Search results for "Building"
showing 10 items of 1985 documents
A review of emerging trends in membrane science and technology for sustainable water treatment
2020
Abstract Access to clean or potable water will continue to be a global challenge in as much as sustainable solutions are far-fetched. It has become imperative to improve the efficiency of conventional membrane science and technologies for water treatment in order to reduce their deleterious impact on the environment. Some sustainability solutions have been proposed and studied in recent years. Therefore, a critical and comprehensive review of emerging trends in sustainable membrane-based desalination and wastewater treatment is presented in this paper. Some of the emerging trends in membrane science and technology for sustainable water treatment include the reuse of membranes, reuse of wast…
Investigation of design strategies and quantification of energy flexibility in buildings: A case-study in southern Italy
2021
Abstract The need for nearly (net) zero energy buildings in the current European landscape does not merely refer to energy balances: the aim to investigate the interaction between generation and load and find sources of technical-economic energy efficiency is marking the rise in interest throughout research and practice of energy flexibility solutions in buildings. In this regard, the study aims at enhancing the energy flexibility of a building in southern Italy through Rule-Based Control algorithms for the control of the space heating system and the charge and discharge of an electricity storage. The influence of electricity pricing and the thermal comfort conditions on flexibility is also…
A New Systematic Series of Foil Sections with Parallel Sides
2020
Parallel-sided foil sections are used for centerboards and rudders in sailing dinghy classes and also for struts placed in a fluid flow. The objective of this work is to create a systematic series of parallel-sided sections to be used under different conditions, with an emphasis on the sailing dinghies 470, 420 and Optimist. The loss, and surprisingly the gain, in performance relative to 4-digit NACA sections are also investigated. A 2D Reynolds-averaged Navier&ndash
An MAS-based subjective model for indoor adaptive thermal comfort
2015
The achievement of high level personalized sets of comfort parameters is contemplated within the more general context of the so-called smart buildings, where people, by means of the new communication technologies, become active actors to the process of the singling out and control of the best indoor conditions. This Dynamic Intelligence approach would usefully contribute to a better energy efficient and environmental friendly management of buildings. Multi-Agent schemes are suitable tools in this aim, since they are able to manage the user-building-plant system where the adaptivity of people to the indoor conditions is suitably achieved. In this paper a contribution to a development of the …
Stochastic multicriteria evaluation of district heating systems considering the uncertainties
2018
It is of great importance to choose a suitable district heating (DH) system for a specific DH area from the economics, environment and energy (3E) points of view. This is a multicriteria decision making problem, in which the criteria performance values (PVs) and weighting are characterized by uncertain or imprecise information. In this study, seven candidate DH systems are evaluated from the viewpoints of 3E by the stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) method. SMAA is able to handle the uncertainties of the criteria PVs and the weighting at the same time. These uncertainties are very common and typical in real-life, but in most cases are not treated judiciously or just negl…
Simplified Energy Model and Multi-Objective Energy Consumption Optimization of a Residential House
2022
Featured Application: The potential application of the proposed model is a computationally inexpensive semi- or fully automated system for the optimization of operation in residential buildings in terms of energy consumption. Some analyses state that buildings contribute to overall energy consumption by 20–40%, which, in the context of the recent geopolitical energy crisis, makes them a critical issue to study. Finding solutions for better energy management in buildings can have a significant impact on the energy sector, thus reducing EU energy dependencies and contributing to the fulfillment of the REPowerEU goals. This paper focuses on proposing a simplified model of a residential house c…
Corporate governance and its implications for sustainability reporting quality in Latin American business groups
2020
Abstract This paper aims to study the factors determining the quality of sustainability reporting in Latin American business groups. Applying a logistic regression model, this study is pioneer in establishing how some distinct corporate variables of business groups influence disclosure quality of Corporate Social Responsibility practices in these groups in emerging economies. The results show that control concentration in the groups negatively affects the quality of sustainability reporting. Variables such as foreign ownership, the age of the business group and board size help business groups to improve the quality of their sustainability and voluntary disclosure practices. These results fo…
Development of a Model to Estimate the Risk of Emission of Greenhouse Gases from Forest Fires
2022
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Catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction of municipal sludge assisted by formic acid for the production of next-generation fuels
2021
Abstract Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of municipal sludge (MS) was studied at 325 °C and 30 min at 10 and 30% w/w concentration of MS using formic acid (FA) as a green liquid hydrogen donor both in the absence and in the presence of heterogeneous catalysts. Pellets of commercial NiMo/Al2O3, CoMo/Al2O3 and felt of activated carbon ACF 1600 were used as catalysts. The addition of FA at high MS loading allowed to increase the yields in BC from 41 to 62% and its H/C ratio from 1.80 to 2.01 leading to energy recovery (ER) higher than 100%.When heterogeneous catalysts were used together with FA, a marked improvement of BC yields and quality was obtained at 10% MS loading. This behavior was not…
Masonry structures: A proposal of analytical generation of fragility functions for tsunami impact – Application to the Mediterranean coasts
2021
Abstract Evaluation of tsunami vulnerability of coastal buildings is gaining high interest in recent years in the areas with high tsunami hazard. Fragility evaluation is a fundamental step to obtain a quantitative estimation of the probability of building damage and in order to define possible strategies for risk mitigation. Several empirical fragility curves are available for masonry structures. However, an empirical fragility curve is generally based on field surveys after tsunami events, not always available. Conversely, analytical fragility curves are based on prediction approaches. In this paper, a proposal for the evaluation of analytical fragility curves for masonry structures typica…