The capability to reduce primary energy demand in EU housing

The European Union has been demonstrating its adherence to energy efficiency policy in the last decade. At the main EU summits there were stated the requirements to reduce energy consumption in the EU, and to make it sustainable over the long term. The “20-20-20” promise of a 20% share of renewable energies in total EU energy consumption and a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2020 was determined in 2007 and affirmed in 2008. The paper deals with the evaluation of some ways of reaching a 20% reduction in primary energy demand in housing. For that purpose some measures leading to such a reduction for a dwelling house are estimated. These measures require an additional investment into the energy performance of a building. For the achievement of goals stated by the European Parliament in energy demand it will be necessary to involve a considerable level of financial and technical support in these spheres. An estimation of the amount of supporting program funds is also presented in the paper.     

Densification of transparent yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) by SPS processing

Nano-size YAG powder co-mixed with 0.25 wt.% LiF was used to fabricate transparent polycrystalline YAG specimens by means of the Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) technique. The presence of the LiF additive in the initial nano-powder allows obtaining fully dense disc shaped (up to 4 mm thick) transparent specimens at the outcome of a 2 h treatment at 1300 °C. The presence of LiF plays a key role in the mass transport related effects during the densification of YAG to full density and also in the elimination of the residual carbon contamination, allowing reaching a level of optical transmittance close to the theoretical value.     

Environmentally Benign Oxidation of Alkylphenols to p-Benzoquinones: A Comparative Study of Various Ti-Containing Catalysts

Catalytic properties of Ti-containing porous solids were compared in the oxidation of 2,3,6-trimethylphenol (TMP) with H₂O₂ to produce 2,3,5-trimethyl-1,4-benzoquinone (TMBQ, vitamin E key intermediate). Mesoporous titanium–silicates with di(oligo)nuclear Ti centers, metal–organic framework MIL-125 and amorphous TiO₂ demonstrated 100 % selectivity toward TMBQ. Titanium–silicates prepared by evaporation-induced self-assembly revealed superior performance in terms of product yield and catalyst reusability.

     

Phase Transformation Modelling and Parameter Identification from Dilatometric Investigations

The goal of this paper is to propose a new approach towards the evaluation of dilatometric results, which are often employed to analyse the phase transformation kinetics in steel, especially in terms of continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagram. A simple task of dilatometry is deriving the start and end temperatures of the phase transformation. It can yield phase transformation kinetics provided that plenty metallographic investigations are performed, whose analysis is complicated especially in case of several coexisting product phases. The new method is based on the numerical solution of a thermomechanical identification problem. It is expected that the phase transformation kinetics can be derived by this approach with less metallographic tasks. The first results are remarkably promising although further investigations are required for the numerical simulations.     

The first ribbed functionalized tris-dioximate clathrochelates with inherent hydroxyl substituents: Synthesis, spectra and X-ray structure

The controlled hydrolysis of the dichlorine-containing iron(II) clathrochelate FeBd₂(Cl₂Gm)(BF)₂ precursor (where Bd²⁻ and Cl₂Gm²⁻ are α-benzyldioxime and dichloroglyoxime dianions, respectively) afforded the hydroxy-containing clathrochelate derivatives with the hydroxyl substituent inherently bound to the ribbed chelate fragment of the macrobicyclic ligand. The triethylammonium and tetra-n-butylammonium salts of the clathrochelate [FeBd₂(OClGm)(BF)₂]⁻ anion have been characterized using elemental analysis, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, IR, UV–Vis, ⁵⁷Fe Mössbauer and ¹H, ¹³C{¹H}, ¹¹B and ¹⁹F NMR spectroscopies, and X-ray crystallography. The X-ray structural data for this deprotonated anion showed strong delocalization of its negative charge into the clathrochelate framework.     

Covering numbers of rotations

For an irrational rotation, we use the symbolic dynamics on the sturmian coding to compute explicitly, according to the continued fraction approximation of the argument, the measure of the largest Rokhlin stack made with intervals, and the measure of the largest Rokhlin stack whose levels have one name for the coding. Each one of these measures is equal to one if and only if the argument has unbounded partial quotients.     

Framework for developing image-based dirt particle classifiers for dry pulp sheets

One important aspect of assessing the quality in pulp and papermaking is dirt particle counting and classification. Knowing the number and types of dirt particles present in pulp is useful for detecting problems in the production process as early as possible and for fixing them. Since manual quality control is a time-consuming and laborious task, the problem calls for an automated solution using machine vision techniques. However, the ground truth required to train an automated system is difficult to ascertain, since all of the dirt particles should be manually segmented and classified based on image information. This paper proposes a framework for developing and tuning dirt particle detection and classification systems. To avoid manual annotation, dry pulp sheets with a single dirt type in each were exploited to generate semisynthetic images with the ground truth information. To classify the dirt particles, a set of features were computed for each image segment. Sequential feature selection was employed to determine a close-to-optimal set of features to be used in classification. The framework was tested both with semisynthetically generated images based on real pulp sheets and with independent original real pulp sheets without any generation. The results of the experiments show that the semisynthetic procedure does not significantly change the properties of images and has little effect on the particle segmentation. The feature selection proved to be important when the number of dirt classes changes since it allows to improve the classification results. Using the standard classification methods, it is possible to obtain satisfactory results, although the methods modeling the data, such as the Bayesian classifier using the Gaussian Mixture Model, show better performance.     

Microfluidic pump based on the phenomenon of electroosmosis of the second kind

A micropump based on strong polarization of ion-exchange beads and corresponding actuation by electroosmosis of the second kind was designed and fabricated. Experimental results from operation with AC and DC voltage showed a close to second order relationship between flow and voltage, in good agreement with theory. The difference between experimental and theoretical flow rates and pressures is attributed to the hydrodynamic resistance of the channel network. A modified pump design which should yield higher flow rates and pressures was suggested.