Machine Learning in Estimating CO2 Emissions from Electricity Generation

In the last decades, there has been an outstanding rise in the advancement and application of various types of Machine learning (ML) approaches and techniques in the modeling, design and prediction for energy systems. This work presents a simple but significant application of a ML approach, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) to the estimation of CO2 emission from electricity generation. The CO2 emission was estimate in a framework of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis between two competing technologies in electricity generation using data for Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Plant (CCGT) provided by IEA for Italy in 2020. Respect to other application of ML techniques, usually developed to address engineering issues in energy generation, this work is intended to provide useful insights in support decision for energy policy.

REVIEW ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF FUEL CELLS AND ITS FUTURE PROSPECTS

Fossil fuels are unsustainable energy storage medium with pollution problems. With the limitation of fossil fuels, fuel cells, which are known as effective electrochemical converters, has attracted much attention. Present review paper provides a complete information on fuel cell technology and history which includes competing technologies, current status of research-and-development and its future direction. Fuel cell plays an important role in stationary applications from 1990s till now due to its efficiency upon reducing emissions.

Membrane Technologies and Applications to Produced Water Treatment

Various technologies to treat produced water have been extensively reviewed in the literature, including membranes and physical, biological, thermal, or chemical treatments. Fundamental principles of membrane technology, such as separation mechanism, fouling behavior, system configuration, and energy efficiency, had been described.13, 16-21 The advantages and drawbacks of membranes against the competing technologies were discussed. Without intending to exhaustively review the membrane technology for produced water treatment, this chapter aims to provide examples of state-of-the-art membranes and processes for treating the produced water. The challenges of the membrane technology are described, and various strategies of membrane design and modification to overcome the challenges are presented.

Unsettled Topics on the Benefit of Additive Manufacturing for Production at the Point of Use in the Mobility Industry

An oft-cited benefit of additive manufacturing (AM), or “3D-printing,” technology is the ability to produce parts at the point of use by downloading a digital file and making the part at a local printer. This has the potential to greatly compress supply chains, lead times, inventories, and design iterations for custom parts. As a result of this, both manufacturing and logistics companies are investigating and investing in AM capacity for production at the point of use. However, it can be imagined that the feasibility and benefits are a function of size, materials, build time, manufacturing complexity, cost, and competing technologies. Because of this, there are instances where the viability of point-of-use manufacturing ranges from the perfect solution to the worst possible choice. Unsettled Topics on the Benefits of Additive Manufacturing for Production at the Point of Use in the Mobility Industry discusses the benefits, challenges, trade-offs, and other determining factors regarding this new level of AM possibilities.

Transformative Technologien

The anthology is interested in the relationship between technology and law. Transformative technologies not only displace competing technologies from the market, i.e., they do not only have a disruptive effect in an economic sense, but are also able to influence normative concepts. Thus, technical innovations such as digitization not only confront the law with new regulatory tasks, but also change it at the same time. Law is actively shaping the process of the digital transformation of society, but at the same time is becoming its passive object. The contributions to this anthology illuminate this dual character of digitization as a transformative technology from the perspectives of law, philosophy, and cultural and media studies. With contributions by Prof. Dr. Bijan Fateh-Moghadam, Prof. Dr. Herbert Zech; Prof. Burkhard Schafer; Lukas Brand; Prof. Dr. Peter Georg Picht, Gaspare Tazio Loderer; Prof. Dr. Roberto Simanowski; Stefan Huonder, Olivier Raemy; Tianyu Yuan and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem.

A Decision Framework for Decentralized Control of Distributed Processes

A typical example of a distributed process is trade finance where data and documents are transferred between multiple companies including importers, exporters, carriers, and banks. Blockchain is seen as a potential decentralized technology that can be used to automate such processes. However, there are also other competing technologies such as managed file transfers, messaging, and WebAPIs that may also be suitable for automating similar distributed processes. In this chapter, a decision framework is proposed to assist the solution architect in deciding the technology best suited to support decentralized control of a distributed business process where there are multiple companies involved. The framework takes as input the different areas of concern such as data, processing, governance, technical, and the pros and cons of the technologies in addressing these areas of concerns and provides a method to analyze and highlight the best technology for any process in question. Two example processes, trade finance and price distribution, are used to show the application of the framework.