Reducing the Costs for Consumed Electricity through the Solar Energy Utilization

The priority development direction of the Rostov region as the largest agricultural producer of Russia is the creation of modern, competitive processing industries. Since the beginning of 2015, despite record harvests of cereals, the wheat flour cost has been steadily increasing and now exceeds the peak values for the previous period from 2008 to 2015. This caused by the high share of payment for consumed electricity in the production costs, which is approximately 30%, and significant increase in tariffs for it in the last 10-12 years due to unjustifiably high costs of equipment maintenance and operation in grid companies, liquidation of cross-subsidizing prices, as well as rising gas prices. Under conditions of the existing high solar energy potential in the territory of the South of the country, the implementation of technologies for its transformation into electricity will reduce energy costs and, consequently, reduce the costs of produced goods and services. The purpose of the presented research was to determine the composition and parameters of the equipment of a solar electrical power plant that provides energy to the lighting system of the flour milling section No. 1 and No. 2 of the processing plant Ltd. "Rostovremagroprom" in Zernograd of the Rostov Region, taking into account the assessment of the solar radiation intensity during the year, the structural features of the building roof and features of the company's load graph. Full solar energy potential (1246.87 kWh / m²) is possible to realize at the facility partly due to the existing technical limitations imposed by the building roof construction. The design and implementation of economically feasible additional power supply system for the lighting system of the flour-milling departments of the enterprise excludes the usage of accumulating devices, allowing to reduce the annual costs for the payment of consumed electricity by approximately 45 thousand rubles by decreasing the cost of each one kilowatt-hour of consumed electricity from 8.1 rubles / kWh to 3.6 rubles / kWh during the period of intense activity of the Sun. Keywords: Solar Energy Potential, Inclination Angle of the Receiving Surface, the Layout of the Solar Power Plant JEL Classifications: O13, O44 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.720

Prospects for the Development of the Oil and Gas Industry in the Regional and Global Economy

Problems of energy efficiency, along with increasing environmental safety of production and increasing social responsibility, are becoming a central object of research. Therefore, the main goal of the work is to analyze the prospects for the development of the oil and gas industry. It was established that innovative technologies play an important role in the development of energy. In the structure of public administration, the definition of the place in the close relationship with commodity-money relations, mediating its implementation. But refusal of oil resources will lead to negative consequences. It is established that the maximum production of conventional oil in the world in the amount of 4.5-4.8 billion tons per year will be achieved in 2020-2030. Major areas of conventional oil production in this period will be oil and gas basins of the Persian Gulf, Western and Eastern Siberia, the Caspian sea, the Atlantic shelves of Africa and South America. The achieved level of oil production can be maintained by large-scale involvement in the development of non-traditional sources (bitumen and shale oil). According to the raw material base, the leaders of unconventional oil production should be Venezuela, Canada, Russia and the United States. Keywords: environmental policy, oil production, forecast, coal-fired power plants, economic crisis. JEL Classifications: L100, Q400, Q430

Chiral photonic super-crystals based on helical van der Waals homostructures

Chirality is probably the most mysterious among all symmetry transformations. Very readily broken in biological systems, it is practically absent in naturally occurring inorganic materials and is very challenging to create artificially. Chiral optical wavefronts are often used for the identification, control and discrimination of left- and right-handed biological and other molecules. Thus, it is crucially important to create materials capable of chiral interaction with light, which would allow one to assign arbitrary chiral properties to a light field. In this paper, we utilized van der Waals technology to assemble helical homostructures with chiral properties (e. g. circular dichroism). Because of the large range of van der Waals materials available such helical homostructures can be assigned with very flexible optical properties. We demonstrate our approach by creating helical homostructures based on multilayer As$_2$S$_3$, which offers the most pronounced chiral properties even in thin structures due to its strong biaxial optically anisotropy. Our work showcases that the chirality of an electromagnetic system may emerge at an intermediate level between the molecular and the mesoscopic one due to the tailored arrangement of non-chiral layers of van der Waals crystals and without additional patterning

Coping Responses During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Peru

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic has subjected people around the world to severe stress, evoking a variety of coping responses. Coping responses can be broadly classified into four strategies: 1) problem-focused coping; 2) emotion-focused coping; 3) socially supported coping; and 4) avoidance. While there is a wide variability of individual coping responses, to some extent they are also culturally specific. Objective. This study aimed to compare the differences in the prevalence and factor structure of coping responses during COVID-19 pandemic in three countries: Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Peru. Design. The sample included 501 participants from Russia, 456 participants from Kyrgyzstan, and 354 participants from Peru. The mean age of participants was 28 years in Russia (SD = 13.5); 24 years in Kyrgyzstan (SD = 10.0); and 30 years in Peru (SD = 12.3). In Russia and Kyrgyzstan, coping strategies were assessed with an abbreviated Russian adaptation of the COPE (Coping Orientations to Problems Experienced) questionnaire. In Peru, coping responses were assessed using the Spanish version of the Brief COPE questionnaire. The average scores from fifteen COPE scales were used as the input data for linear modelling and factor analysis. Results. The coping scores varied substantially within each country. Differences between countries accounted for 17.7% of the total variability in religious coping; 15.8% in acceptance; 13.9% in mental disengagement; and less than 7% in the other coping strategies. No difference in the prevalence of coping responses was found between Russian and Kyrgyz participants after accounting for age and gender. In all three countries the coping responses were associated with the same four coping domains: problem-focused coping, socially supported coping, avoidance, and emotion-focused coping. Four factors explained up to 44% of the total variation in the COPE scores. Religious coping and mental disengagement were classified into different coping domains in the three countries. Conclusion. The results suggest that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people from different countries apply the full range of coping responses within the four universal coping strategies. Religious coping and mental disengagement differed the most across the countries, suggesting that some coping behaviors can take on different roles within the system of coping responses to stressful events. We attribute these differences to differing cultural and socioeconomic characteristics, and the different measures taken by governments in response to COVID-19

Turning cellulose waste into electricity: hydrogen conversion by a hydrogenase electrode.

Hydrogen-producing thermophilic cellulolytic microorganisms were isolated from cow faeces. Rates of cellulose hydrolysis and hydrogen formation were 0.2 mM L(-1) h(-1) and 1 mM L(-1) h(-1), respectively. An enzymatic fuel cell (EFC) with a hydrogenase anode was used to oxidise hydrogen produced in a microbial bioreactor. The hydrogenase electrode was exposed for 38 days (912 h) to a thermophilic fermentation medium. The hydrogenase activity remaining after continuous operation under load was 73% of the initial value