Waste Cooking Oil-to-Biodiesel Conversion for Institutional Vehicular Applications

Biodiesel is a renewable, sustainable, clean-burning biogenic fuel that can serve as a substitute for conventional ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD). Biodiesel is comprised of mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids and is produced via transesterification, whereby glycerin is separated from the fatty acid component of either an oil or fat. The full process yields the fatty acid methyl ester (biodiesel fuel) and glycerin, an economically valuable by-product. As part of a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Showcase Communities Grant to Monroe County, New York and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS) was engaged to develop a closed-loop biodiesel production process system using the food service waste cooking oil stocks. Because the waste oil feedstock supply and fuel demand are internal within the institution, the system dynamics, economic feasibility, and environmental benefits versus the incumbent ultra-low sulfur diesel can be effectively quantified. Along with establishing quantitative metrics associated with quality of the fuel itself, the main goal of this part of a broader research program included utilizing the biodiesel fuel for campus vehicular applications. Ultimately, developing a robust waste-to-energy process within the system boundaries of the institution is the desired outcome, along with economic valuation, emissions testing, fuel quality metrics and standardization, life cycle assessment, and energy return on investment for the university\u27s stakeholders. Through the execution of this project, two successful biodiesel batches were produced which met American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) quality standards for vehicle use. Lower heating value (LHV) measurement demonstrated comparable embodied energy content to earlier published data. In addition, cloud point measurements were taken to understand the performance of the fuel in cold weather conditions, and these metrics were also consistent with published data for biodiesel fuels. Through direct measurements of exhaust gas composition, overall reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were observed in two test vehicles. However, consistent with published data, there is evidence that emissions of nitrous oxides (NOx) may be higher with a 20% biodiesel blend (B20), depending on the specific vehicle and the type of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) valve technology employed. According to a life cycle assessment conducted on the closed-loop biodiesel production process, the cumulative energy demand (CED) was 752 MJ/100 km and the global warming potential (GWP) was 80.6 kg CO2-eq./100 km. Crude oil-based diesel contributes the most to the energy and environmental impact to the total combustion CED and GWP of a B20 fuel mixture, while the methanol component contributes the greatest energy and environmental impact to just the biodiesel component. The energy return on investment (EROI) was determined to vary depending on specific waste oil properties and processing conditions, with a value of 4.16 determined to be most representative of the developed conversion process. This demonstrates that waste cooking oil biodiesel production at RIT is net energy positive, and thus can reasonably contribute to the University\u27s renewable energy and GHG emissions reduction goals. The closed-loop biodiesel process also presented a compelling economic case, with a total computed cost of $3.35/gallon (including a conservative estimate for production labor) well lower than the reported national prices of B100 at retail market

Evidence

The paper discusses and builds on the themes tackled by Paolo Rosso in his synthesis on the school in the Middle Ages, affording particular attention to the Early Middle Ages. Specifically, it focuses on the problems of the hegemonic role of monastic culture and on its relationship with the ecclesiastical institutions

Guest Artist Recital Series: Elliot Frank, Guitar; October 5, 2009

Kemp Recital HallOctober 5, 2009Monday Evening7:30 p.m

Some Types of Artists' Models

attached to Sandow Magazine Wrestling Article

Redundancy and specialization among plant microRNAs : role of the MIR164 family in developmental robustness

In plants, members of microRNA (miRNA) families are often predicted to target the same or overlapping sets of genes. It has thus been hypothesized that these miRNAs may act in a functionally redundant manner. This hypothesis is tested here by studying the effects of elimination of all three members of the MIR164 family from Arabidopsis. It was found that a loss of miR164 activity leads to a severe disruption of shoot development, in contrast to the effect of mutation in any single MIR164 gene. This indicates that these miRNAs are indeed functionally redundant. Differences in the expression patterns of the individual MIR164 genes imply, however, that redundancy among them is not complete, and that these miRNAs show functional specialization. Furthermore, the results of molecular and genetic analyses of miR164-mediated target regulation indicate that miR164 miRNAs function to control the transcript levels, as well as the expression patterns, of their targets, suggesting that they might contribute to developmental robustness. For two of the miR164 targets, namely CUP-SHAPED COTYLEDON1 (CUC1) and CUC2, we provide evidence for their involvement in the regulation of growth and show that their derepression in miR164 loss-of-function mutants is likely to account for most of the mutant phenotype

Genome-Wide Analysis of Gene Expression during Early Arabidopsis Flower Development

Detailed information about stage-specific changes in gene expression is crucial for the understanding of the gene regulatory networks underlying development. Here, we describe the global gene expression dynamics during early flower development, a key process in the life cycle of a plant, during which floral patterning and the specification of floral organs is established. We used a novel floral induction system in Arabidopsis, which allows the isolation of a large number of synchronized floral buds, in conjunction with whole-genome microarray analysis to identify genes with differential expression at distinct stages of flower development. We found that the onset of flower formation is characterized by a massive downregulation of genes in incipient floral primordia, which is followed by a predominance of gene activation during the differentiation of floral organs. Among the genes we identified as differentially expressed in the experiment, we detected a significant enrichment of closely related members of gene families. The expression profiles of these related genes were often highly correlated, indicating similar temporal expression patterns. Moreover, we found that the majority of these genes is specifically up-regulated during certain developmental stages. Because co-expressed members of gene families in Arabidopsis frequently act in a redundant manner, these results suggest a high degree of functional redundancy during early flower development, but also that its extent may vary in a stage-specific manner

Hidden Charge Order of Interacting Dirac Fermions on the Honeycomb Lattice

We consider the extended half-filled Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice for second nearest neighbors interactions. Using a functional integral approach, we find that collective fluctuations suppress topological states and instead favor charge ordering, in agreement with previous numerical studies. However, we show that the critical point is not of the putative semimetal-Mott insulator variety. Due to the frustrated nature of the interactions, the ground state is described by a novel hidden {\it metallic} charge order with {\it semi-Dirac} excitations. We conjecture that this transition is not in the Gross-Neveu universality class.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Floral stem cell termination involves the direct regulation of AGAMOUS by PERIANTHIA

In Arabidopsis, the population of stem cells present in young flower buds is lost after the production of a fixed number of floral organs. The precisely timed repression of the stem cell identity gene WUSCHEL (WUS) by the floral homeotic protein AGAMOUS (AG) is a key part of this process. In this study, we report on the identification of a novel input into the process of floral stem cell regulation. We use genetics and chromatin immunoprecipitation assays to demonstrate that the bZIP transcription factor PERIANTHIA (PAN) plays a role in regulating stem cell fate by directly controlling AG expression and suggest that this activity is spatially restricted to the centermost region of the AG expression domain. These results suggest that the termination of floral stem cell fate is a multiply redundant process involving loci with unrelated floral patterning functions