scholarly journals SPECIFIC EMISSIONS FROM BIOMASS COMBUSTION

2014 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Skopec ◽  
Jan Hrdlička ◽  
Michal Kaválek

This paper deals with determining the specific emissions from the combustion of two kinds of biomass fuels in a small-scale boiler. The tested fuels were pellets made of wood and pellets made of rape plant straw. In order to evaluate the specific emissions, several combustion experiments were carried out using a commercial 25 kW pellet-fired boiler. The specific emissions of CO, SO<sub>2</sub> and NO<sub>x</sub> were evaluated in relation to a unit of burned fuel, a unit of calorific value and a unit of produced heat. The specific emissions were compared with some data acquired from the reference literature, with relatively different results. The differences depend mainly on the procedure used for determining the values, and references provide no information about this. Although some of our experimental results may fit with one of the reference sources, they do not fit with the other. The reliability of the references is therefore disputable.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (11) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Maria Antonietta Aiello ◽  
Alessio Cascardi ◽  
Luciano Ombres ◽  
Salvatore Verre

Fabric Reinforced Cementitious Matrix (FRCM) systems are promising solutions for the confinement of masonry columns because they demonstrate strengthening effectiveness and, at the same time, compatibility with historical substrates. Nevertheless, the matrix is responsible for the stress-transfer from the structural element to the fabric-reinforcement. Therefore, in the case of poor-quality mortar, the effectiveness of the strengthening can be limited or even compromised. On the other hand, the low content of fibers utilized for FRCM systems generally involves the need to apply more layers in order to accomplish design requirements and a continuous configuration of the reinforcement is more often addressed. Few experimental and theoretical investigations have been targeted to the before mentioned aspects in the recent past, namely the influence of the kind of mortar, the number of layers, and the strengthening configuration (continuous, discontinuous) on the effectiveness of confinement. The present paper refers to the results of an experimental investigation on FRCM confined clay brick masonry. A series of small-scale masonry columns were tested under monotonic centered load until collapse. The varied parameters were the number of confining layers (i.e., 1, 2, and 3) and the confinement configuration (i.e., continuous and discontinuous). The performed research aims to contribute in strengthening to the knowledge in the field of FRCM-confinement, mainly focusing on some of the mentioned unexplored aspects (number of layers, strengthening configuration) that could be considered for validation/improvement of analytical design-oriented formulas. In particular, some analytical models, available in the technical literature, were adopted for predicting the herein reported experimental results. Even if based on few experimental results, the outcomes showed that the number of FRCM-layers and the confinement configuration were crucial parameters affecting the confining effectiveness. The compressive strength was satisfactorily predicted in all cases by the two available utilized models. On the other hand, an improvement in the utilized AOM model is suggested in order to include the stress–strain curves of the hardening type.


1994 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 127-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Rea ◽  
George G. Ganf

Experimental results demonstrate bow small differences in depth and water regime have a significant affect on the accumulation and allocation of nutrients and biomass. Because the performance of aquatic plants depends on these factors, an understanding of their influence is essential to ensure that systems function at their full potential. The responses differed for two emergent species, indicating that within this morphological category, optimal performance will fall at different locations across a depth or water regime gradient. The performance of one species was unaffected by growth in mixture, whereas the other performed better in deep water and worse in shallow.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Kazuhiro Aruga

In this study, two operational methodologies to extract thinned woods were investigated in the Nasunogahara area, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. Methodology one included manual extraction and light truck transportation. Methodology two included mini-forwarder forwarding and four-ton truck transportation. Furthermore, a newly introduced chipper was investigated. As a result, costs of manual extractions within 10 m and 20 m were JPY942/m3 and JPY1040/m3, respectively. On the other hand, the forwarding cost of the mini-forwarder was JPY499/m3, which was significantly lower than the cost of manual extractions. Transportation costs with light trucks and four-ton trucks were JPY7224/m3 and JPY1298/m3, respectively, with 28 km transportation distances. Chipping operation costs were JPY1036/m3 and JPY1160/m3 with three and two persons, respectively. Finally, the total costs of methodologies one and two from extraction within 20 m to chipping were estimated as JPY9300/m3 and JPY2833/m3, respectively, with 28 km transportation distances and three-person chipping operations (EUR1 = JPY126, as of 12 August 2020).


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 551-563
Author(s):  
Liqiong Lu ◽  
Dong Wu ◽  
Ziwei Tang ◽  
Yaohua Yi ◽  
Faliang Huang

This paper focuses on script identification in natural scene images. Traditional CNNs (Convolution Neural Networks) cannot solve this problem perfectly for two reasons: one is the arbitrary aspect ratios of scene images which bring much difficulty to traditional CNNs with a fixed size image as the input. And the other is that some scripts with minor differences are easily confused because they share a subset of characters with the same shapes. We propose a novel approach combing Score CNN, Attention CNN and patches. Attention CNN is utilized to determine whether a patch is a discriminative patch and calculate the contribution weight of the discriminative patch to script identification of the whole image. Score CNN uses a discriminative patch as input and predict the score of each script type. Firstly patches with the same size are extracted from the scene images. Secondly these patches are used as inputs to Score CNN and Attention CNN to train two patch-level classifiers. Finally, the results of multiple discriminative patches extracted from the same image via the above two classifiers are fused to obtain the script type of this image. Using patches with the same size as inputs to CNN can avoid the problems caused by arbitrary aspect ratios of scene images. The trained classifiers can mine discriminative patches to accurately identify some confusing scripts. The experimental results show the good performance of our approach on four public datasets.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein Ahmadvand ◽  
Fouzhan Foroutan ◽  
Mahmood Fathy

AbstractData variety is one of the most important features of Big Data. Data variety is the result of aggregating data from multiple sources and uneven distribution of data. This feature of Big Data causes high variation in the consumption of processing resources such as CPU consumption. This issue has been overlooked in previous works. To overcome the mentioned problem, in the present work, we used Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) to reduce the energy consumption of computation. To this goal, we consider two types of deadlines as our constraint. Before applying the DVFS technique to computer nodes, we estimate the processing time and the frequency needed to meet the deadline. In the evaluation phase, we have used a set of data sets and applications. The experimental results show that our proposed approach surpasses the other scenarios in processing real datasets. Based on the experimental results in this paper, DV-DVFS can achieve up to 15% improvement in energy consumption.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Ribeiro ◽  
C. Vilarinho ◽  
J. Araújo ◽  
J. Carvalho

The increasing of world population, industrialization and global consuming, existing market products existed in the along with diversification of raw materials, are responsible for an exponential increase of wastes. This scenario represents loss of resources and ultimately causes air, soils and water pollution. Therefore, proper waste management is currently one of the major challenges faced by modern societies. Textile industries represents, in Portugal, almost 10% of total productive transforming sector and 19% of total employments in the sector composed by almost 7.000 companies. One of the main environmental problems of textile industries is the production of significant quantities of wastes from its different processing steps. According to the Portuguese Institute of Statistics (INE) these industries produce almost 500.000 tons of wastes each year, with the textile cotton waste (TCW) being the most expressive. It was estimated that 4.000 tons of TCW are produced each year in Portugal. In this work an integrated TCW valorisation procedure was evaluated, firstly by its thermal and energetic valorisation with slow pyrolysis followed by the utilization of biochar by-product, in lead and chromium synthetic wastewater decontamination. Pyrolysis experiments were conducted in a small scale rotating pyrolysis reactor with 0.1 m3 of total capacity. Results of pyrolysis experiments showed the formation of 0,241 m3 of biogas for each kilogram of TCW. Results also demonstrated that the biogas is mostly composed by hydrogen (22%), methane (14 %), carbon monoxide (20%) and carbon dioxide (12%), which represents a total high calorific value of 12.3 MJ/Nm3. Regarding biochar, results of elemental analysis demonstrated a high percentage of carbon driving its use as low cost adsorbent. Adsorption experiments were conducted with lead and chromium synthetic wastewaters (25, 50 and 100 mg L−1) in batch vessels with controlled pH. It was evaluated the behaviour of adsorption capacity and removal rate of each metal during 120 minutes of contact time using 5, 10 and 50 g L−1 of adsorbent dosage. Results indicated high affinity of adsorbent with each tested metal with 78% of removal rate in chromium and 95% in lead experiments. This suggests that biochar from TCW pyrolysis may be appropriated to wastewaters treatment, with high contents of heavy metals and it can be an effective alternative to activated carbon.


1993 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 2344-2353 ◽  
Author(s):  
J-M. Berthelot ◽  
Souda M. Ben ◽  
J.L. Robert

The experimental study of wave attenuation in concrete has been achieved in the case of the propagation of plane waves in concrete rods. Different mortars and concretes have been investigated. A transmitter transducer coupled to one of the ends of the concrete rod generates the propagation of a plane wave in the rod. The receiver transducer, similar to the previous one, is coupled to the other end of the rod. The experimental results lead to an analytical expression for wave attenuation as function of the concrete composition, the propagation distance, and the wave frequency.


Author(s):  
Segen F. Estefen ◽  
Paulo Roberto da Costa ◽  
Eliab Ricarte ◽  
Marcelo M. Pinheiro

Wave energy is a renewable and non-polluting source and its use is being studied in different countries. The paper presents an overview on the harnessing of energy from waves and the activities associated with setting up a plant for extracting energy from waves in Port of Pecem, on the coast of Ceara State, Brazil. The technology employed is based on storing water under pressure in a hyperbaric chamber, from which a controlled jet of water drives a standard turbine. The wave resource at the proposed location is presented in terms of statistics data obtained from previous monitoring. The device components are described and small scale model tested under regular waves representatives of the installation region. Based on the experimental results values of prescribed pressures are identified in order to optimize the power generation.


Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Lei Shi ◽  
Cosmin Copot ◽  
Steve Vanlanduit

In gaze-based Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), it is important to determine human visual intention for interacting with robots. One typical HRI interaction scenario is that a human selects an object by gaze and a robotic manipulator will pick up the object. In this work, we propose an approach, GazeEMD, that can be used to detect whether a human is looking at an object for HRI application. We use Earth Mover’s Distance (EMD) to measure the similarity between the hypothetical gazes at objects and the actual gazes. Then, the similarity score is used to determine if the human visual intention is on the object. We compare our approach with a fixation-based method and HitScan with a run length in the scenario of selecting daily objects by gaze. Our experimental results indicate that the GazeEMD approach has higher accuracy and is more robust to noises than the other approaches. Hence, the users can lessen cognitive load by using our approach in the real-world HRI scenario.


1948 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 853-859
Author(s):  
R. F. A. Altman

Abstract As numerous investigators have shown, some of the nonrubber components of Hevea latex have a decided accelerating action on the process of vulcanization. A survey of the literature on this subject points to the validity of certain general facts. 1. Among the nonrubber components of latex which have been investigated, certain nitrogenous bases appear to be most important for accelerating the rate of vulcanization. 2. These nitrogen bases apparently occur partly naturally in fresh latex, and partly as the result of putrefaction, heating, and other decomposition processes. 3. The nitrogen bases naturally present in fresh latex at later stages have been identified by Altman to be trigonelline, stachhydrine, betonicine, choline, methylamine, trimethylamine, and ammonia. These bases are markedly active in vulcanization, as will be seen in the section on experimental results. 4. The nitrogenous substances formed by the decomposition processes have only partly been identified, on the one hand as tetra- and pentamethylene diamine and some amino acids, on the other hand as alkaloids, proline, diamino acids, etc. 5. It has been generally accepted that these nitrogenous substances are derived from the proteins of the latex. 6. Decomposition appears to be connected with the formation of a considerable amount of acids. 7. The production of volatile nitrogen bases as a rule accompanies the decomposition processes. These volatile products have not been identified. 8. The active nitrogen bases, either already formed or derived from complex nitrogenous substances, seem to be soluble in water but only slightly soluble in acetone.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document