Revalorization of Grape Seed Oil for Innovative Non-Food Applications

Grape processing produces a substantial amount of residues that are highly polluting and expensive to treat, being grape seed one of the main by-products with high commercial interest. During the extraction process of grape seed oil, most of the nutraceutical compounds remain on the solid cake. This book chapter resumes the potential utilization of grape seed oil for producing biobased materials through environmentally friendly processes that could substitute petroleum-derived products. Special attention is given to transesterification and epoxidation processes. The transesterification of grape seed oil in presence of methanol drives to the production of a biodiesel with excellent low-temperature properties. According to EN 14214, grape seed oil-based biodiesel presents a slightly lower cetane number than the specified limit. In addition, this biodiesel presents a low oxidation stability which can be improved by the incorporation of oxidation stabilizer. Attending to the epoxidation of grape seed oil, short reaction times and high temperatures are advised. Epoxidized grape seed oil can be used for the synthesis of biobased polyols and its further application on the synthesis of polyurethane compounds

Ruta Provincial Nº 33 - Cuesta del Obispo

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es realizar el proyecto que mejore la situación del camino actual, aplicando todos los conocimientos y las herramientas adquiridos a lo largo de la carrera. Para eso, lo dotamos de una infraestructura con las condiciones adecuadas, contemplando las modificaciones de los radios de curva, el diseño de un paquete estructural resistente, como también la colocación de muros de contención y bermas, para así brindar mayor confort y sobre todo seguridad a la gente que lo transita. La idea es que, con la ruta planteada en este proyecto, siendo la misma una ruta escénica, la personas se lleven una experiencia agradable, sintiéndose seguras en todo momento. El alcance del proyecto va desde el modelado digital del camino hasta el impacto ambiental de la carretera...Fil: Merani, Celina. Universidad Católica de Salta. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina.Fil: Haro Rodríguez, Juan Alejo. Universidad Católica de Salta. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina.Fil: Escotorin, Alejandro Agustín. Universidad Católica de Salta. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina

Unraveling the mystery about the negative valence bias: does arousal account for processing differences in unpleasant words?

Many studies have found that the emotional content of words affects visual word recognition. However, most of them have only considered affective valence, finding inconsistencies regarding the direction of the effects, especially in unpleasant words. Recent studies suggest that arousal might explain why not all unpleasant words elicit the same behavior. The aim of the present research was to study the role of arousal in unpleasant word recognition. To do that, we carried out an ERP experiment in which participants performed a lexical decision task that included unpleasant words which could vary across three levels of arousal (intermediate, high, and very high) and words which were neutral in valence and had an intermediate level of arousal. Results showed that, within unpleasant words, those intermediate in arousal evoked smaller LPC amplitudes than words that were high or very high in arousal, indicating that arousal affects unpleasant word recognition. Critically, arousal determined whether the effect of negative valence was found or not. When arousal was not matched between unpleasant and neutral valenced words, the effect of emotionality was weak in the behavioral data and absent in the ERP data. However, when arousal was intermediate in both unpleasant and neutral valenced words, larger EPN amplitudes were reported for the former, pointing to an early allocation of attention. Interestingly, these unpleasant words which had an intermediate level of arousal showed a subsequent inhibitory effect in that they evoked smaller LPC amplitudes and led to slower reaction times and more errors than neutral words. Our results highlight the relevance that the arousal level has for the study of negative valence effects in word recognitionThis study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PID2019-107206GB-I00 and RED2018-102615-T), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-110583GB-I00), the Autonomous Government of Galicia (Consellería de Educación, Xunta de Galicia, GRC 2015/006), and the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2019PFR-URV-B2-32)S

A survey on future railway radio communications services: challenges and opportunities

Radio communications is one of the most disruptive technologies in railways, enabling a huge set of value-added services that greatly improve many aspects of railways, making them more efficient, safer, and profitable. Lately, some major technologies like ERTMS for high-speed railways and CBTC for subways have made possible a reduction of headway and increased safety never before seen in this field. The railway industry is now looking at wireless communications with great interest, and this can be seen in many projects around the world. Thus, railway radio communications is again a flourishing field, with a lot of research and many things to be done. This survey article explains both opportunities and challenges to be addressed by the railway sector in order to obtain all the possible benefits of the latest radio technologies

Implementación de la Metodología Six Sigma en la línea de producción de pellets en la Empresa Gamboa Pellets ubicada en el cantón Baños provincia de Tungurahua

La empresa de producción de pellets GAMBOA PELLETS inicialmente presentó una alta variabilidad en el porcentaje de humedad del producto final, dicho inconveniente genera que el pellet desmejore sus propiedades físicas y químicas, lo que provoca que el producto se encuentre fuera de la especificación dictaminada por el PFI USA (Pellet fuel Institute), por tal motivo, el objetivo de la presente investigación fue realizar la implementación de la metodología Six Sigma en la línea de producción de pellets de la empresa Gamboa Pellets de tal forma que ayude a mejorar los niveles de calidad, específicamente en torno al porcentaje de humedad del producto final así como también la reducción de la variabilidad del mismo. Se llevo a cabo un análisis específico del proceso que realiza la empresa con la finalidad de identificar las áreas que requieran mejoras, para efectuar este análisis se tomó como referencia la metodología DMAIC (Definir, Medir, Analizar, Mejorar y Controlar), con la cual se desarrolló soluciones efectivas para los problemas identificados. Mediante la aplicación de distintas técnicas estadísticas y matemáticas se pudo evidenciar un cambio en el antes y después de haber aplicado las soluciones planteadas, aparte de esto se llevó a cabo un seguimiento mediante la implementación de un plan de muestreo con el objetivo de asegurar la eficacia de las propuestas y además se realizó un análisis de capacidad final que pudo determinar el impacto positivo de la metodología Six Sigma implementada en la empresa Gamboa Pellets. Los resultados denotaron una mejora significativa en la calidad del producto final, así como también una notable reducción de la variabilidad de la humedad, con ello se puede enfatizar que la implementación de la metodología Six Sigma puede ser efectiva si se la realiza a adecuadamente y siguiendo un enfoque sistemático planificado.GAMBOA PELLETS Company initially presented a high variability in the percentage of moisture in the final product, this disadvantage causes the pellet to improve its physical and chemical properties, which causes the product to be out of specification determined by the PFI USA (Pellet fuel Institute), for this reason, the objective of this research was to implement Six Sigma methodology in the pellet production line of GAMBOA PELLETS Company in order to improve the quality levels, specifically regarding the percentage of humidity of the final product as well as the reduction of its variability. A specific analysis of the processes performed by the company was made in order to determine the areas in need of improvement, using DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) methodology as a reference to develop efficient solutions to the problems detected. The application of different statistical and mathematical techniques allowed to demonstrate a change in the before and after having applied the proposed solutions, in addition to this, a follow-up was carried out through the implementation of a sampling plan in order to ensure the effectiveness of the proposals and a final capacity analysis was also performed to determine the positive impact of Six Sigma methodology being implemented in GAMBOA PELLETS Company. The results revealed a considerable improvement in the quality of the final product, as well as a remarkable reduction in the variability of moisture, thus emphasizing that the implementation of Six Sigma methodology can be effective if it is carried out adequately and following a systematic and planned approach

Using the ℓ1-norm for Image-based tomographic reconstruction

This paper introduces an ℓ1-norm model based on Total Variation Minimization for tomographic reconstruction. The reconstructions produced by the proposed model are more accurate than those obtained with classical reconstruction models based on the ℓ2-norm. This model can be linearized and solved by linear programming techniques. Furthermore, the complementary slackness conditions can be exploited to reduce the dimension of the resulting formulation by removing unnecessary variables and constraints. Since the efficacy of the reduced formulation strongly depends on the quality of the dual-multipliers used when applying the reduction method, Lagrangian relaxation is used to obtain near-optimal multipliers. This allows solving larger instances in an efficient way

Influence of polarization on keyhole probability on a MIMO-OFDM train-to-wayside system on tunnels

This paper presents a deep insight on a real implementation of a train-to-wayside broadband radio on subway tunnels that makes use of a 2x2 MIMO-OFDM setup. A keyhole is a phenomenon that usually happens in tunnels and that seriously degrades channel?s capacity, even if both transmitter and receiver antennas are uncorrelated. The main purpose of this paper is to study in detail the influence of the polarization in the probability of having a keyhole on a MIMOOFDM train-to-wayside communication system on a tunnel. MIMO keyholes are studied in four different polarization setups, six different tunnels cross-sections and, finally, capacity results are provided

Quantitative Evaluation of Supported Catalysts Key Properties from Electron Tomography Studies: Assessing Accuracy Using Material-Realistic 3D-Models

Electron Tomography (ET) reconstructions can be analysed, via segmentation techniques, to obtain quantitative, 3D-information about individual nanoparticles in supported catalysts. This includes values of parameters out of reach for any other technique, like their volume and surface, which are required to determine the dispersion of the supported particle system or the specific surface area of the support; two figures that play a major role in the performance of this type of catalysts. However, both the experimental conditions during the acquisition of the tilt series and the limited fidelity of the reconstruction and segmentation algorithms, restrict the quality of the ET results and introduce an undefined amount of error both in the qualitative features of the reconstructions and in all the quantitative parameters measured from them. Here, a method based on the use of well-defined 3D geometrical models (phantoms), with morphological features closely resembling those observed in experimental images of an Au/CeO2 catalyst, has been devised to provide a precise estimation of the accuracy of the reconstructions. Using this approach, the influence of noise and the number of projections on the errors of reconstructions obtained using a Total Variation Minimization in 3D (TVM-3D) algorithm have been determined. Likewise, the benefits of using smart denoising techniques based on Undecimated Wavelet Transforms (UWT) have been also evaluated. The results clearly reveal a large impact of usual noise levels on both the quality of the reconstructions and nanometrological measurement errors. Quantitative clues about the key role of UWT to largely compensate them are also provided.This work has received support from Projects: PID2020-113006-RB-I00, PID2019-110018GA-I00, PID2020-114594GB-C22, funded by MCIN/AEI/https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033.This work has also been co-financed by Project ref: MAT2017-87579-R and by the 2014 -2020 ERDF Operational Programme and by the Department of Economy, Knowledge, Business and University of the Regional Government of Andalusia, Project references: FEDER-UCA18-107139, FEDERUCA18-106895 and P18-FR-1422. STEM ET experiments were recorded at the DME-UCA Node of the Spanish Singular Infrastructure for Electron Microscopy of Materials (ICTS ELECMI)

Measurements of a MIMO train-to-wayside communication system on tunnels

This paper presents a deep insight on a real implementation of a train-to-wayside radio on subway tunnels that makes use of a 2x2 MIMO-OFDM setup. The following parameters on the performance of such a system are investigated: polarization diversity, antenna separation, tunnel cross-section influence and MIMO capacity. Moreover, two different channel matrices have been calculated, assuming uniform power allocation and performing the waterfilling algorithm. Finally, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of a real MIMO-based train-to-wayside broadband radio. Measurements were carried out on Line 3 of Metro de Madrid, Spain