scholarly journals Evaluation of Techno-Economic Studies on the bioliq® Process for Synthetic Fuels Production from Biomass

Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 684
Author(s):  
Nicolaus Dahmen ◽  
Jörg Sauer
Keyword(s):  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Biomass Energy ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Transport Cost ◽  
Fuel Production ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Economic Studies

Techno-economic studies by various research institutions on the costs for the production of biomass to liquid (BtL) fuels using the bioliq® process were analyzed and evaluated. The bioliq® process consists of decentralized pretreatment by fast pyrolysis plants for biomass energy densification, and of a central gasification and synthesis step for synthesis of gas and synthetic fuel production. For comparison, specific material and energy flows were worked out for both process steps, and conversion efficiencies were calculated for the conversion of straw to diesel fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. A significant variation of the overall process efficiency in the range of 33–46% was mainly a result of the different assumptions made for electricity generation at the central location. After breaking down the individual cost items to either fixed or variable costs, it turned out that the largest cost items in the production of BtL fuels were attributable to feedstock and capital costs. Comparison of the specific investments showed that, in addition to economies of scale, other factors had a significant influence leading to values between 1000 and 5000 EUR/kW. This, particularly, included the origin of the equipment purchase costs and the factors applied to them. Fuel production costs were found to range between 0.8 and 2.6 EUR/L. Possible cost reduction by learning potential was investigated, leading to an improvement by a few percent of production costs. A sensitivity analysis of the individual cost items by up to 30%, for “investments” and “biomass and transport” cost increases, led to higher manufacturing costs of up to 17% in both cases. By harmonizing the depreciation period and the chosen interest rate, the production costs changed from -16% to +17%. Similarly, effects could be shown by adjusting the costs for maintenance and servicing, and the plant operation time. A superposition of these effects in a best-case scenario led to cost reductions of 21%. The most expensive variant in the opposing worst-case scenario raised costs by up to 27%. This uncertainty contributed already fifty percent to a preliminary cost estimate based on a conceptual design.

scholarly journals Honey bee workers reared in a neonicotinoid contaminated in-hive environment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Odemer ◽  
Franziska Odemer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
Plant Protection ◽  
Plant Protection Products ◽  
List Type ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Behavioral Impairment ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Simple Substitution ◽  
The Individual

ABSTRACTWith the currently updated risk assessment of three neonicotinoid pesticides, the European Food Safety Authority has confirmed that different applications of these substances represent a risk to wild and managed bees and their use was therefore severely restricted. However, to close further gaps in knowledge, this experiment covers exposure of honey bee worker brood reared in a neonicotinoid contaminated in-hive environment with focus on the individual. In a worst case scenario, mini-hives were fed chronically with a sublethal concentration of clothianidin (15 µg/kg), which is highly toxic to bees already in small amounts. Freshly hatched workers from these colonies were subsequently marked and introduced into non-contaminated colonies, where their lifespan and behavior was monitored. Nineteen days after exposure, clothianidin treated bees had no reduced lifespan or showed any signs of behavioral impairment when compared to the control, demonstrating that social buffering is not a simple substitution of dead bees by rearing more brood. Our results suggest that the social environment plays a crucial role for the individual in terms of “superorganism resilience”. These findings are discussed in context with the current use of lower tier test systems in risk assessment and contrary results obtained from laboratory experiments.HIGHLIGHTSSublethal clothianidin treatment did not affect lifespan nor behavior of workers.Effects on individual bees reared within a mini-hive are translatable to full-sized colonies.“Superorganism resilience” is not a simple substitution of dead bees by rearing more brood.Laboratory testing in the risk assessment of plant protection products bears severe weaknesses.

An omnidirectional WPT platform for distributed fully implanted neural recording systems

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Yuhua Cheng ◽  
Chunwu Liu ◽  
Minghao Wang ◽  
Gaofeng Wang ◽  
Maysam Ghovanloo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Homogeneous Magnetic Field ◽  
Neural Recording ◽  
Side Length ◽  
Prototype System ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Coil Array ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Neural Recording System

Recent progress on human brain science requires developing advanced neural recording system to capture the activity of large neural populations accurately, across a large area of the brain, and over extended periods. Recently proposed distributed neural recording systems with numerous implanted devices require reliably energizing them wirelessly. Random distribution of these mm-sized implants and brain motion place them at different positions and orientations with respect to the power transmitter. Therefore, traditional wireless power transfer techniques fall short of reaching sufficient power for all implants simultaneously, rendering some implants nonfunctional. In this paper, a three-layer power transmitting array with three-phase coil excitation current is introduced, which is capable of producing omnidirectional and homogeneous magnetic field across the volume where the Rx coils are located. The individual coil dimensions in the array is optimized to improve the worst-case scenario in terms of homogeneity, which is further verified by the measurements using a scaled-up prototype system. The measurement results show that the minimum received voltages is improved from 0.34 V for 10-mm side-length hexagonal transmitting coil array to 0.83 V for the optimal case, i.e., 35 mm side-length hexagonal transmitting coil array.

scholarly journals Economic Costs of Providing District- and Regional-Level Surgeries in Tanzania

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martilord Ifeanyichi ◽  
Henk Broekhuizen ◽  
Adinan Juma ◽  
Kondo Chilonga ◽  
Edward Kataika ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Surgical Care ◽  
Activity Based Costing ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
Surgical Services ◽  
Unit Costs ◽  
District Hospitals ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Arusha Region

Background: Access to surgical care is poor in Tanzania. The country is at the implementation stage of its first National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anesthesia Plan (NSOAP; 2018-2025) aiming to scale up surgery. This study aimed to calculate the costs of providing surgical care at the district and regional hospitals. Methods: Two district hospitals (DHs) and the regional referral hospital (RH) in Arusha region were selected. All the staff, buildings, equipment, and medical and non-medical supplies deployed in running the hospitals over a 12 month period were identified and quantified from interviews and hospital records. Using a combination of step-down costing (SDC) and activity-based costing (ABC), all costs attributed to surgeries were established and then distributed over the individual types of surgeries. These costs were delineated into pre-operative, intra-operative, and post-operative components. Results: The total annual costs of running the clinical cost centres ranged from $567k at Oltrumet DH to $3453k at Mt Meru RH. The total costs of surgeries ranged from $79k to $813k; amounting to 12%-22% of the total costs of running the hospitals. At least 70% of the costs were salaries. Unit costs and relative shares of capital costs were generally higher at the DHs. Two-thirds of all the procedures incurred at least 60% of their costs in the theatre. Open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) performed at the regional hospital was cheaper ($618) than surgical debridement (plus conservative treatment) due to prolonged post-operative inpatient care associated with the latter ($1177), but was performed infrequently due mostly to unavailability of implants. Conclusion: Lower unit costs and shares of capital costs at the RH reflect an advantage of economies of scale and scope at the RH, and a possible underutilization of capacity at the DHs. Greater efficiencies make a case for concentration and scale-up of surgical services at the RHs, but there is a stronger case for scaling up district-level surgeries, not only for equitable access to services, but also to drive down unit costs there, and free up RH resources for more complex cases such as ORIF.

scholarly journals Geographical Potential of Solar Thermochemical Jet Fuel Production

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 802
Author(s):  
Christoph Falter ◽  
Niklas Scharfenberg ◽  
Antoine Habersetzer
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jet Fuel ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Solar Irradiation ◽  
Fuel Production ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
Fuel Demand ◽  
Solar Thermochemical ◽  
Whole Life Cycle

The solar thermochemical fuel pathway offers the possibility to defossilize the transportation sector by producing renewable fuels that emit significantly less greenhouse gases than conventional fuels over the whole life cycle. Especially for the aviation sector, the availability of renewable liquid hydrocarbon fuels enables climate impact goals to be reached. In this paper, both the geographical potential and life-cycle fuel production costs are analyzed. The assessment of the geographical potential of solar thermochemical fuels excludes areas based on sustainability criteria such as competing land use, protected areas, slope, or shifting sands. On the remaining suitable areas, the production potential surpasses the current global jet fuel demand by a factor of more than fifty, enabling all but one country to cover its own demand. In many cases, a single country can even supply the world demand for jet fuel. A dedicated economic model expresses the life-cycle fuel production costs as a function of the location, taking into account local financial conditions by estimating the national costs of capital. It is found that the lowest production costs are to be expected in Israel, Chile, Spain, and the USA, through a combination of high solar irradiation and low-level capital costs. The thermochemical energy conversion efficiency also has a strong influence on the costs, scaling the size of the solar concentrator. Increasing the efficiency from 15% to 25%, the production costs are reduced by about 20%. In the baseline case, the global jet fuel demand could be covered at costs between 1.58 and 1.83 €/L with production locations in South America, the United States, and the Mediterranean region. The flat progression of the cost-supply curves indicates that production costs remain relatively constant even at very high production volumes.

A Study of a Wind Farm Power System

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Muljadi ◽  
Y. Wan ◽  
C. P. Butterfield ◽  
B. Parsons
Keyword(s):  
Power Systems ◽  
Power System ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Wind Power System ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Conventional Power Plant

A wind power system differs from a conventional power system. In a conventional power plant, the operator can control the plant’s output. The output of a wind farm cannot be controlled because the output fluctuates with the wind. In this study, we investigated only the fixed-frequency induction generator, often used with wind turbines. We adopted the worst-case scenario and conducted a per-phase, per-turbine analysis. Our analysis showed a strong interaction among the wind farm, the utility grid, and the individual generator. In this paper, we investigate the power-system interaction resulting from power variations at wind farms using steady-state analysis. We use the characteristic of a real windsite on a known weak grid. We present different types of capacitor compensations and use phasor diagrams to illustrate the characteristics of these compensations. The purpose of our study is to provide wind farm developers with somc insights on wind farm power systems.

Reducing Probabilistic Weather Forecasts to the Worst Case Scenario: Anchoring Effects

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Savelli ◽  
Susan Joslyn ◽  
Limor Nadav-Greenberg ◽  
Queena Chen
Keyword(s):  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Weather Forecasts ◽  
Worst Case Scenario ◽  
Anchoring Effects

EXPEDITION TO MALI, 2020

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-28
Author(s):  
D. V. Vaniukova ◽  
◽  
P. A. Kutsenkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Murder ◽  
The State ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
State Museum ◽  
Bobo Dioulasso ◽  
Oriental Studies ◽  
The Village

The research expedition of the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been working in Mali since 2015. Since 2017, it has been attended by employees of the State Museum of the East. The task of the expedition is to study the transformation of traditional Dogon culture in the context of globalization, as well as to collect ethnographic information (life, customs, features of the traditional social and political structure); to collect oral historical legends; to study the history, existence, and transformation of artistic tradition in the villages of the Dogon Country in modern conditions; collecting items of Ethnography and art to add to the collection of the African collection of the. Peter the Great Museum (Kunstkamera, Saint Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Arts (Moscow). The plan of the expedition in January 2020 included additional items, namely, the study of the functioning of the antique market in Mali (the “path” of things from villages to cities, which is important for attributing works of traditional art). The geography of our research was significantly expanded to the regions of Sikasso and Koulikoro in Mali, as well as to the city of Bobo-Dioulasso and its surroundings in Burkina Faso, which is related to the study of migrations to the Bandiagara Highlands. In addition, the plan of the expedition included organization of a photo exhibition in the Museum of the village of Endé and some educational projects. Unfortunately, after the mass murder in March 2019 in the village of Ogossogou-Pel, where more than one hundred and seventy people were killed, events in the Dogon Country began to develop in the worst-case scenario: The incessant provocations after that revived the old feud between the Pel (Fulbe) pastoralists and the Dogon farmers. So far, this hostility and mutual distrust has not yet developed into a full-scale ethnic conflict, but, unfortunately, such a development now seems quite likely.

Risk-Based Robust Bidding Strategies for EVs’ Aggregators in Day-ahead Markets with Uncertainty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Abdelmoaty ◽  
Wessam Mesbah ◽  
Mohammad A. M. Abdel-Aal ◽  
Ali T. Alawami
Keyword(s):  
Robust Optimization ◽  
Electricity Market ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Optimization Approach ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Bidding Strategies ◽  
Wind Generators ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Optimal Bidding

In the recent electricity market framework, the profit of the generation companies depends on the decision of the operator on the schedule of its units, the energy price, and the optimal bidding strategies. Due to the expanded integration of uncertain renewable generators which is highly intermittent such as wind plants, the coordination with other facilities to mitigate the risks of imbalances is mandatory. Accordingly, coordination of wind generators with the evolutionary Electric Vehicles (EVs) is expected to boost the performance of the grid. In this paper, we propose a robust optimization approach for the coordination between the wind-thermal generators and the EVs in a virtual<br>power plant (VPP) environment. The objective of maximizing the profit of the VPP Operator (VPPO) is studied. The optimal bidding strategy of the VPPO in the day-ahead market under uncertainties of wind power, energy<br>prices, imbalance prices, and demand is obtained for the worst case scenario. A case study is conducted to assess the e?effectiveness of the proposed model in terms of the VPPO's profit. A comparison between the proposed model and the scenario-based optimization was introduced. Our results confirmed that, although the conservative behavior of the worst-case robust optimization model, it helps the decision maker from the fluctuations of the uncertain parameters involved in the production and bidding processes. In addition, robust optimization is a more tractable problem and does not suffer from<br>the high computation burden associated with scenario-based stochastic programming. This makes it more practical for real-life scenarios.<br>

scholarly journals Heuristic Optimization of Overloading Due to Electric Vehicles in a Low Voltage Grid

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 6069
Author(s):  
Sajjad Haider ◽  
Peter Schegner
Keyword(s):  
Electric Vehicles ◽  
Low Voltage ◽  
Optimization Methods ◽  
Monte Carlo Analysis ◽  
Heuristic Optimization ◽  
Optimization Approach ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Voltage Drops ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Nodal Voltage

It is important to understand the effect of increasing electric vehicles (EV) penetrations on the existing electricity transmission infrastructure and to find ways to mitigate it. While, the easiest solution is to opt for equipment upgrades, the potential for reducing overloading, in terms of voltage drops, and line loading by way of optimization of the locations at which EVs can charge, is significant. To investigate this, a heuristic optimization approach is proposed to optimize EV charging locations within one feeder, while minimizing nodal voltage drops, cable loading and overall cable losses. The optimization approach is compared to typical unoptimized results of a monte-carlo analysis. The results show a reduction in peak line loading in a typical benchmark 0.4 kV by up to 10%. Further results show an increase in voltage available at different nodes by up to 7 V in the worst case and 1.5 V on average. Optimization for a reduction in transmission losses shows insignificant savings for subsequent simulation. These optimization methods may allow for the introduction of spatial pricing across multiple nodes within a low voltage network, to allow for an electricity price for EVs independent of temporal pricing models already in place, to reflect the individual impact of EVs charging at different nodes across the network.

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