2 research outputs found
Environmental and Economic Optimization of Algal Biofuel Supply Chain with Multiple Technological Pathways
This article optimizes the design
and configuration of algal biofuel
supply chain networks (SCN) under economic and environmental objectives.
Minimization of the total supply chain cost and the total life cycle
greenhouse gas emission are the economic and environmental objectives,
respectively. The SCN has been modeled by a multiobjective mixed integer
linear programming approach which incorporates multiple production
pathways and time periods, seasonality factors, water evaporation,
recycling opportunities, and other major traits of the algal biofuel
SCN. The model determines the optimal strategic and tactical level
decisions of all SCN echelons. A fuzzy solution-based ε-constraint
method has been utilized to obtain Pareto-optimal solutions that illustrate
the trade-off between economic and environmental objectives. The performance
of the model has been assessed in a case study carried out in seven
states of the U.S which intends to develop the algal biofuel SCN from
the year 2018 to the year 2024. Essential information with regard
to the future of different technological pathways, relative importance
of various supply chain factors, and sensitivity analysis has been
discussed with respect to the case study results
Observation of topologically distinct corner states in "bearded" photonic Kagome lattices
Kagome lattices represent an archetype of intriguing physics, attracting a great deal of interest in different branches of natural sciences, recently in the context of topological crystalline insulators. Here, we demonstrate two distinct classes of corner states in breathing Kagome lattices (BKLs) with "bearded" edge truncation, unveiling their topological origin. The in-phase corner states are found to exist only in the topologically nontrivial regime, characterized by a nonzero bulk polarization. In contrast, the out-of-phase corner states appear in both topologically trivial and nontrivial regimes, either as bound states in the continuum or as in-gap states depending on the lattice dimerization conditions. Furthermore, the out-of-phase corner states are highly localized, akin to flat-band compact localized states, and they manifest both real- and momentum-space topology. Experimentally, we observe both types of corner states in laser-written photonic bearded-edge BKLs, corroborated by numerical simulations. Our results not only deepen the current understanding of topological corner modes in BKLs, but also provide new insight into their physical origins, which may be applied to other topological BKL platforms beyond optics