Impact of energy efficiency upgrade retrofits on the residential energy consumption in Canada

The impact of various energy efficiency upgrade scenarios on the annual energy consumption of the Canadian housing stock is assessed using the Canadian Residential Energy End‐use Model (CREEM). The energy efficiency upgrade scenarios that are considered include major retrofits, such as the improvement of the house envelope by adding insulation, and the replacement of the existing heating system and appliances by higher efficiency units, as well as minor retrofits, such as lighting fixture, thermostat, showerhead and aerator upgrades that reduce energy consumption. The economic feasibility of each upgrade was assessed using the indicator ‘energy savings per dollar investment’. The results indicate that the energy savings potential of the retrofits is rather small, resulting in savings of 0–8 per cent of the total energy consumption of the Canadian housing stock. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A flexible current‐mode classifier circuit and its applications

In this paper a new CMOS classifier circuit is presented, simulated, and compared with other recently introduced circuits. The proposed CMOS circuit operates in current‐mode and can classify several types of data. The architecture is designed using two threshold circuits and a subtraction circuit. Among many possible applications of the classifier circuit, template‐based pattern classification, namely template matching and character recognition with corruption, and in another direction its use as a quantizer are given. Using 0.35‐ µm AMS technology parameters, SPICE simulations as well as hard realization results for the classifier and application circuits are included; detailed Monte Carlo analyses to assess parameter mismatch effects are also performed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Carbon dioxide emission from the Turkish electricity sector and its mitigation options

In this study, electricity generation associated CO₂ emissions and fuel-specific CO₂ emission factors are calculated based on the IPCC methodology using the data of fossil-fueled power plants that ran between 2001 and 2008 in Turkey. The estimated CO₂ emissions from fossil-fueled power plants between 2009 and 2019 are also calculated using the fuel-specific CO₂ emission factors and data on the projected generation capacity of the power plants that are planned to be built during this period. Given that the total electricity supply (planned+existing) will not be sufficient to provide the estimated demand between 2011 and 2019, four scenarios based on using different fuel mixtures are developed to overcome this deficiency. The results from these scenarios show that a significant decrease in the amount of CO₂ emissions from electricity generation can be achieved if the share of the fossil-fueled power plants is lowered. The Renewable Energy Scenario is found to result in the lowest CO₂ emissions between 2009 and 2019. The associated CO₂ emissions calculated based on this scenario are approximately 192 million tons lower than that of the Business As Usual Scenario for the estimation period.     

A prototype portable system for EEG measurements

In this study, a prototype EEG recording and analysis module for biomedical research applications is designed. The design of the system consists of an analog and a digital part. The system has two signal channels, but it can be extended to six channels construction. The analog module involves the following units; an input instrumentation amplifier, gain adjustable amplifier, band-pass filter, and a driven-right-leg- (DRL) circuit. The digital board consists of A/D converter and RS232 communication unit. In order to test system, the circuit simulation and the real-time EEG measurements are implemented. The proposed EEG system can be used in our department’s biomedical laboratory.     

Memstor,memstance simulations via a versatile 4-port built with new adder and subtractor circuits

In this paper, novel voltage-mode (VM) n-channel metal-oxide semiconductor (NMOS) transistor-based analogue adder and subtractor circuits, which, respectively, perform V₁+V₂ and V₁?V₂ operations, are presented. The most important feature of the proposed circuits is their extremely simple structures containing only six NMOS transistors. Further, the presented adder and subtractor circuits have high input and low output impedances, resulting in easy cascadability. The post-layout simulations of the proposed circuits have been executed using TSMC 0.25 µm process parameters with ±1.25 V. The area of the suggested circuits is approximately 30 × 13 µm². Moreover, the topology of a generalised mutator, a versatile 4-port built with an adder and a subtractor, which acts as an ordinary mutator when properly reduced to a 2-port, is offered. A table for simulating lossless inductance, memristor, meminductor, memcapacitor and other elements under suitable termination of the 4-port is given, and three of these elements’ simulations with SPICE are also presented.     

A Survey of Occurrence and Risk Assessment of Pharmaceutical Substances in the Great Lakes Basin

The present study is an overview of the literature on the occurrence and potential risks of pharmaceutical substances in the wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), natural waters and drinking water treatment plants served by the Great Lakes Basin (Canada and the USA) between the years of 2007–2012. Large number of pharmaceutical substances, including anti-inflammatories, lipid regulators, antidepressants, antibiotics, beta blockers, anti-epileptics, anti-hypertensions and stimulants, in high ng/L concentrations, has been reported in the WWTP influents. Most of these compounds have also been detected in the WWTP effluents at comparable concentrations with the exception of caffeine, cotinine and salicylic acid suggesting the inefficiency of conventional treatment processes in the degradation of pharmaceutical compounds. Decreasing surface water concentrations have been observed with the distance downstream of the discharge point due to the dilution effect. Surface waters located around septic systems and agricultural areas have also been found to be contaminated with pharmaceutical substances. Carbamazepine, caffeine, its metabolite paraxanthine, ibuprofen, gemfibrozil and sulfamethoxazole have been frequently detected in the surface waters. The number of occurrences of carbamazepine, ibuprofen, naproxen, gemfibrozil, bezafibrate, sulfamethoxazole and macrolide antibiotics in drinking water sources, at ng/L concentration ranges, has been quite high. Although the detection frequencies in treated drinking waters were relatively low, the concentrations of the above mentioned pharmaceutical substances were at the same range as the source water concentrations.

Six of the detected pharmaceutical substances, namely, fluoxetine, sulfamethoxazole, clarithromycin, erythromycin, carbamazepine and esterone exhibit a high environmental risk in Great Lakes WWTP effluents and surface waters, while none of the pharmaceutical substances seem to pose a risk for human health at their highest reported concentrations in the drinking water sources from the Great Lakes.     

Application of fuzzy logic controller to active power filters

In this paper, the way to use one of the most powerful problem-solving methodologies, fuzzy logic, to enhance the quality of the power system is described. To prove the power of fuzzy logic for the modeling of nonlinear systems, the modeling of active power filters with a fuzzy logic based control strategy is presented as a case study and its capability to reject reactive power eliminate current harmonic components is simulated by MATLAB. The advantages in using fuzzy logic as emphasized in the case study are its simple application to various types of systems, high performance, lower cost, and higher productivity.     

Secondary transitions and thermodynamic interaction parameters of poly (phenyl sulfone) by gas chromatography

Summary Trace amount of solvents such as n-octane, n-nonane, n-decane, isopropyl acetate, tert-butyl acetate and isoamyl acetate were passed through the column of a gas chromatograph, which stationary phase is poly (phenyl sulfone) trademarked as Radel^®R. The retention diagrams were obtained by plotting the logarithm of the specific retention volumes of the solvents against reciprocal of the absolute column temperature between 50 and 280 °C. The slope changes on the diagram were assigned as secondary transitions. Three secondary transition temperatures were established at 140, 110 and 80 °C below glass transition temperature, 210 °C. Weight fraction activity coefficients of the solvents at infinite dilution, ₁ - and hard-core polymer solvent interaction parameters _t , were given for the studied solvents at 250 °C. The values of the parameters ₁ - and _t suggest that n-alkanes are very poor whereas esters studied are moderately poor solvents for poly (phenyl sulfone) at 250 °C.     

A novel circularly polarized reader antenna design for UHF RFID applications

Wireless Networks - In this article, a novel ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) reader antenna is proposed and experimentally investigated. The proposed RFID antenna...