Cofiring versus biomass-fired power plants: GHG (Greenhouse Gases) emissions savings comparison by means of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) methodology

One way of producing nearly CO₂ free electricity is by using biomass as a combustible. In many cases, removal of CO₂ in biomass grown is almost the same as the emissions for the bioelectricity production at the power plant. For this reason, bioelectricity is generally considered CO₂ neutral. For large-scale biomass electricity generation two alternatives can be considered: biomass-only fired power plants, or cofiring in an existing coal power plant. Among other factors, two important aspects should be analyzed in order to choose between the two options. Firstly, which is the most appealing alternative if their Greenhouse Gases (GHG) Emissions savings are taken into account. Secondly, which biomass resource is the best, if the highest impact reduction is sought. In order to quantify all the GHG emissions related to each system, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been performed and all the processes involved in each alternative have been assessed in a cradle-to-grave manner. Sensitivity analyses of the most dominant parameters affecting GHG emissions, and comparisons between the obtained results, have also been carried out.     

POA-DPSA混合算法在短期优化调度中的应用

根据逐步优化算法和逐次逼近优化算法的思想，提出了POA-DPSA混合算法，建立了清江梯级水电站短期发电效益最大模型，并利用逐步优化逐次逼近混合算法进行模型求解，在给定总用水量和各时段电价，满足各种约束条件下使总的发电效益最大，取得了较好的优化效果。     

高速公路水土保持植物配置多样性初探

当前,在高速公路水土保持植物配置项目中普遍存在着植物配置单一的现象,它直接影响水土保持事业的发展,对此以大庆至广州高速公路粤境连平至从化段工程的水土保持设计为例,探索广东省高速公路项目实施植物多样性配置的途径。     

Software sensor for on-line estimation of the microbial activity in activated sludge systems

This paper considers the design of a software sensor (or soft-sensor) for the on-line estimation of the biological activities of a colony of aerobic micro-organisms acting on activated sludge processes, where the carbonaceous waste degradation and nitrification processes are taken into account. These bioactivities are intimately related to the dissolved oxygen concentration. Two factors that affect the dynamics of the dissolved oxygen are the respiration rate or the oxygen uptake rate (OUR) and the oxygen transfer function (K(l)a). These items are challenging topics for the application of recursive identification due the nonlinear characteristic of the oxygen transfer function, and to the time-varying feature of the respiration rate. In this work, OUR and the oxygen transfer function are estimated through a software sensor, which is based on a modified version of the discrete extended Kalman filter. Numerical simulations are carried out in a predenitrifying activated sludge process benchmark and the obtained results demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed methodology, which should provide a valuable tool to supervise and control activated sludge processes.     

The effects of cooking oil fume condensates (COFCs) on the vegetative growth of Salvinia natans (L.) All.

Cooking oil fumes (COF) and their condensates (COFCs), which are suspected of causing human lung cancers, are hazardous materials to environments. The effects of COFCs on the vegetative growth of Salvinia natans (L.) All., a free-floating aquatic fern, are discussed in this paper. The results showed that there were no differences of the number of floating leaves and the mean numbers of new leaves of S. natans in all groups, but these indices in experimental groups were influenced obviously at the late stage. COFCs also influenced stem length and number of buds of S. natans. COFCs could cause the floating leaves to turn yellow and individuals to die quickly. All these effects were correlated with the concentration of COFCs and the time. When the concentration of COFCs was ≥0.18 g/l, above 80% individuals would die in a short time. COFCs had significant impacts on the decrease in photosynthetic areas of S. natans by making the floating leaves turn yellow faster and accelerating the decomposition. There were some components in minute amount benefiting to the growth of S. natans. S. natans was sensitive to COFCs and could be a potential indicator for monitoring COFCs pollution in aquatic environments.     

Development of a new quantification method for a fire PSA

For an internal fire analysis, fire scenarios are developed carefully and quantified in a sequential and iterative way in a traditional fire Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA). However, there has been no proven explicit method to avoid these iterative quantifications till now. This study presents the Jung's Single Top And Run (JSTAR) method that facilitates a simultaneous single quantification of all fire scenarios. The JSTAR method could be employed at the fire PSA phases of a quantitative screening or detailed analysis. Using the JSTAR method, accurate fire risks of a fault tree that has many negates could be calculated by avoiding the frequent house event propagations of the fire scenario conditions. Furthermore, the proposed JSTAR method is a simple and explicit method to build a single-top external event PSA model for a risk-monitoring system.The JSTAR method could be implemented easily by developing a small automatic conversion tool. Depending on the maintenance policy of a fire PSA model, a single-top fire PSA model that is created by the conversion tool could be maintained permanently or it could be temporarily generated and discarded. The use of the JSTAR method is recommended for all external event PSAs such as an internal flooding risk analysis.     

Water Treatment Units Residence-Time Distributions as Probabilistic Functions

A probabilistic approach to obtain theoretical residence-time distribution (RTD) functions for series of reactors with possible stagnation, bypassing, and recycle is presented. It is shown that most known RTD functions can be obtained from probability arguments alone, thus avoiding abstract Laplace transform mathematical techniques and providing additional physical insight. Several new RTD models for reactors in series are derived, based exclusively on using the binomial probability distribution to describe the passage of a particle through the treatment train with bypassing and stagnation possible at each individual reactor. The proposed RTD models are validated with travel time computer simulation of a large number of particles through the series of reactors. A MSExcel based computer procedure was programmed to obtain the nonideal flow parameters by minimizing the squared sum of the differences between tracer test data and the derived unit’s RTD function. The least squares parameter estimation procedure was used to fit theoretical RTDs to tracer data collected from real water treatment units with different hydraulic behavior at two locations in Mexico.     

清江梯级水电厂集中控制优化调度

介绍了清江梯级水电厂开展集中控制优化调度过程中产生的效益、面临的问题,及对今后工作的建议及展望。     

Digital redesign of uncertain interval systems based on time-response resemblance via particle swarm optimization

In this paper, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based approach is proposed to derive an optimal digital controller for redesigned digital systems having an interval plant based on time-response resemblance of the closed-loop systems. Because of difficulties in obtaining time-response envelopes for interval systems, the design problem is formulated as an optimization problem of a cost function in terms of aggregated deviation between the step responses corresponding to extremal energies of the redesigned digital system and those of their continuous counterpart. A proposed evolutionary framework incorporating three PSOs is subsequently presented to minimize the cost function to derive an optimal set of parameters for the digital controller, so that step response sequences corresponding to the extremal sequence energy of the redesigned digital system suitably approximate those of their continuous counterpart under the perturbation of the uncertain plant parameters. Computer simulations have shown that redesigned digital systems incorporating the PSO-derived digital controllers have better system performance than those using conventional open-loop discretization methods.     

Chlorogenic acids and related compounds in medicinal plants and infusions

The consumption of plant infusions for prevention and treatment of health disorders is a worldwide practise. Various pharmacological activities inherent to medicinal plants have been attributed to their phenolic composition, including chlorogenic acids (CGA). Studies have shown potential beneficial properties of CGA to humans such as antioxidant, hepatoprotective, hypoglycaemic. In the present study, the CGA composition of 14 dried medicinal plants was determined by HPLC-UV and LC-DAD–ESI-MS. The plants with the highest CGA contents were Ilex paraguariensis, Bacharis genistelloides, Pimpinella anisum, Achyrochine satureioides, Camellia sinensis, Melissa officinalis and Cymbopogon citratus, with 84.7 mg/100 g–9.7 g/100 g, dry weight. Plant infusions were prepared (at 0.5%) in order to evaluate the actual consumption of CGA through these beverages. Total CGA contents in the infusions were similar to those in the methanolic extracts and indicated that a satisfactory extraction occurs during the preparation of infusions. These CGA-rich plants deserve attention regarding the pharmacological properties attributed to CGA.