Analysis of relationship between the European Union and the United States in the period the presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2020)

The European Union has met Donald Trump's presidency in a crisis, caused by Britain's exit, quarrels over migration policy and prospects for European integration. Trump has abandoned a project to create a transatlantic free trade area. He demanded a one-sided trade advantage for the United States. The rejection of the liberal project of multilateral foreign policy contributed to the deepening of contradictions between the EU and the US in the field of trade, environment, the regime of international disarmament treaties, the algorithm for resolving regional conflicts. The Trump era in US foreign policy was a time of abandoning liberal globalism. But it is impossible to realize this task in one cadence. The question is whether it is possible for Democrats to fully restore liberal globalism in equal cooperation with the European Union. Trump has abandoned the project of a transatlantic free trade area between the United States and the European Union. This shocked the European elites. Differences in approaches to world trade contributed to the coolness. The European Union is promoting a liberal approach. Trump insisted on the priority of the patronage of American interests. As a result, the tradition of relationships has suffered. Until 2017, the United States bought European goods and paid the most to the NATO budget. Trump demanded trade parity and more European funding for NATO. European elites perceived Trump's approach to migration issues as unacceptable. Trump's policy on international conflicts has become another reason for mutual misunderstanding. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and helped establish diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. This has become a challenge for the European Union's Middle East policy

THE RESURGENCE OF NATIONALISM: THE BREAKUP OF YUGOSLAVIA

The choice between modern nation-building and integration into supranational European and Euro-Atlantic structures remains a strategic challenge for the Balkan countries. Success in solving this problem of predominantly mono-ethnic Croatia and Slovenia has not yet become a model to follow. Serbian and Albanian national issues cannot be resolved. Serbia's defeat in the Balkan wars of 1991–1999 over the creation of a "Greater Serbia" led to the country's territorial fragmentation. Two Albanian national states emerged in the Balkans. Attempts to create a union of Kosovo and Albania could turn the region into a whirlpool of ultra-nationalist contradictions. The European Union has started accession negotiations with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. The success of these negotiations depends on the readiness of the EU and the ability of these Balkan states to adopt European norms and rules. The accession of all Balkan nation-states to the European Union must finally close the "Balkan window" of the vulnerability of the united Europe. Nation-building in the Balkans on the basis of ethnic nationalism sharply contradicts the purpose and current values of the European integration process. For more than three decades, the EU has been pursuing a policy of human rights, the rule of law, democracy and economic development in the Balkans. The region remains vulnerable to the influences of non-European geopolitical powers: the United States, Russia, Turkey, and China. The further scenario of the great Balkan geopolitical game mainly depends on the pro-European national consolidation of the Balkan peoples and the effectiveness of the European Union's strategy in the Balkans

Estimating the Failure Probability of CO2 Pipeline as Part of Carbon Capture and Storage Chain

This paper presents the development of an analytical method for predicting the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) for CO2 pipeline puncture failures based on fitting the Weibull distribution to the failure hole size data in the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) historical database using the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE). The method starts with obtaining the minimum acceptable sample size for acquiring a reliable MLE through assessing the quality of the MLE as a function of the data sample size using the Mean Squared Error (MSE). For low quality MLE, the bootstrapping method is employed to enhance the confidence of the distribution fitting by calculating the 95% Confidence Interval (CI) of the MLE. The minimum acceptable sample size is then compared with the number of the database CO2 hole size data to decide whether the bootstrapping is needed. The results show that the sample data available are far less than what would be required for obtaining a reliable MLE and hence the bootstrapping method is applied to acquire a range of CDFs that may be considered valid for representing the probability distribution of CO2 pipeline failure hole sizes. The resulting CDF range shows that at least 70% of the failure holes are smaller than 0.25 of the pipe internal diameter for CO2 pipelines

Multi-objective economic and environmental assessment for the preliminary design of CO2 transport pipelines

A methodology based on the multi-objective optimisation of economic and environmental aspects is presented to support the preliminary design of CO2 transport pipelines employed as part of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) systems. Pareto optimal design solutions are determined for a realistic point-to-point CO2 pipeline using Level Diagrams and choosing the Nominal Pipe Size (NPS) as a decision variable. A quantitative procedure entailing the definition of economic and environmental key performance indicators is defined to allow the identification of an optimum pipeline design. The outcome is compared against the minimisation of single-objective indicators based on the CO2 avoided and carbon pricing concepts. The results of a case-study concerning a 70 km long pipeline transporting 10 Mt yr−1 of supercritical CO2 show that the multi-objective method yields an optimum NPS equal to 30, higher than the NPS 28 deriving from the alternative indexing methods. The proposed multicriteria approach effectively considers case-specific environmental sustainability constraints, which result in determining 46% of the overall performance measure of the identified optimum solution. The results show that conventional single-objective methods underestimate the contribution of environmental factors up to 2.6% of the overall performance index value. A Monte Carlo probabilistic analysis is performed to verify the robustness of the results with respect to the possible uncertainties

A model of the near-field expansion of CO2 jet released from a ruptured pipeline

The transportation of pressurised CO2 using pipelines is a crucial element of the Carbon Capture and Storage chain; for their safe design the ability to accurately predict the consequences of a failure, the jet release and ensuing dispersion is essential. Such phenomena are commonly modelled in stages: jet expansion followed by atmospheric dispersion. For jet expansion modelling, both analytical and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) models are available to predict the fully expanded flow conditions which are subsequently used as inputs in dispersion modelling. Although analytical models are computationally efficient, due to the lack of experimental data, their predictions have yet been verified. In this work, a conservation law based multiphase analytical model is constructed with a rigorous equation of state. The predicted flow variables at full expansion are then compared to those from the Shear Stress Transport k-ω CFD model. The quantitative comparisons between two models provide necessary verification of the application of analytical models in accidental release modelling

Henry’s Law Constants and Vapor–Liquid Distribution Coefficients of Noncondensable Gases Dissolved in Carbon Dioxide

The accurate determination of the solubilities of the typical impurity gases present in captured CO2 in the carbon capture, utilization, and storage chain is an essential prerequisite for the successful modeling of the CO2 stream thermodynamic properties. In this paper, Henry’s law constants and the vapor–liquid distribution coefficients of six noncondensable gases, namely, N2, O2, H2, CH4, Ar, and CO, at infinite dilution in liquid CO2 are derived based on published vapor–liquid equilibrium data at temperatures ranging from the triple point (216.59 K) to the critical point (304.13 K) of CO2. The temperature dependence of Henry’s law constants of the six gases is correlated using approximating functions previously proposed for aqueous solutions. A correlation that provides the best fit for the Henry constants data for all the six gases, with the accuracy (absolute average deviation %) of 4.2%, is recommended. For N2, O2, H2, Ar, and CO, the combined standard uncertainty in the derived Henry constants is less than 6%, whereas for CH4, due to a larger deviation between the utilized data, the uncertainty is less than 18%. Analysis of the temperature variation of the vapor–liquid distribution coefficient at infinite dilution shows that when all the six gases are present in the CO2 stream, separation of N2, O2, Ar, and CO from CO2 can be problematic due to their similar volatilities, while the distinct volatilities of H2 and CH4 at lower temperatures make their separation from CO2 easier