Use of principal component analysis to evaluate thermal properties and combustibility of coffee-pine wood briquettes

Submitted: February 1st, 2021 ; Accepted: March 30th, 2021 ; Published: May 21st, 2021 ; Correspondence: [email protected] coffee production chain is a potential source of residual biomass inherent to the high productivity that can contribute to the generation of value-added products. The residues from the coffee sector are typically disposed to landfill without treatment causing potential environmental inconveniences. Briquetting presents an alternative process to produce a uniform fuel with high energy density. Briquettes facilitates easy transportation, enables better handling and storage of biomass residues. Properties such as low equilibrium moisture content, high energy density and compressive strength were reported for different coffee-pine wood briquettes treatments. Moreover, understanding of the thermal properties of the briquettes during combustion is crucial to evaluate their final application. This research is the first study that investigates the combustibility properties and kinetic parameters of the thermal decomposition of briquettes from coffee-pine wood using differential and integral thermal analysis under non-isothermal conditions. Multivariate analysis of the collected parameters through principal components analysis (PCA), was implemented to reduce the dimensionality of the data. The desired profile in the combustibility is directly related to high temperatures and long burning times, thus, the tested briquettes displayed a significant combustibility potential, reporting peak temperatures and burnout times around 600 °C and 27 minutes, respectively. Activation energy kinetic parameter in the range of 12–42 kJ mol-1 and average reactivity of 0.14–0.22 min-1 , were also found. The results revealed the not thermally hard material to degrade when compared to biomasses typically used for combustion

Underwater energy harvesting to extend operation time of submersible sensors

A linear electromagnetic energy harvesting device for underwater applications, fabricated with a simple manufacturing process, was developed to operate with movement frequencies from 0.1 to 0.4 Hz. The generator has two coils, and the effect of the combination of the two coils was investigated. The experimental study has shown that the energy capture system was able to supply energy to several ocean sensors, producing 7.77 mJ per second with wave movements at 0.4 Hz. This study shows that this energy is enough to restore the energy used by the battery or the capacitor and continue supplying energy to the sensors used in the experimental work. For an ocean wave frequency of 0.4 Hz, the generator can supply power to 8 sensors or 48 sensors, depending on the energy consumed and its optimization.This work is co-funded by the project K2D-Knowledge and Data from the Deep to Space with reference POCI-01-0247-FEDER-045941, co-financed by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization (COMPETE2020) and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology-FCT under MIT-Portugal Program. This work is also co-financed by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE2020), through Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER), Project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER000032–NextSea, and by national funds through FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P. under project SONDA (PTDC/EME-SIS/1960/2020)

The usefulness of serum adenosine deaminase 2 (ADA2) activity in adults for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis

AbstractRapid diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains an obstacle for therapy of tuberculosis (TB). Adenosine deaminase isoform 2 (ADA2) is produced by activated macrophages and has been used for diagnosis of TB from extra-pulmonary sites. However, few studies adequately address whether serum ADA2 activity is useful for diagnosis of active pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). We prospectively measured serum ADA2 activity in 110 patients with pulmonary disease (65 cases with active PTB and 45 cases with other respiratory diseases) and 78 healthy volunteers (eight with tuberculin skin test positive). The serum ADA2 for the diagnosis of PTB had the sensitivity of 36·9%, the specificity of 84·5%, the positive predictive value of 10·9% and the negative predictive value of 96·2%. We concluded that serum ADA2 activity is neither useful to diagnosis of active PTB nor to differentiate from other respiratory diseases

Wave profile and tide monitoring system for scalable implementation

Apresentação de Poster em conferência Nacional.Presentation of a wave profile and tide monitoring system, with low-cost and low-power pressure sensors connected to a datalogger in a wired or acustic network

Global and consistent analysis of the heavy-ion elastic scattering and fusion processes

We have developed a model for the nuclear interaction which is based on the effects of the Pauli nonlocality. In earlier works, we have successfully used this interaction to describe the elastic scattering for several systems in a very wide energy range. In the present work, we have checked the validity of the same interaction in the description of about 2500 fusion cross section data for 165 different systems. By introducing only one energyand system-independent effective parameter, the nonlocal model describes the global behavior of the fusion process with good precision

A prediction algorithm for drug response in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy based on clinical and genetic information

FAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOMesial temporal lobe epilepsy is the most common form of adult epilepsy in surgical series. Currently, the only characteristic used to predict poor response to clinical treatment in this syndrome is the presence of hippocampal sclerosis. Single nucleotide121FAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOFAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO2013/07559-