“AN APPLIED RESEARCH TO SUPPLY ENERGY COMING FROM EXPLOITATION OF BIOMASS SCRAPS TO “LITTLE AND MIDDLE ENTERPRISE (LME)” (PART ONE)

The research was funded by “Operative National Plan - European Capital for Regional Development” (PON-FERS 2007-2013, Industry 2015). Authors considered the Sicilian LME producing wastes from operational processes as like woody chips, wood shavings, shells of hazelnut or almond and so on. A previous survey carried out on a consistent sample of Sicilian LME showed that electrical power required by operational processes ranges substantially around three main values (250, 500 and 635 kWe) and research was addressed to obtain previous values of electrical power. People takes in consideration the exploitation of biomass through pyrolysis process since it produces syngas usable as fuel in gas-turbine of CHP plant, bio-oil and biochar too, both of them able to supply thermal energy to many section of plant. The whole paper describes the general plane of research and guidelines for: • calculus of sizes of biomass stockpile storage (storage and drying - first section) • design of equipments of pyrolysis process and exhausts treatment (pyrolysis process – second section) • design of cogeneration system (CHP techniques – third section). The result of research specifies too the economical decreasing of operational costs of LME and the remarkable environmental benefits arose by exploitation of biomass. For room reason the part one of paper describes the generalized characteristics of research and results of calculations to design drying and storage section

TECHNIQUES OF CCHP AS A RIGHT WAY TO APPLY THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMIC: CASE STUDY (PART ONE)

Paper illustrates the design of an “Efficient Energy System” (EES) to supply energy to a new hospital of Catania (CH). It is shown the way to build EES through CCHP techniques and the analysis of energy request of EES during whole period of year. Paper shows also as EES , and connected CCHP techniques , achieves on the basis of 2nd Law of Thermodynamic significant economical decreasing of operational costs of CH and remarkable environmental benefits

Analysis and Acoustic Correction of a Contemporary Italian Church

Abstract Nowadays, architects and designers build new churches primarily considering the architectural shape to emphasize the iconographic message without sufficiently investigating the acoustic climate. In many cases, designers propose elliptical or irregular geometries for the shapes of these buildings and, in addition, the furniture of indoor surfaces have unsuitable absorption and diffusivity coefficients. Thereby, it can be observed the arise of serious acoustical problems such as standing waves, flutter echo, sound focusing and intensive late reflections (greater than 100 ms) which seriously decrease speech intelligibility and diminish the effectiveness of the early sound energy. This paper presents the results of an acoustic survey on the Catholic Church "Invaluable Blood of Jesus", situated in Ragusa (Italy), which is characterized by many problems mentioned above. During last years, some refurbishment interventions have attempted to reduce the acoustic discomfort, but an uncorrected approach has completely compromised the speech intelligibility, especially during liturgical functions. Recently, the authors have been involved to propose suitable interventions for improving the acoustic quality of this environment. Preliminarily, a measurement survey was conducted to evaluate the main acoustic indices (RT60, STI, EDT, C80, D50) and portray the current acoustic climate. After that, it was developed an acoustic computer simulation on a 3D model of the church, in order to calibrate the model comparing measured and simulated data. This procedure allowed testing the reliability and accuracy of the model. Finally, We propose two different interventions of acoustic correction. Globally it is possible to obtain an improvement of RT60 from 7.3 to 2.5 s at 1 kHz and STI increases from 33% to 40%, at 1000 Hz

An assessment study of evaporation rate models on a water basin with floating photovoltaic plants

Under the general topic of the impact of floating PV systems (FPVs) on water basins, the present study aims to model and analyze the effect of FPVs on the evaporation rate of water surfaces. The estimation of the evaporation of the water surface of a basin is usually calculated using mathematical evaporation models that require knowledge of some parameters (i.e. solar radiation, humidity, air temperature, water temperature, wind velocity). Thus, in the first section of this study some evaporative models (EVM) for free water basin have been examined to evaluate which are the environmental variables used. On the basis of this analysis, new numerical models for the calculation of the daily evaporation rate have been developed using the DoE method (3 models) and the linear regression method (2 models). The results of the developed models have been compared with the experimental measurements carried out by an evaporimeter, such comparison has highlighted the robustness of the proposed numerical models. Moreover, for estimating the evaporation rate in water basins partially covered by FPVs further three numerical methods are proposed. Finally, the evaporation rates, arising by the installation of different typology of FPVs on water basins, have been evaluated as function of the energy balance on the water surface. It is possible to highlight that the amount of evaporated water depends not only on the percentage of surface covered but also on the characteristics of floating systems. Covering only 30% of the surface of a basin, it is possible to obtain up to 49% reduction in evaporation

The evapotranspiration process in green roofs: a review

Previous research has shown that most of the green roof benefits are related to the cooling effect. In the literature available, however, it is still not clear how and how much the evapotranspiration affects the performance of a green roof. In order to fill the gap in this research topic, this study carries out a review on the cooling effect due to the evapotranspiration process of green roofs. First of all, an overview of the evapotranspiration phenomenon in green roofs, as well as the equipment and methods used for its measurement are presented. Then, the main experimental results available in literature, the physical-mathematical models and the dynamic simulation software used for the evaluation of the latent heat flux are also analysed and discussed among the available literature. Moreover, this review proposes a classification of the results carried out by previous studies as function of the main parameters affecting the evapotranspiration process (e.g. volumetric water content, stomatal resistance, Leaf Area Index, solar radiation, wind velocity, relative humidity, soil thickness, and substrate composition). Additionally, a sensitivity analysis of the results obtained from the literature allowed underlining the correlation among the main factors affecting the evapotranspiration. Finally, a vision of the world area where green roof studies were performed is provided. From the results, it is possible to emphasize that most of the studies that evaluated the evapotranspiration used high precision load cells. Furthermore, all the heat transfer models of green roofs considered in this review took into account the latent heat flux due to evaporation of water from the substrate and plants transpiration, however, only few of them were experimentally validated.This work is partially funded by the Spanish governmentENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER). The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2017 SGR 1537). GREiA is certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers by the Government of Catalonia. Julià Coma would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for the Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2016-30345. This research is also funded by “the Notice 5/2016 for financing the Ph.D. regional grant in Sicily” as part of the Operational Programme of European Social Funding 2014–2020 (PO FSE 2014–2020)

Energy analysis of a micro-cogeneration unit fed by biogas as a function of pyrolysis operating parameters

In this study, the biomass degradation and the evolution of chemical species during pyrolysis are analysed with the main aim of evaluating the energy performance of a micro-cogeneration unit fed by biogas. The decomposition of the feedstock material is modelled as a two-stage process: firstly, in the reactor, the biomass is decomposed in a residual solid fraction (char) and a gaseous mixture; then, the condensable gases are divided from permanent gases generating the pyro-oil. The mathematical model proposed in this work has been developed considering the dependence of the pyrolysis process from the temperature and within the interval 500–900 °C. The kinetic of the reactions involved during the pyrolysis was also taken into account. Simulations run in AspenPlus exploiting the R-yield reactor supported by a calculator block. Afterwards, the energy recovery line for the valorisation of the pyro-products has been analysed. The gas fraction obtained at the end of the cycle was firstly characterized and then used to feed a micro-CHP system. Results are very promising, with great potential in terms of thermal recovery; more than 60% of the initially fed biogas and about 30% power output can be derived

Energy analysis of a micro-cogeneration unit fed by biogas as a function of pyrolysis operating parameters

In this study, the biomass degradation and the evolution of chemical species during pyrolysis are analysed with the main aim of evaluating the energy performance of a micro-cogeneration unit fed by biogas. The decomposition of the feedstock material is modelled as a two-stage process: firstly, in the reactor, the biomass is decomposed in a residual solid fraction (char) and a gaseous mixture; then, the condensable gases are divided from permanent gases generating the pyro-oil. The mathematical model proposed in this work has been developed considering the dependence of the pyrolysis process from the temperature and within the interval 500–900 °C. The kinetic of the reactions involved during the pyrolysis was also taken into account. Simulations run in AspenPlus exploiting the R-yield reactor supported by a calculator block. Afterwards, the energy recovery line for the valorisation of the pyro-products has been analysed. The gas fraction obtained at the end of the cycle was firstly characterized and then used to feed a micro-CHP system. Results are very promising, with great potential in terms of thermal recovery; more than 60% of the initially fed biogas and about 30% power output can be derived

application of a mapping tool to plan energy saving at a neighborhood scale

Abstract This study proposes the application of a model for the evaluation of the overall energy demand of existing urban neighborhoods, which can be useful when planning energy enhancement strategies at urban scale. The application of this model can be interconnected with the use of a GIS software tool, thus providing the opportunity to perform the energy mapping of city neighborhoods. In the proposed model, the overall energy demand of existing urban neighborhoods is evaluated by considering the three most energy intensive sectors: buildings, transport and urban lighting. However, in this paper the application of the model is only focused on the assessment of the energy demand in the building sector. The proposed methodology is applied to a neighborhood of the municipality of Catania in Southern Italy. The preliminary results are reported in this study: first, the existing energy consumption for space heating and electric appliances is assessed, then the effectiveness of a series of energy-saving strategies is considered, thus providing a tool to implement effective energy planning policies at urban scale

uhi effects and strategies to improve outdoor thermal comfort in dense and old neighbourhoods

Abstract Modelling techniques have received growing attention as a tool to investigate the thermal comfort within a city, on the basis of which decision makers can set-up appropriate mitigation strategies. This research aims at studying the effectiveness of strategies for reducing the urban heat island-associated effects in dense and old neighborhoods considering, in particular, green roofs, cool roofs, cool pavements, green areas and urban renewal actions. Computer simulation was selected as the major methodology in this research; ENVI-met software was used under different scenarios for a case study consisting in an old neighborhood in the city of Avola. The investigation focused on evaluating the efficacy of each strategy for a condition corresponding to a typical summer heat wave. The results highlight that the cool pavements allow relevant improvements at the height of 1.50 m, with a temperature decrease up 1.15°C, whereas the other scenarios, given the relatively high density of the buildings, are able to improve outdoor conditions only at higher elevations. Reported results represent a guideline for the choice of UHI mitigation method that can help stakeholders involved in new urban assessment of old neighborhoods in Mediterranean climate

Individual differences in the neuroendocrine response of male rats to emotional stressors are not trait-like and strongly depend on the intensity of the stressors

Altres ajuts: Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICBiological response to stressors is critical to understand stress-related pathologies and vulnerability to psychiatric diseases. It is assumed that we can identify trait-like characteristics in biological responsiveness by testing subjects in a particular stressful situation, but there is scarce information on this issue. We then studied, in a normal outbred population of adult male rats (n = 32), the response of well-characterized stress markers (ACTH, corticosterone and prolactin) to different types of stressors: two novel environments (open-field, OF1 and OF2), an elevated platform (EP), forced swim (SWIM) and immobilization (IMO). Based on both plasma ACTH and prolactin levels, the OF1 was the lowest intensity situation, followed by the OF2 and the EP, then SWIM and finally IMO. When correlations between the individual responses to the different stressors were studied, the magnitude of the correlations was most dependent on the similarities in intensity rather than on other characteristics of stressors, with good correlations between similar intensity stressors and no correlations at all were found between stressors markedly differing in intensity. In two additional confirmatory experiments (n = 37 and n = 20) with HPA hormones, we observed good correlation between the response to restraint and IMO, which were close in intensity, and no correlation between OF1 and SWIM. The present results suggest that individual neuroendocrine response to a particular stressor does not predict the response to another stressor greatly differing in intensity, thus precluding characterization of low or high responsive individuals to any stressor in a normal population. The present data have important implications for human studies