Economic Aspects of Renewable Energy from Agricultural Waste on the Southern Plains of Texas

Motivated to explore sustainability of renewable energy from bio-waste, this study attempted to discover the economic feasibility of effectively utilizing the existing agricultural waste to generate bio-energy, to complement local nucleus business by meeting specific market demands while assessing the reasonable risk associated with bio-energy production for an area with heavy concentration of agricultural production and serious water constraints. Since the problems to be addressed are all location specified critical points for bio-energy generation, GIS maps are used to identify the locations and the associated attainable volumes of agricultural waste. Meanwhile, reasonable variation and distribution of attainable cotton gin waste was identified by using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain simulation. Consequently, the constrained expected profit maximization model was specified to assess the optimal plant size, application of technologies and associated production outputs under multiple scenarios of market situations. Conclusions based on the study results include that the possibility of peaking power contact for bio-energy outputs is critical for taking advantage of larger scales of bio-energy production, reducing the production risk and enhancing the competitiveness of bio-energy products. Gasifying biomass is a feasible way to generate electricity for peak load needs while satisfying self consumption and incidental sale if necessary facilities connecting to the grid are available. Mobile pyrolysis plants have sufficient potential for profits all the way through effectively converting biomass to bio-oil, hence increasing the feasibility of a large-scale bio-energy facility and the capability to meet the needs of higher valued peaking power by utilizing an existing facility at local power plants in the study region. Also, the study results imply that production of bio-energy from agricultural waste has higher risks, and the variance of profits could be immense even though at a typical area with heavy concentrations of agricultural production. Technology improvement associated with reduced expenses for plant facilities or the increased converting efficiency would be the key components for dealing the risk and commercializing bio-energy products in long term.sustainability, bio-energy, agricultural waste, economic feasibility, risk, Agribusiness, Land Economics/Use,

Asymmetry of Left Versus Right Lateral Face in Face Recognition

Prior research has found that the left side of the face is emotionally more expressive than the right side [1]. This was demonstrated in a study where the right and the left halves of a face image were combined with their mirror-reversed duplicates to make composite images. When observers were asked which composite face appeared more emotional, they selected the left-left over the right-right composite more often

Heuristic algorithms for a vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup and time windows in home health care

International audienceThis paper addresses a vehicle scheduling problem encountered in home health care logistics. It concerns the delivery of drugs and medical devices from the home care company's pharmacy to patients' homes, delivery of special drugs from a hospital to patients, pickup of bio samples and unused drugs and medical devices from patients. The problem can be considered as a special vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup and time windows, with four types of demands: delivery from depot to patient, delivery from a hospital to patient, pickup from a patient to depot and pickup from a patient to a medical lab. Each patient is visited by one vehicle and each vehicle visits each node at most once. Patients are associated with time windows and vehicles with capacity. Two mixed-integer programming models are proposed. We then propose a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and a Tabu Search (TS) method. The GA is based on a permutation chromosome, a split procedure and local search. The TS is based on route assignment attributes of patients, an augmented cost function, route re-optimization, and attribute-based aspiration levels. These approaches are tested on test instances derived from existing VRPTW benchmarks

Dynamics of cold pulses induced by super-sonic molecular beam injection in the EAST tokamak

Evolution of electron temperature, electron density and its fluctuation with high spatial and temporal resolutions are presented for the cold pulse propagation induced by super-sonic molecular beam injection (SMBI) in ohmic plasmas in the EAST tokamak. The non-local heat transport occurs for discharges with plasma current $I_p$=450 kA ($q_{95}\sim5.55$), and electron density $n_{e0}$ below a critical value of $(1.35\pm0.25)\times10^{19}~\mathrm{m^{-3}}$. In contrary to the response of core electron temperature and electron density (roughly 10 ms after SMBI), the electron density fluctuation in the plasma core increases promptly after SMBI and reaches its maximum around 15 ms after SMBI. The electron density fluctuation in the plasma core begins to decrease before the core electron temperature reaches its maximum (roughly 30 ms). It was also observed that the turbulence perpendicular velocity close to the inversion point of the temperature perturbation changes sign after SMBI

Design and research into the nonlinear main vibration spring in double-mass high energy vibration milling

Due to the shortcomings of one - mass vibration mill such as inefficiency, high energy consumption and big noise, a double - mass high energy vibration mill, in which transient high vibration intensity is produced, is investigated by applying the non - linear vibration theory. The nonlinear hard - feature variable-pitch spring i0s used in the main vibration system which has the characteristic of the stiffness that can be varied along with the dynamic load. In this way, the goals of operation stabilization and energy saving will be achieved. Results from the field test show that the efficiency is obviously improved, i.e. a 28% increase in the vibration intensity, 10% decrease in energy consumption and 4% decrease in noise. That verifies the correctness of the main vibration system construction. This system can be used by others as a reference design for this field