Catalysis, the turntable for a clean future

Upgrading the bottom of the barrel for clean fuel production, developing new engines with optimized catalytic posttreatments, implementing clean catalytic combustion technologies, improving the overall CO₂ balance via catalytic processes and, lastly, developing new water purification techniques represent major upheavals in catalysis linked to refining and environmental protection. This paper, thus, will focus on the determining contribution of catalysis to the most recent achievements in these domains. A technico-economic approach will follow, underlining their main incentives and drawbacks within the framework of future environmental constraints.     

Excerpt from Designed for the Future — 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable World

In Designed for the Future^①, author Jared Green, who writes about cities and design for numerous publications, asks eighty of today’s most innovative architects, urban planners, landscape architects, journalists, artists, and environmental leaders the same question: What gives you the hope that a sustainable future is possible? Their imaginative answers show the way to our future success on earth and begin a much-needed dialogue about what we can realistically accomplish in the decades ahead. As an excerpt, this article introduces the author’s conception and intent of this book, and selects some inspiring ideas contributed by three leading landscape architects.     

The Peak of the Oil Age – Analyzing the world oil production Reference Scenario in World Energy Outlook 2008

The assessment of future global oil production presented in the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2008 (WEO 2008) is divided into 6 fractions; four relate to crude oil, one to non-conventional oil, and the final fraction is natural-gas-liquids (NGL). Using the production parameter, depletion-rate-of-recoverable-resources, we have analyzed the four crude oil fractions and found that the 75 Mb/d of crude oil production forecast for year 2030 appears significantly overstated, and is more likely to be in the region of 55 Mb/d. Moreover, analysis of the other fractions strongly suggests lower than expected production levels. In total, our analysis points to a world oil supply in 2030 of 75 Mb/d, some 26 Mb/d lower than the IEA predicts.     

Heat integrated distillation operation

Increasing energy demand, consequently high crude oil prices and growing concern for pollution motivated the researchers to explore more energy-efficient and environment-friendly process technologies. Although the heat integrated distillation has been researched for a number of decades, unfortunately it has not yet been commercialized mainly due to high investment cost, complex equipment design, control problem in consequence of severe interaction and nonlinearity, and lack of experimental data at sufficiently large scale to verify the theoretical predictions. It is true that some progress has been made in theory but for practical applications many questions still remain. Among the broader research needs the following areas are identified for heat integrated distillation column: rigorous dynamic modeling, optimal design, multiple steady state analysis, system identification, synthesis and implementation of high-quality nonlinear control, and importantly experimental evaluation. It is also suggested to investigate the feasibility of heat integration in the reactive distillation schemes and in the two distillation columns having no direct connections.     

Hydrogen from biomass – Present scenario and future prospects

Hydrogen is considered in many countries to be an important alternative energy vector and a bridge to a sustainable energy future. Hydrogen is not an energy source. It is not primary energy existing freely in nature. Hydrogen is a secondary form of energy that has to be manufactured like electricity. It is an energy carrier. Hydrogen can be produced from a wide variety of primary energy sources and different production technologies. About half of all the hydrogen as currently produced is obtained from thermo catalytic and gasification processes using natural gas as a starting material, heavy oils and naphtha make up the next largest source, followed by coal. Currently, much research has been focused on sustainable and environmental friendly energy from biomass to replace conventional fossil fuels. Biomass can be considered as the best option and has the largest potential, which meets energy requirements and could insure fuel supply in the future. Biomass and biomass-derived fuels can be used to produce hydrogen sustainably. Biomass gasification offers the earliest and most economical route for the production of renewable hydrogen.     

An Optimal Multi-Vector Iterative Algorithm in a Krylov Subspace for Solving the Ill-Posed Linear Inverse Problems

An optimal m-vector descent iterative algorithm in a Krylov subspace is developed, of which the m weighting parameters are optimized from a properly defined objective function to accelerate the convergence rate in solving an ill-posed linear problem. The optimal multi-vector iterative algorithm (OMVIA) is convergent fast and accurate, which is verified by numerical tests of several linear inverse problems, including the backward heat conduction problem, the heat source identification problem, the inverse Cauchy problem, and the external force recovery problem. Because the OMVIA has a good filtering effect, the numerical results recovered are quite smooth with small error, even under a large noise up to 10%.     

新陈代谢:立足当下畅想未来——UIA第24届世界建筑师大会未来都市展观感

作为在东京召开的国际建筑师协会(UIA)第24届世界建筑师大会开幕式的重头戏,"新陈代谢"未来都市展在东京六本木之丘的森美术馆举办。展览介绍了日本新陈代谢学派在战后日本重建及当前城市建设中的相关活动,展示其对未来都市的美好畅想,体现了日本新陈代谢学派大师对未来城市与空间设计构想的超前性和预见性。这些对未来城市规划和发展实践具有重要启示和借鉴意义。     

黄酒工业的现状、前景和新世纪发展策略

文中简述了我国黄酒工业的现状和前景、在此基础上分析了黄酒工业在新世纪的发展对策。     

The Rise of the ‘Invisible Detail’: Ubiquitous Computing and the ‘Minimum Meaningful’

The architectural detail has provided the essential material building block for conveying an idea. Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel of the SENSEable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ask how this, though, is all set to change in a digital context. As technologies shrink and vanish from sight, what might become the new minimum meaningful unit for architecture? How might a new relational scale establish itself, at the level of the ‘invisible detail’ or the microchip? How might this, in turn, change the very nature of buildings as they become highly responsive, human-occupied transmitters?     

Integrating Robotic Fabrication in the Design Process

Does the application of robotic technologies in Southeast Asian cities, where the residential high-rise is pre-eminent, provide a unique opportunity to introduce bespoke design elements and liberate the high-rise from serial production and standardisation? Michael Budig, Jason Lim and Raffael Petrovic of the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) at the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC) introduce the research project ‘Design of Robotic Fabricated High Rises’ (2012-13) led by Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, exploring high-rise typologies and architectural scenarios for future vertical cities.