Search results for "Form."
showing 10 items of 43419 documents
To incinerate or not? - Effects of incineration on the concentrations of heavy metals and leaching efficiency of post-precipitated sewage sludge (RAV…
2020
The major element and heavy metal concentrations of post-precipitated sewage sludge (PPS) and its ash residue (PPA) were determined using microwave digestion followed by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). To the best of our knowledge, this has not been previously done. In both PPS and PPA the heavy metal concentrations were clearly below the average concentrations than those encountered in sewage sludge in Europe. The leaching efficiency of the metal (Al/ Fe) used as a precipitation agent from post-precipitated sludge and its ash residue with phosphoric acid was also investigated with previously optimized leaching conditions. T…
Fast pyrolysis of hot-water-extracted and delignified silver birch (Betula pendula) sawdust by Py-GC/MS
2017
The thermochemical behavior of birch (Betula pendula) sawdust both untreated and after various chemical treatments (hot-water extraction, delignification, and hot-water extraction followed by delignification) was investigated by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). In each case, major GC-amenable condensable products were classified into several compound groups, and the formation of these monomer-related fragments from feedstock samples with varying mass portions of the structural constituents (cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin) were determined at 500 °C and 700 °C at hold times of 5 s and 20 s. The formation of pyrolysis products was shown to be characteristically…
Optimization of photovoltaic solar power plant locations in northern Chile
2017
The optimization of photovoltaic solar power plants location in Atacama Desert, Chile, is presented in this study. The study considers three objectives: (1) Find sites with the highest solar energy potential, (2) determine sites with the least impact on the environment, and (3) locate the areas which produce small social impact. To solve this task, multi-criteria decision analyses (MCDAs) such as analytical hierarchy process and ordered weighted averaging were applied in a GIS environment. In addition, survey results of social impacts were analyzed and included into the decision-making process, including landscape values. The most suitable sites for solar energy projects were found near roa…
Economic feasibility of stationary electrochemical storages for electric bill management applications: The Italian scenario
2016
Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are expected to become a fundamental element of the electricity infrastructure, thanks to their ability to decouple generation and demand over time. BESSs can also be used to store electricity during low-price hours, when the demand is low, and to meet the demand during peak hours, thus leading to savings for the consumer. This work focuses on the economic viability of BESS from the point of view of the electricity customer. The analysis refers to a lithium-ion (Li-ion), an advanced lead-acid, a zinc-based, a sodium-sulphur (NaS) and a flow battery. The total investment and replacement costs are estimated in order to calculate the cumulated cash flow, …
Towards Intelligent IoT Networks: Reinforcement Learning for Reliable Backscatter Communications
2019
Backscatter communication is becoming the focal point of research for low-powered Internet of things (IoT). However, the intelligence aspect of the backscattering devices is not well-defined. Since future IoT networks are going to be a formidable platform of intelligent sensing devices operating in a self-organizing manner, it is necessary to incorporate learning capabilities in backscatter devices. Motivated by this objective, this paper aims to employ reinforcement learning for improving the performance of backscatter networks. In particular, a multicluster backscatter communication model is developed for shortrange information sharing. This is followed by a power allocation algorithm usi…
Phase-noise Impact on the Performance of mmWave-radars
2019
The impact of phase noise in Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) millimeter-wave (mmWave) radars is investigated in this paper. A FMCW signal is transmitted from the radar, reflected off a moving object and processed at a receiver in the radar. The impact of random phase noise/jitter on the performance parameters of estimated distance, speed and angle of arrival of an object is studied. Our studies show that there exists a threshold at about fifteen percent of the period of the carrier frequency, over which errors substantially manifest in the estimations. Distance estimation is less affected than speed and angle, which rely directly on the phase information for the estimations. Angl…
A 3D Non-Stationary Cluster Channel Model for Human Activity Recognition
2019
Author's accepted manuscript. © 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This paper proposes a three-dimensional (3D) non- stationary fixed-to-fixed indoor channel simulator model for human activity recognition. The channel model enables the formulation of temporal variations of the received signal caused by a moving human. The moving human is modelled by …
Towards a simulation-based tuning of motion cueing algorithms
2016
Abstract This paper deals with the problem of finding the best values for the parameters of Motion Cueing Algorithms (MCA). MCA are responsible for controlling the movements of robotic motion platforms used to generate the gravito-inertial cues of vehicle simulators. The values of their multiple parameters, or coefficients, are hard to establish and they dramatically change the behaviour of MCA. The problem has been traditionally addressed in a subjective, partially non-systematic, iterative, time-consuming way, by seeking pilot/driver feedback on the generated motion cues. The aim of this paper is to introduce a different approach to solve the problem of MCA tuning, by making use of a simu…
Applications of Evolutionary Computation
2011
EvoCOMPLEX Contributions.- Coevolutionary Dynamics of Interacting Species.- Evolving Individual Behavior in a Multi-agent Traffic Simulator.- On Modeling and Evolutionary Optimization of Nonlinearly Coupled Pedestrian Interactions.- Revising the Trade-off between the Number of Agents and Agent Intelligence.- Sexual Recombination in Self-Organizing Interaction Networks.- Symbiogenesis as a Mechanism for Building Complex Adaptive Systems: A Review.- EvoGAMES Contributions.- Co-evolution of Optimal Agents for the Alternating Offers Bargaining Game.- Fuzzy Nash-Pareto Equilibrium: Concepts and Evolutionary Detection.- An Evolutionary Approach for Solving the Rubik's Cube Incorporating Exact Met…
Study about Mechanical Properties of Materials Obtained by Thermoforming
2019
Plastic materials have played a very important role in the development of our modern civilization. It can be said that plastic materials are a tribute to man’s creativity and inventiveness. Plastic materials are the key to the innovation of many products and technologies in various sectors such as electrical and electronic equipment, packaging, civil engineering, agriculture, power generation, medical and pharmaceutical industry, aerospace and not last automotive industry. An increasingly important aspect in the automotive industry, in terms of fuel consumption is the lower weight of the components, while maintaining a very high stiffness. The difficulties of the design process of thermofor…