engine emissions during representative customer driving
profiles and created emission meta models. The investigation showed
a significant difference in emissions when simulating realistic
customer driving profiles using the created verified meta models
compared to static approaches which are commonly used for vehicle
simulation.