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This study focuses on formulating the most sustainable concrete by incorporating recycled concrete aggregates and other products retrieved from construction and demolition (C&D) activities. Both recycled coarse aggregates (RCA) and recycled fine aggregates (RFA) are firstly used to fully replace the natural coarse and fine aggregates in the concrete mix design. Later, the cement rich ultrafine particles, recycled glass powder and mineral fibres recovered from construction and demolition wastes (CDW) are further incorporated at a smaller rate either as cement substituent or as supplementary additives. Remarkable properties are noticed when the RCA (4–12 mm) and RFA (0.25–4 mm) are fully used to replace the natural aggregates in a new concrete mix. The addition of recycled cement rich ultrafines (RCU), Recycled glass ultrafines (RGU) and recycled mineral fibres (RMF) into recycled concrete improves the modulus of elasticity. The final concrete, which comprises more than 75% (wt.) of recycled components/materials, is believed to be the most sustainable and green concrete mix. Mechanical properties and durability of this concrete have been studied and found to be within acceptable limits, indicating the potential of recycled aggregates and other CDW components in shaping sustainable and circular construction practices. The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from EU Horizon 2020 Project VEEP ‘‘Cost-Effective Recycling of C&DW in High Added Value Energy Efficient Prefabricated Concrete Compo-nents for Massive Retrofitting of our Built Environment” (No.723582).

Environmental dataBioclimatic data and environmental data for all 56 European peatland site (geo referenced by longitude [long], latitude [lat] and altitude [ALT]. MAT = Mean annual temperature (°C), TS = Seasonality in temperature, MAP = Mean annual precipitation (mm), PS = Seasonality in precipitation, tot_sox = Total sulphur deposition SOx (mg m-2 yr-1), tot_noy = Total oxidized nitrogen deposition (mg m-2 yr-1), tot_nhx = Total reduced nitrogen deposition (mg m-2), PT warm = Lang’s moisture index. The four bioclimatic variables (MAT, TS, MAP, PS) were extracted from the WorldClim database (Hijmans, R. J., Cameron, S. E., Parra, J. L., Jones, P. G. & Jarvis, A. Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. Int. J. Climatol. 25, 1965–1978 (2005)), and averaged over the 2000-2009 period. Atmospheric deposition data were produced using the EMEP (European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme)-based IDEM (Integrated Deposition Model) model (Pieterse, G., Bleeker, A., Vermeulen, A. T., Wu, Y. & Erisman, J. W. High resolution modelling of atmosphere‐canopy exchange of acidifying and eutrophying components and carbon dioxide for European forests. Tellus B 59, 412–424 (2007)) and consisted of grid cell averages of total reduced (NHx) and oxidised (NOy) nitrogen and sulphur (SOx) deposition. The moisture index (PTwarm) was calculated as the ratio between mean precipitation and mean temperature in the warmest quarter (Thornwaite, C. W. & Holzman, B. Measurement of evaporation from land and water surfaces. USDA Technical Bulletin 817, 1–143 (1942))Data 1_environmental data.txtplant community dataAbundance data (% cover) for all vascular plant and bryophyte species from five randomly chosen hummocks and lawns (0.25 m2 quadrats; ten in total) across 56 European Sphagnum-dominated peatlands were collected in two consecutive summers (2010 and 2011). Vascular plants and Sphagnum mosses were identified to the species level. Non-Sphagnum bryophytes were identified to the family level. Lichens were recorded as one group.Data 2_plant community data.txttraits vascular plantsPlant functional traits used to calculate functional indices for the vascular plant communities. Traits were extracted from LEDA (Kleyer, M. et al. The LEDA Traitbase: a database of life‐history traits of the Northwest European flora. J. Ecol. 96, 1266–1274 (2008)). Only trait data available for all species our data-set were extracted.ncomms_Data 3_traits vascular plants.txttraits SphagnumTrait values (means) for Sphagnum spp. C = tissue carbon content (mg g-1), N = tissue nitrogen content (mg g-1), P = tissue phosphorus content (mg g-1), Productivity ( St.w = stem width (mm), l.h.c. = length hyaline cells (µm), w.h.c. = width hyaline cells (µm), l.s.l. = length stem leaves (mm), w.s.l. = width stem leaves. These measured traits were complemented with traits extracted from the literature. These latter traits included plant length (Hill, M. O., Preston, C. D., Bosanquet, S. & Roy, D. B. BRYOATT: attributes of British and Irish mosses, liverworts and hornworts. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Huntingdon, UK (2007)), spore diameter and capsule diameter (Sundberg, S., Hansson, J. & Rydin, H. Colonization of Sphagnum on land uplift islands in the Baltic Sea: time, area, distance and life history. Journal of Biogeography 33, 1479–1491 (2006)), productivity (Gunnarsson, U. Global patterns of Sphagnum productivity. J. Bryol. 27, 269–279 (2005))ncomms_Data 4_traits Sphagnum.txt In peatland ecosystems, plant communities mediate a globally significant carbon store. The effects of global environmental change on plant assemblages are expected to be a factor in determining how ecosystem functions such as carbon uptake will respond. Using vegetation data from 56 Sphagnum-dominated peat bogs across Europe, we show that in these ecosystems plant species aggregate into two major clusters that are each defined by shared response to environmental conditions. Across environmental gradients, we find significant taxonomic turnover in both clusters. However, functional identity and functional redundancy of the community as a whole remain unchanged. This strongly suggests that in peat bogs, species turnover across environmental gradients is restricted to functionally similar species. Our results demonstrate that plant taxonomic and functional turnover are decoupled, which may allow these peat bogs to maintain ecosystem functioning when subject to future environmental change.

Abstract. The concept of wake steering on wind farms for power maximization has gained significant popularity over the last decade. Recent field trials described in the literature not only demonstrate the real potential of wake steering on commercial wind farms but also show that wake steering does not yet consistently lead to an increase in energy production for all inflow conditions. Moreover, a recent survey among experts shows that validation of the concept currently remains the largest barrier to adoption. In response, this article presents the results of a field experiment investigating wake steering in three-turbine arrays at an onshore wind farm in Italy. This experiment was performed as part of the European CL-Windcon project. While important, this experiment excludes an analysis of the structural loads and focuses solely on the effects of wake steering on power production. The measurements show increases in power production of up to 35 % for two-turbine interactions and up to 16 % for three-turbine interactions. However, losses in power production are seen for various regions of wind directions too. In addition to the gains achieved through wake steering at downstream turbines, more interesting to note is that a significant share in gains is from the upstream turbines, showing an increased power production of the yawed turbine itself compared to baseline operation for some wind directions. Furthermore, the surrogate model, while capturing the general trends of wake interaction, lacks the details necessary to accurately represent the measurements. This article supports the notion that further research is necessary, notably on the topics of wind farm modeling and experiment design, before wake steering will lead to consistent energy gains on commercial wind farms.

Performing accurate numerical simulations of molten salt reactors is challenging, especially in case of fast-spectrum designs, due to the unique physics phenomena characterizing these systems. The limitations of codes traditionally used in the nuclear community often require the development of novel high-fidelity multi-physics tools to advance the design of these innovative reactors. In this work, we present the most recent code developed at Delft University of Technology for multi-physics simulations of liquid-fueled fast reactors. The coupling is realized between an incompressible RANS model and an SN neutron transport solver. The models are implemented in two in-house codes, based on the discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element discretization, which guarantees high-quality of the solution. We report and discuss the results of preliminary simulations of the Molten Salt Fast Reactor at steady-state and during a Total Loss of Power transient. Results prove our code has capabilities for steady-state and transient analysis of non-moderated liquid-fueled reactors.

This paper introduces an innovative energy management system architecture for Smart Grids, designed in the European 7th framework program project e-balance. The architecture is hierarchical and fractal-like, which results in better scalability and reuse of algorithms and programming code for energy management. It supports both micro-grids and distributed energy resources. The system is structured into two main parts – the communication platform and the energy management platform. The former provides a common data exchange layer, while the latter provides the local energy management logic, currently supporting energy balancing and grid resilience services. The system is being deployed in two pilots: in Portugal and in the Netherlands, where use cases on energy balancing, grid monitoring and grid reliability will be demonstrated.

Lattice Boltzmann simulations were carried out to investigate the noise mitigation mechanisms of a 3-D printed porous trailing-edge insert, elucidating the link between noise reduction and material permeability. The porous insert is based on a unit cell resembling a lattice of diamond atoms. It replaces the last 20 % chord of a NACA 0018 at zero angle-of-attack. A partially blocked insert is considered by adding a solid partition between 84 % and 96 % of the aerofoil chord. The regular porous insert achieves a substantial noise reduction at low frequencies, although a slight noise increase is found at high frequencies. The partially blocked porous insert exhibits a lower noise reduction level, but the noise emission at mid-to-high frequency is slightly affected. The segment of the porous insert near the tip plays a dominant role in promoting noise mitigation, whereas the solid-porous junction contributes, in addition to the rough surface, towards the high-frequency excess noise. The current study demonstrates the existence of an entrance length associated with the porous material geometry, which is linked to the pressure release process that is responsible for promoting noise mitigation. This process is characterised by the aerodynamic interaction between pressure fluctuations across the porous medium, which is found at locations where the porous insert thickness is less than twice the entrance length. Present results also suggest that the noise attenuation level is related to both the chordwise extent of the porous insert and the streamwise turbulent length scale. The porous inserts also cause a slight drag increase compared to their solid counterpart.

In future distribution grids, prosumers (i.e., energy consumers with storage and/or production capabilities) will trade energy with each other and with the main grid. To ensure an efficient and safe operation of energy trading, in this paper, we formulate a peer-to-peer energy market of prosumers as a generalized aggregative game, in which a network operator is only responsible for the operational constraints of the system. We design a distributed market-clearing mechanism with convergence guarantee to an economically-efficient and operationally-safe configuration (i.e., a variational generalized Nash equilibrium). Numerical studies on the IEEE 37-bus testcase show the scalability of the proposed approach and suggest that active participation in the market is beneficial for both prosumers and the network operator. 11 pages, 8 figures. Published in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 2022