On farm agronomic and first environmental evaluation of oil crops for sustainable bioenergy chains.

Energy crops, and in particular oil crops, could be an important occasion for developing new non food production rows for a new multi-functional agriculture in Italy. In this view, the use of local biomass is a fundamental starting point for the development of a virtuous energy chain that should pursue not only agricultural profitability, but also chain sustainability and that is less dependent on the global market, characterized by instability in terms of biomass availability and price. From this perspective, particular attention must be paid to crop choice on the basis of its rusticity and of its adaptability to local growing conditions and to low input cropping systems. In this context, alike woody and herbaceous biomasses, oil crops such as sunflower and rapeseed should be able to support local agricultural bioenergy chain in Italy. In addition, in a local bioenergy chain, the role of the farmers should not be limited just to grain production; but also grain processing should be performed at farm or consortium level in oilseed extraction plants well proportioned to the cropped surface. In this way, by means of a simple power generator, farmer could thus produce its own thermal and electric energy from the oil, maximizing his profit. This objective could also be achieved through the exploitation of the total biomass, including crop residues and defatted seed meals, that may be considered as fundamental additional economic and/or environmental benefits of the chain. This paper reports some results of three-years on-farm experiments on oil crop chain carried out in the framework of "Bioenergie" project, that was focused to enhance farmers awareness of these criteria and to the feasibility at open field scale of low-input cultivation of rapeseed, sunflower and Brassica carinata in seven Italian regions. In several on-farm experiences, these crops produced more than 800 kg ha-1 of oil with good energy properties. Defatted seed meals could be interesting as organic fertilizers and, in the case of B. carinata, as a biofumigant amendment that could offer a total or partial alternative to some chemicals in agriculture. Furthermore, biomass soil incorporation could contribute to C sequestration, catching CO2 from atmosphere and sinking a part in soil as stable humus. Finally, four different open field experiences carried out again in the second year of the project, have been analysed in order to evaluate their energy and greenhouse gasses balance after cultivation phase

Project of an advanced ISOL facility for exotic beams at LNL

Abstract In the framework of the European program to define a second generation Radioactive Ion Beam facility, LNL are proposing the construction in the next five–seven years of a specialized national facility for RIB originated by fission fragments produced by secondary neutrons. It consists on a two-accelerator ISOL-type facility to provide intense neutron-rich radioactive ion beams of highest quality, in the range of masses between 80 and 160. The conceptual design is based on a high intensity 50 MeV (100 kW) proton linac as driver and on the availability of the heavy-ion accelerator ALPI as post accelerator. The estimated neutron yield is 2×1014 n/s at 0°, high enough to satisfy the demand for an advanced RIB facility. An intense R&D program on different items is actually in progress in collaboration with other Laboratories and University groups and is moving in a European context

Innovative technologies for the developments of W-band radars and communication payloads

The present work1,2, that has been performed in the frame of the ASI (Italian Space Agency) program WAVE (W-Band Analysis and VErification), i.e. the identification of innovative technologies to be used for the design and development of on-board W-band radars or telecommunication payloads. The paper will provide and comment on the major results achieved in this investigation. Based on the state of the art of the present technology the possibility of developing low level W band MMICs with many functions integrated on the same chip has been investigated in order to reduce drastically the number of interconnections, the number of measurements and the workmanship with respect to the equivalent hybrid subsystems, which means a drastic reduction in terms of dimensions, weight and costs. As for the power is concerned, an analysis of the performances of MMICs developed using state-of-the-art consolidated monolithic processes has been carried out together with the analysis of the potential performance of new "wide band-gap" semiconductors that start to play an important role in terms of power and efficiency. At W-band, WR-10 waveguide losses play a significant role in the management of the performance of transmitter and receiver chains and of antennas feeds. In order to reduce such losses different technologies have to be explored. One of those is quasi optics. Quasi-optics is the name given to the technique of manipulating mm-wave signals in free-space beams through the use of quasi-optical components such as lenses, mirrors, polarisers and so on. Quasi-optics (QO) has a number of advantages over other transmission techniques (such as waveguide and microstrip), including low loss propagation and wide bandwidth capacity. © 2006 IEEE

A Medium-Power Low-Noise Amplifier For X-Band Applications

A monolithic front-end amplifier for X-band radar applications has been developed utilising conventional low noise GaAs technology. The application requires low noise figure, high output power, good input and output return loss, high gain and reduced chip area. To simultaneously fulfil such conflicting requirements, proper design methods have been adopted. Measured results from 8.5 to 9.6 GHz demonstrate a noise figure lower than 1.5 dB, a small-signal gain of 29 dB, input and output return loss over 20 dB, with an associated output power at -1 dB gain compression in excess of 17 dBm

Time correlation studies of secondary emission processes

In the framework of the CRYSTAL proposal for the pro- duction and studies of ordered beams, a direct imaging di- agnostics of longitudinal structures of ordered ions is now under development. The fundamental elements of the di- agnostics device are a thin foil, an accelerating grid, an RF camera and an imaging detector. The thin carbon foil is responsible for the direct production of time correlated electrons upon the arrival of ordered ions. The accelerating grid (10-15 kV) is used to enhance the time correlation of the electrons against the angular spread of emission. The accelerating grid is followed by the RF camera, working at 2.465 GHz, for the transverse deflection of the correlated electrons. A detector with spatial resolution around 50 micron is foreseen after a drift length of 30 cm. The time response of the thin carbon foil was investigated with a Monte Carlo method with particular emphasis to electrons with kinetic energies smaller than few hundreds eV. According to the adopted model, the time lags originated by the transport of the primary electrons through the thin foil are limited at few tens of femto-seconds