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Recently, studies have appeared pointing out that aerosols can dominate the total amine emission from amine based PCCC pilot plant scale installations. For the design of countermeasure types (upstream or downstream of the PCCC installation), it is crucial to have an idea of the aerosol size distribution and numbers entering or leaving the absorber. This study is the first to present this kind of data and should serve future installations when designing aerosol emission countermeasures. H2SO4 aerosols entering the absorber are observed to be extremely small (i.e. <0.2μm) with number concentrations exceeding 1E8cm-3. The aerosols grow in size as they travel through the absorber through the taking up of water and amine to sizes close to but staying below 1μm. However, despite the fact that most of the aerosols (expressed in number concentrations) are well below 1μm, most of the water (and thus amine) is found in the aerosol sizes between 0.5 and 2μm. Therefore, if one aims at designing efficient countermeasures, eliminating this size fraction is crucial. This amine emission stream is therefore very difficult to remove using water washes as aerosols are known to travel through water wash sections. Moreover, also classical demisters show very little efficiency for these small aerosol sizes and are therefore believed not to be suitable for the removal of aerosols. This information will therefore serve future installations when designing aerosol emission countermeasures. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract Bioenergy systems are expected to expand over the coming decades due to their potential to address energy security and environmental pollution challenges. Nevertheless, any renewable energy project can only survive if approved environmentally superior to its conventional counterparts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized and validated methodology to evaluate and quantify the environmental impacts of bioenergy systems. However, due to its methodological scope, the LCA method measures only the environmental consequences of the target products of energy systems. The LCA approach can neither allocate the environmental impacts at the component level nor measure the environmental impacts of intermediate products. These challenges can be substantially resolved by systematically integrating the LCA approach with the thermodynamically-rooted exergy, offering a powerful environmental sustainability assessment tool known as “exergoenvironmental analysis“. Due to the unique methodological and conceptual characteristics of exergoenvironmental analysis in revealing the possibilities and trends for improvement, it has recently received increasing attention to mitigate the environmental impacts of bioenergy systems. Therefore, this review is aimed to thoroughly summarize and critically discuss the evaluation of sustainability aspects of bioenergy systems based on exergoenvironmental analysis. The pros and cons of using exergoenvironmental analysis in bioenergy research are also outlined to identify possible future directions for the field. Overall, exergoenvironmental analysis can offer more detailed information on the environmental consequences of each flow and component of bioenergy production plants, thereby diagnosing the breakthrough points for additional environmental improvements.

Tourism is an industry of primary importance for the world economy. Tourists are sensitive to climate and to climate change, which will affect the relative attractiveness of destinations and hence the motive for tourists to leave their country. Yet the attention devoted by the tourism literature to climate change and by the climate change literature to tourism has been limited. This paper is divided in two parts. The first part reviews the relevant literature. The second part analyses empirically the relationship between climate characteristics, weather extremes and domestic and international tourism demand across Europe, with a focus on Italy. JEL Classification: L83 , Q25, C 23, C42

Abstract A general method for realistic performance evaluation of solar control properties of facades for facades with sun-shading or other solar control systems has been developed. It is particularly designed to be used for venetian blinds. It can be used used ‘stand-alone’ or within building simulation programs. The new method has proven to be of great practical value to planning teams of huge office buildings in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The method is presented in detail in this paper. It can be used either ’stand-alone’ (without building simulation) for comparisons of different facade variants or within building simulation programs. Some parts of the proposed methodology could be used in standards (e.g. EN13363) or to improve the accuracy of building simulation programs which are currently on the market. Practical experience with the new methodology led to insights which are the basis for the design of two new products. These new products are compared with state of the art products in [T.E. Kuhn, Solar control: comparsion of two new systems with the state of the art on the basis of a new general evaluation method for facades with venetian blinds or other solar control systems, Energy and Buildings, in press] on the basis of the new methodology.

AbstractIndustrial bus systems are the backbone of production control and management. Regardless of the utilised technology, industrial communication systems realise feedback loops from sensors and control values to actuators. Industrial communication is also the basis for an operative energy management system. Energy demands are metered and send to management and decision support tools to be analysed and evaluated. Present industrial bus technologies from production and building automation domains offer different functionalities to support an operative energy management. This paper aims to discuss the requirements of an advanced energy management system regarding the technical issues of appropriate data communication means. By describing the properties of various bus systems the advantages and disadvantages of each one is shown and the applicability for the described utilisation is considered. Finally, the possibilities to apply machine control mechanisms through the bus systems are analysed.

The comprehensive approach for a building envelope design involves building performance simulations, which are time-consuming and require knowledge of complicated processes. In addition, climate variation makes the selection of these parameters more complex. The paper aims to establish guidelines for determining a single-family household’s unique optimal passive design in various climate zones worldwide. For this purpose, a bi-objective optimization is performed for twenty-four locations in twenty climates by coupling TRNSYS and a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-III) using the Python program. The optimization process generates Pareto fronts of thermal load and investment cost to identify the optimum design options for the insulation level of the envelope, window aperture for passive cooling, window-to-wall ratio (WWR), shading fraction, radiation-based shading control, and building orientation. The goal is to find a feasible trade-off between thermal energy demand and the cost of thermal insulation. This is achieved using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) through criteria importance using intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The results demonstrate that an optimal envelope design remarkably improves the thermal load compared to the base case of previous envelope design practices. However, the weather conditions strongly influence the design parameters. The research findings set a benchmark for energy-efficient household envelopes in the investigated climates. The optimal solution sets also provide a criterion for selecting the ranges of envelope design parameters according to the space heating and cooling demands of the climate zone.

The participation of citizens in scientific research has a long tradition, and in some disciplines, especially medical research, it is even common practice. In Technology Assessment (TA), Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), and Sustainable Development (SD), the participation of citizens can be of considerable value. In this paper, we explore this value for three concepts, based on the researcher’s insights from three participatory research projects. The first project is the citizen science project TeQfor1, which was conducted with, for, and on the type 1 diabetes community, who do not feel adequately supported by the conventional health care system. In the second project, citizens with vision impairments participated in the technological development of an audio-tactile navigation tool in the TERRAIN project. The third project (Nachtlichter) dealt with light pollution. Based on the three projects presented, we show that citizen participation makes specific contributions to TA, RRI, and SD. We also investigate the specificity of citizen engagement and motivation by differentiating between existing and emerging involvement. In conclusion, we discuss the benefits that may be added by participatory approaches for the three concepts of TA, RRI, and SD.