Optimized Design of Hot Water Storage in Solar Thermal Cooling Facilities

Solar thermal installations can provide a significant contribution to the energy needs of cooling demand of single family buildings. Unfortunately oversizing facility elements is not uncommon. Most of the design flaws concern collector field or auxiliary elements, such as backup boilers or electric resistances inside storage devices. This leads to lower than expected facility COP and SCOP, but also higher cost. Customer dissatisfaction is the result. This paper presents a numerical model of the multiple purpose solar thermal facility installed at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) using the TRNSYS® tool. The solar cooling facility (http://termica.uc3m.es/solar.htm) is completely monitored for its performance characterization in the production of AC, DHW and heating. Operational data for various summer seasons have been recorded, simultaneously with 7 meteorological variables. The experimental facility includes a single effect BrLi absorption chiller working at part load under summer season. TRNSYS is a completely feasible platform for simulating solar facilities and is commonly used by researchers and planners, for its simplicity and ease manipulation. This simulation tool contains general solar cooling elements found in most experimental facilities and has been kept as simple as possible. The model developed aims at analyzing facility elements in order to resize collector field and storage volumes. Furthermore it allows studying different configurations of the facility and the control schemes. These configurations include different hot water storage capacities within the facility allowing comparing with the facility without any kind of storage excepting its own thermal inertia. The simulation has been validated with instantaneous and seasonal experimental data for different summer seasons including 2003, 2004 and 2005. Simulation results show that there is a hot storage tank capacity that optimizes the facility in terms of COP, SCOP and total cold produced. Even with no storage at all, the facility still improves its behavior from current operating conditions. Simulation and experimental results are compared and an optimum configuration of the facility is proposed.Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - ITEA Research GroupPublicad

Discovery of conserved epitopes through sequence variability analyses

Depto. de Inmunología, Oftalmología y ORLFac. de MedicinaTRUEpu

Simulation of an absorption based solar cooling facility using a geothermal sink for heat rejection

An important issue of solar cooling facilities based on absorption cycles and sometimes not given the necessary attention is the recooling process of the absorber and condenser. This is critical in the overall behaviour of the facility because the condensation and absorption temperatures will affect the COP and cooling capacity of the chiller. Most of the time the recooling process is made by using a wet cooling tower in a closed loop through the absorber and condenser. The use of a wet cooling tower gives good results in terms of cooling capacity and COP, but presents some health risk, like legionella, and its use is restricted to the industrial sector and places where water scarcity is not present. This paper presents the modification of the already validated TRNSYS simulation of a solar cooling facility, implementing a geothermal heat sink instead of the wet cooling tower in order to dissipate the heat generated internally in the absorption chiller. Simulation results shows that a geothermal heat sink composed of 6 boreholes of 100 meters of depth should be sufficient in order to substitute the wet cooling tower, for a typical Spanish single family dwelling.Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - ITEA Research GroupPublicad

Characteristics of the growth of table olive yeasts at low temperature

The behaviour of Picchia anomala, Picchia membranaefaciens, Pichia minuta, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida diddensii, Candida famata y Debaryomyces hansenii, isolated form olive fermentations at low temperature was studied. The response, growth rate, at increasing time intervals, was studied by means of a General Linear Model (GLM) repeated measures, paying special attention to interactions. The most vigorous yeasts in YMGP were P. anomala, C. diddensii, y Deb. hansenii, who were able to grow at 7ºC and 8% salt. In brine, in addition to the main effects, the interactions salt-yeast, time-pH, time-yeast-species were also significant. P. membranaefaciens showed greater salt tolerance in brine than in YMPG. S. cerevisiae, P. minuta and C. famata were inhibited of both pH 3,5 and pH 4 at 7ºC. A sinergistic effect of salt and pH can inhibit yeast growth at 7ºC.Se ha estudiado el comportamiento de Picchia anomala, Picchia membranaefaciens, Pichia minuta, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida diddensii, Candida famata y Debaryomyces Hansenii a bajas temperaturas. La respuesta, crecimiento relativo determinado a diferentes intervalos de tiempo, se ha estudiado mediante el modelo lineal general (GLM) con medidas repetidas, prestándose especial atención a las interacciones. Las levaduras más resistentes en medio YMGP fueron P. anomala, C. diddensii, y Deb. hansenii que crecieron a 7ºC incluso al 8% de sal. En salmueras, además de los efectos principales, fueron también significativas las interacciones, concentración de sal-especie de levadura, tiempo-pH, tiempo-especie de levadura, tiempo-sal-pH y tiempo-sal-especie de levadura. P. membranaefaciens mostró mayor tolerancia a la sal en la salmuera que en YMGP. S. cerevisiae, P. membranaefaciens y C. famata se inhibieron a 7ºC tanto a pH 3,5 como 4, con independencia de los niveles de sal. Combinaciones adecuadas de pH y sal pueden inhibir el crecimiento a 7ºC.Los autores desean expresar su gratitud a la CICYT (AGL2000-1539-CO2-01) y a la Unión Europea (FAIR-97-9526) por la financiación parcial de esta investigación.Peer reviewe

Computational analysis and modeling of cleavage by the immunoproteasome and the constitutive proteasome

Proteasomes play a central role in the major histocompatibility class I (MHCI) antigen processing pathway. They conduct the proteolytic degradation of proteins in the cytosol, generating the C-terminus of CD8 T cell epitopes and MHCI-peptide ligands (P1 residue of cleavage site). There are two types of proteasomes, the constitutive form, expressed in most cell types, and the immunoproteasome, which is constitutively expressed in mature dendritic cells. Protective CD8 T cell epitopes are likely generated by the immunoproteasome and the constitutive proteasome, and here we have modeled and analyzed the cleavage by these two proteases. RESULTS: We have modeled the immunoproteasome and proteasome cleavage sites upon two non-overlapping sets of peptides consisting of 553 CD8 T cell epitopes, naturally processed and restricted by human MHCI molecules, and 382 peptides eluted from human MHCI molecules, respectively, using N-grams. Cleavage models were generated considering different epitope and MHCI-eluted fragment lengths and the same number of C-terminal flanking residues. Models were evaluated in 5-fold cross-validation. Judging by the Mathew's Correlation Coefficient (MCC), optimal cleavage models for the proteasome (MCC = 0.43 +/- 0.07) and the immunoproteasome (MCC = 0.36 +/- 0.06) were obtained from 12-residue peptide fragments. Using an independent dataset consisting of 137 HIV1-specific CD8 T cell epitopes, the immunoproteasome and proteasome cleavage models achieved MCC values of 0.30 and 0.18, respectively, comparatively better than those achieved by related methods. Using ROC analyses, we have also shown that, combined with MHCI-peptide binding predictions, cleavage predictions by the immunoproteasome and proteasome models significantly increase the discovery rate of CD8 T cell epitopes restricted by different MHCI molecules, including A*0201, A*0301, A*2402, B*0702, B*2705. CONCLUSIONS: We have developed models that are specific to predict cleavage by the proteasome and the immunoproteasome. These models ought to be instrumental to identify protective CD8 T cell epitopes and are readily available for free public use at http://imed.med.ucm.es/Tools/PCPS

Three newly described species of carex sect. fecundae (cyperaceae) from Central America and typification of two related names

Three new species of Carex sect. Fecundae (Cyperaceae) are described from Central America. Carex orothanatica from Costa Rica, Carex siguanabae occurring in El Salvador and Honduras, and Carex via-aquae from Costa Rica and Panama. The three new species are compared with relatives. In addition, two related names, Carex lehmanniana Boott, and C. lehmaniana var. simplex Kük., are lectotypifie

Integrating T-cell epitope annotations with sequence and structural information using DAS

Immunoinformatics is an emerging new field that benefits from computational analyses and tools that facilitate the understanding of the immune system. A large number of immunoinformatics resources such as immune-related databases and analysis software are available through the World Wide Web for the benefit of the research community. However, immunoinformatics developments have sometimes remained isolated from mainstream bioinformatics. Therefore, there is clearly a need for integration, which will empower the exchange of data and annotations within the scientific community in a quick and efficient fashion. Here, we have chosen the Distributed Annotation System (DAS), for integrating in house annotations on experimental and predicted HLA I-restriction elements of CD8 T-cell epitopes with sequence and structural information

Is the plant Bolboschoenus maritimus an adequate biomonitor for trace metal contamination in saltmarshes? A field study from the Óbidos lagoon (Portugal)

Monitoring the negative impacts of trace metals is crucial to assess the health and stability of ecosystems. In salt marshes, halophyte plants were reported as possible bioaccumulators of these elements. The aim of this work was to explore the bioaccumulation potential of Bolboschoenus maritimus as a tool for monitoring the presence of metals in coastal environments. Bolboschoenus maritimus were collected from a brackish water lagoon, and the presence of the trace metals lead, cadmium, and nickel were seasonally evaluated in distinct parts of the plants, and in water and sediment samples. Lead was the trace metal with the highest concentration detected in water and sediments of the sampling site. The highest lead concentrations in B. maritimus were recorded in the spring season. The transport index indicated an accumulation of lead in the leaves of around 70% in the spring of 2009. Cadmium in leaves in spring and summer of 2009 reached values above 5 mg Cd. kg−1. Nickel was not detected in most samples collected. Bolboschoenus maritimus was considered an adequate biomonitor for lead and cadmium, since it bioaccumulates both metals with seasonally distinct results, as the bioaccumulation factor results indicated.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio