Caracterização da remoção de metais pesados na ETAR da Charneca (Óbidos), Águas do Oeste

Este trabalho teve como objectivos a quantificação analítica de quatro metais pesados (chumbo, níquel, crómio e cádmio) nas diferentes etapas da ETAR da Charneca (Óbidos) identificando, através dos coeficientes de partição, os principais mecanismos de remoção dos metais em cada etapa de tratamento. Foram também determinados os parâmetros mais importantes na caracterização de águas residuais (pH, CQO, ST, STV, SS e SSV). Foram realizadas duas campanhas de amostragem, uma primeira com o objectivo de aperfeiçoamento dos planos de amostragem e selecção dos métodos analíticos a adoptar e uma segunda para o cumprimento dos objectivos do trabalho. A determinação de metais pesados foi efectuada por Espectrometria de Absorção Atómica de Chama (FAAS) e Espectrometria de Absorção Atómica de Câmara de Grafite (GFAAS). Os restantes parâmetros analíticos foram determinados pelos métodos de referência (APHA, 1998). No período de amostragem, o afluente à ETAR apresentou concentrações reduzidas dos metais em estudo com valores médios de 11,78 µg/L. De entre os metais destacavam-se, no entanto, o crómio e de níquel, com concentrações respectivamente 27,83 µg/L e 17,50 µg/L. As amostras de areias, extraídas na obra de entrada, apresentaram concentrações mais significativas de chumbo e crómio, enquanto as amostras de gorduras, recolhidas no mesmo ponto, apresentaram concentrações mais elevadas de níquel e crómio. As amostras do efluente final revelaram concentrações muito reduzidas dos quatro metais estudados com a concentração média a situar-se nos 7,34 µg/L. Verificou-se uma remoção na fase líquida do efluente de cerca de 85% para o chumbo, 39% para o níquel e 34% para o crómio. No cádmio não se verificou remoção na fase líquida. Concluiu-se que a remoção dos metais é determinada por uma transferência destes para a fase sólida e que ocorre fundamentalmente no reactor biológico onde uma parte significativa dos metais pesados é absorvida pela biomassa presente. Nas lamas desidratadas, os metais encontrados em maior concentração foram o chumbo e o crómio com concentrações de respectivamente 130,64 mg/Kgmat.seca e 87,99 mg/Kg mat.seca, embora todos os metais pesados estudados apresentem uma situação de conformidade com os requisitos de lamas para valorização agrícola, estabelecidos na legislação nacional

Learning Word Embeddings from the Portuguese Twitter Stream: A Study of some Practical Aspects

This paper describes a preliminary study for producing and distributing a large-scale database of embeddings from the Portuguese Twitter stream. We start by experimenting with a relatively small sample and focusing on three challenges: volume of training data, vocabulary size and intrinsic evaluation metrics. Using a single GPU, we were able to scale up vocabulary size from 2048 words embedded and 500K training examples to 32768 words over 10M training examples while keeping a stable validation loss and approximately linear trend on training time per epoch. We also observed that using less than 50\% of the available training examples for each vocabulary size might result in overfitting. Results on intrinsic evaluation show promising performance for a vocabulary size of 32768 words. Nevertheless, intrinsic evaluation metrics suffer from over-sensitivity to their corresponding cosine similarity thresholds, indicating that a wider range of metrics need to be developed to track progress

Transceiver for an Unmanned Airborne Vehicle

This paper describes a transmission/reception (transceiver) system for the 456MHz - 459MHz band, which allows data communication between a ground station and an unmanned airborne vehicle. The transceiver makes use of quadrature frequency translation techniques, coherent indirect methods for signal generation and supports input signals with several types of modulation. The intermodulation products harmonics and spurious signals are 60dB below the carrier for an output power of 6dBm. The receiver has a sensitivity of -110dBm, a dynamic range of 80dB and an image rejection better than 28dB. The central frequency and the tune steps (100kHz) are digitally controlled by a PLL-based synthesizer. The transceiver draws 500mA from a ±12V supply. These characteristics were found to be good enough for the application referred above

Criteria Assessment of Energy Carrier Systems Sustainability

The sustainability assessment of an energy conversion process into electrical energy is carried out in technological, economical, environmental and social dimensions. A solid basis for a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary assessment using data obtained from the literature supports the sustainability comparison. Thus, indicators that best describe the technologies and that are related to each of the abovementioned dimensions are defined to quantify the sustainability of energy carrier systems. These indicators are: efficiency of electricity generation, lifetime, energy payback time, capital cost, electricity generation cost, greenhouse gases emissions during full life cycle of the technology, land requirements, job creation and social acceptance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sustainability quantification of renewable energy conversion systems for electricity supply

The sustainability of renewable energy conversion systems for electricity supply is quantified and compared. The energy conversion systems considered are: wind, photovoltaic, geothermal, hydro, hydrogen, ocean (wave and tidal power) and nuclear. The sustainability analysis is performed covering technological, economic, environmental and social aspects. The indicators selected to characterize and quantify the sustainability of each subgroup are: efficiency, lifetime, electricity generation cost, capital cost, CO2 emissions, area occupied, employment creation and social acceptance. Membership functions are applied to determine the sustainability index that quantifies how sustainable is each energy conversion system depending on the most relevant indicator. This procedure includes a weighting coefficient that varies in each case study to magnify the importance of one indicator relatively to the others. Sustainability indices are compared in order to assess the energy conversion systems mix for electricity supply more sustainable now and in the near future. Comparing the several case studies, the global sustainability indicators suggest that the mix of energy conversion systems for electricity supply should be based on hydro, wind and nuclear systems.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Contribution for a better understanding of the technological sustainability in electrical energy production through photovoltaic cells

The conversion of solar energy into electricity reveals a huge importance in the production of “clean” energy , mainly when applied to decentralized production systems (micro-generation). However, there is the need to develop and optimize these processes in order to turn it more sustainable in economic and technological scoops. The main purpose of this work is to study the solar energy conversion into electricity through photovoltaic cells, characterizing the process efficiencies. This study intends to evaluate the energetic and exergetic efficiencies defining them as indicators in the formulation of a sustainability index. All the procedures are in a theoretical scope with an illustrative example in the end of this work.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio