Effect of alkaline catalysts on the valorization of sugarcane bagasse via pyrolysis

Sugarcane bagasse (Saccharum officinarum) is a widely spread residual biomass from the sugar industry that can be valorized through pyrolysis. The spectrum of the fractions obtained will vary depending on the pyrolysis conditions selected. In this work, the influence of alkaline treatments on the raw material has been studied. The sugarcane residues were treated with sodium or potassium hydroxides (1:1 sample/hydroxide ratio) and subsequently washed to remove hydroxides. Slow pyrolysis in a thermobalance connected to FTIR and flash pyrolysis in an EGA/Py-GC/MS system were performed with three types of samples, i.e.: raw material, hydroxides impregnated bagasse and the material obtained after washing the previous impregnated samples to remove the hydroxides. The experiments carried out allow us to distinguish between the effect of the basic pretreatment and the catalytic effect of the alkaline ions present during the pyrolysis on the compounds generated, thus allowing us to analyze the advantages that these processes can present in the bagasse valorization. According to the results obtained, the presence of alkaline ions in the sample during the pyrolysis process increases char percentage very significantly as well as cyclopentanone and cyclopentenone derivatives and the amount of CO2 evolved, reducing levoglucosane drastically and the vinyl and methoxy groups in the volatiles obtained. The washing treatment until neutral pH, after the alkaline impregnation, modifies the spectrum of pyrolytic products obtained, reducing phenol derivatives and increasing very significantly the percentage of levoglucosane and hydroxiacetaldehyde. Thus, the changes in the bagasse structure as well as in the decomposition mechanism could be tuned to produce activated carbon in a single step (maximizing carbon yield), diminishing the oxygen content in the bio-oil obtained (increasing its heating value) and reducing the pyrolytic compound spectrum (increasing the selectivity of the process).This research was funded by ‘Conselleria d’Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Esport’ (IDIFEDER 2018/009) and ‘Universidad Central del Ecuador’ (International Collaboration Agreement No 061-P-05)

The role of cartoons on European generalist televisions between 2010 and 2020

Cartoons have been and still are a fundamental genre in children’s television programming and are a key product for the media industry due to their easy interpretation by children and their presence in distribution channels. This paper presents an analysis of the supply of children’s and cartoons broadcast over the last decade on 25 European general-interest television channels, both public and private, of Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. The research findings focus on the genre programming strategies applied in terms of channels, broadcasting time slots and types of production in a multiplatform context driven by the consumption of digital content through streaming and SVOD services. The results show the continued leadership of cartoons in an environment of scarcity of children’s supply on European generalist television channels, reaffirming itself as a morning and weekend product highly shaped by commercial logics. However, distinctive programmatic policies are prominent in the role of public broadcasters in the supply of domestic products, both due to the broadcasting quotas of local cartoons and the consistency of their strategy over the period 2010-2020.Los dibujos animados han sido y son un género fundamental en las programaciones infantiles y un producto clave de la industria audiovisual por su fácil interpretación por parte del público infantil y su presencia en los circuitos de distribución. Este artículo presenta un análisis de la oferta infantil y de dibujos animados emitidos durante la última década en 25 televisiones generalistas europeas, públicas y privadas, de Alemania, España, Francia, Italia y Reino Unido. Los hallazgos de la investigación se centran en las estrategias de la oferta de este género respecto a la programación de las cadenas, las franjas de emisión y el tipo de producción que los operadores están programando en un entorno multiplataforma y de consumo de contenidos digitales por streaming y servicios SVOD. Los resultados obtenidos demuestran el continuado liderazgo de los dibujos animados en un entorno de escasez de oferta infantil en las televisiones generalistas europeas, reafirmándose como un producto matinal y de fin de semanas altamente moldeado por unas lógicas comerciales. Sin embargo, también se observan unas políticas programáticas distintivas en el papel de los programadores públicos respecto a la oferta de productos domésticos, tanto por las cuotas de emisión de dibujos animados locales como por la constancia en su estrategia durante el periodo 2010-2020

Mean-field limit of systems with multiplicative noise

A detailed study of the mean-field solution of Langevin equations with multiplicative noise is presented. Three different regimes depending on noise-intensity (weak, intermediate, and strong-noise) are identified by performing a self-consistent calculation on a fully connected lattice. The most interesting, strong-noise, regime is shown to be intrinsically unstable with respect to the inclusion of fluctuations, as a Ginzburg criterion shows. On the other hand, the self-consistent approach is shown to be valid only in the thermodynamic limit, while for finite systems the critical behavior is found to be different. In this last case, the self-consistent field itself is broadly distributed rather than taking a well defined mean value; its fluctuations, described by an effective zero-dimensional multiplicative noise equation, govern the critical properties. These findings are obtained analytically for a fully connected graph, and verified numerically both on fully connected graphs and on random regular networks. The results presented here shed some doubt on what is the validity and meaning of a standard mean-field approach in systems with multiplicative noise in finite dimensions, where each site does not see an infinite number of neighbors, but a finite one. The implications of all this on the existence of a finite upper critical dimension for multiplicative noise and Kardar-Parisi-Zhang problems are briefly discussed.Comment: 9 Pages, 8 Figure

Extended WKB method, resonances and supersymmetric radial barriers

Semiclassical approximations are implemented in the calculation of position and width of low energy resonances for radial barriers. The numerical integrations are delimited by t/T<<8, with t the period of a classical particle in the barrier trap and T the resonance lifetime. These energies are used in the construction of `haired' short range potentials as the supersymmetric partners of a given radial barrier. The new potentials could be useful in the study of the transient phenomena which give rise to the Moshinsky's diffraction in time.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 3 table

Beyond genomic selection: the animal model strikes back (one generation)!

Genome inheritance is by segments of DNA rather than by independent loci. We introduce the ancestral regression (AR) as a recursive system of simultaneous equations, with grandparental path coefficients as novel parameters. The information given by the pedigree in the AR is complementary with that provided by a dense set of genomic markers, such that the resulting linear function of grandparental BV is uncorrelated to the average of parental BV in the absence of inbreeding. AR is then connected to segmental inheritance by a causal multivariate Gaussian density for BV. The resulting covariance structure (Σ) is Markovian, meaning that conditional on the BV of parents and grandparents, the BV of the animal is independent of everything else. Thus, an algorithm is presented to invert the resulting covariance structure, with a computing effort that is linear in the number of animals as in the case of the inverse additive relationship matrix.Instituto de Genética Veterinari

In situ wavelength calibration of the edge CXS spectrometers on JET

A method for obtaining an accurate wavelength calibration over the entire focal plane of the JET edge CXS spectrometers is presented that uses a combination of the fringe pattern created with a Fabry–Pérot etalon and a neon lamp for cross calibration. The accuracy achieved is 0.03 Å, which is the same range of uncertainty as when neglecting population effects on the rest wavelength of the CX line. For the edge CXS diagnostic, this corresponds to a flow velocity of 4.5 km/s in the toroidal direction or 1.9 km/s in the poloidal direction.EURATOM 63305

Numerical schemes for continuum models of reaction-diffusion systems subject to internal noise

We present new numerical schemes to integrate stochastic partial differential equations which describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of reaction-diffusion (RD) problems under the effect of internal fluctuations. The schemes conserve the nonnegativity of the solutions and incorporate the Poissonian nature of internal fluctuations at small densities, their performance being limited by the level of approximation of density fluctuations at small scales. We apply the new schemes to two different aspects of the Reggeon model namely, the study of its non-equilibrium phase transition and the dynamics of fluctuating pulled fronts. In the latter case, our approach allows to reproduce quantitatively for the first time microscopic properties within the continuum model.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in Physical Review E as a Rapid Communicatio

Phase profile analysis of transparent objects through the use of a two windows interferometer based on a one beam splitter configuration

AbstractIn this research we implemented a two windows interferometer based on polarization phase shifting and grating interferometry techniques in order to retrieve the phase data profile of the object in a single capture. The optical configuration has two optical beams with circular polarization in opposite directions, and it is coupled with a 4-f system. An amplitude grid is used as a filter which is placed at the Fourier plane to obtain replicas of each beam which can properly interfere, depending on the separation between beams. The interferometer presents the capability of changing the beam separation in order to make different orders interfere properly. The interference patterns produced can be separately modulated through the operation of linear polarizer's placed on each interference replica. In order to present the capabilities of the system we will select four interferograms result of contiguous orders interference

Analysis of ELM stability with extended MHD models in JET, JT-60U and future JT-60SA tokamak plasmas

The stability with respect to a peeling–ballooning mode (PBM) was investigated numerically with extended MHD simulation codes in JET, JT-60U and future JT-60SA plasmas. The MINERVA-DI code was used to analyze the linear stability, including the effects of rotation and ion diamagnetic drift ( *w i), in JET-ILW and JT-60SA plasmas, and the JOREK code was used to simulate nonlinear dynamics with rotation, viscosity and resistivity in JT-60U plasmas. It was validated quantitatively that the ELM trigger condition in JET-ILW plasmas can be reasonably explained by taking into account both the rotation and *w i effects in the numerical analysis. When deuterium poloidal rotation is evaluated based on neoclassical theory, an increase in the effective charge of plasma destabilizes the PBM because of an acceleration of rotation and a decrease in *w i. The difference in the amount of ELM energy loss in JT-60U plasmas rotating in opposite directions was reproduced qualitatively with JOREK. By comparing the ELM affected areas with linear eigenfunctions, it was confirmed that the difference in the linear stability property, due not to the rotation direction but to the plasma density profile, is thought to be responsible for changing the ELM energy loss just after the ELM crash. A predictive study to determine the pedestal profiles in JT-60SA was performed by updating the EPED1 model to include the rotation and *w i effects in the PBM stability analysis. It was shown that the plasma rotation predicted with the neoclassical toroidal viscosity degrades the pedestal performance by about 10% by destabilizing the PBM, but the pressure pedestal height will be high enough to achieve the target parameters required for the ITER-like shape inductive scenario in JT-60SA.JSPS KAKENHI 15K06656EURATOM 63305