Robust optimisation of sustainable food grain transportation with uncertain supply and intentional disruptions

The proliferating need for sustainability intervention in food grain transportation planning is anchoring the attention of researchers in the interests of stakeholders and environment at large. Uncertainty associated with food grain supply further intensifies the problem steering the need for designing robust, cost-efficient and sustainable models. In line with this, this paper aims to develop a robust and sustainable intermodal transportation model to facilitate single type of food grain commodity shipments while considering procurement uncertainty, greenhouse gas emissions, and intentional hub disruption. The problem is designed as a mixed integer non-linear robust optimisation model on a hub and spoke network for evaluating near optimal shipment quantity, route selection and hub location decisions. The robust optimisation approach considers minimisation of total relative regret associated with total cost subject to several real-time constraints. A version of Particle Swarm Optimisation with Differential Evolution is proposed to tackle the resulting NP-hard problem. The model is tested with two other state-of the art meta-heuristics for small, medium, and large datasets subject to different procurement scenarios inspired from real time food grain operations in Indian context. Finally, the solution is evaluated with respect to total cost, model and solution robustness for all instances.     

铝合金熔炼铸造能源与资源节约

在铝材生产中,熔炼、铸造工序是能源与资源消耗多的工序,因此,节约资源、降低烧损与能耗有着重要意义。降低能耗还可以相应地减少温室气体与有害、有毒物质排放,对环保有利。中国当前铝合金熔炼铸造能源与资源节约的主要措施:调整加工用锭坯供应结构,大幅提高电解铝厂供应的锭坯,由2013年供应的42%提高到"十三五"末的65%-70%;加快走出去的力度,到国外去办铝厂,将在国外生产的铝合金锭坯运回来,争取2020年出口的铝材与铝制品全部以进口锭坯加工,这是最大的资源与能源节约;加强废铝回收与有效再生利用;加强创新,大力采用新装备、新技术与新工艺;加强管理,精心操作,管理中还有较大的能源与资源节约潜力。     

Supramolecular complexes: Determination of stability constants on the basis of various experimental methods

Stability constants and formation enthalpies of supramolecular complexes of crown ethers and their cyclic and acyclic analogues are determined on the basis of experimental data obtained by different physicochemical methods in the terms of a general approach developed and implemented in the ChemEqui software package. The established regularities of variation of stability of complexes are discussed as dependent on the ligand structure, nature of the cation, solvent, and anion. The applicability of the suggested method of determining complexation selectivity is shown for multicomponent equilibria in solutions.