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This study reports the synthesis of heterogeneous catalysts from flamboyant biomass and their evaluation on the transesterification reaction of safflower oil with methanol to produce biodiesel. The optimization of catalyst preparation conditions was performed. Results showed that the concentration of doping metallic specie was the main variable that affected the performance of flamboyant-based catalyst in the reactive system to obtain the biofuel where the highest formation of methyl esters was 93 %. Physicochemical characterization of the carbon-based catalysts was done with X-ray diffraction and FTIR.

The important task (NBI neutral beam injector for fusion) and the complexity of radiofrequency ion source need large tests (as ELISE and SPIDER) and intermediate scale tests (as NIO1 in this poster) for optimization. Conditioning (with gas) was found necessary in Cs-free operation. Cs-based operation has begun: stability improves at lower oven temperature; in both cases, lateral view cameras show beam quality. Energy recovery plugin almost ready for NIO1 (or at a test station at TRIPS).

The conversion of biomass into biofuels and biochemicals, represent a useful way to reduce the use of fossil fuels and maintain a sustainable energy production. In this context, Mexico is a country with a wide variety of exploitable agricultural resources that can be used to support its economic growth. In this study, several Mexican biomass wastes (avocado seeds, palm seeds, peppers, flamboyant fruit, jatropha seeds, coconut shells and nance seeds) were analyzed and fully characterized, in order to obtain a complete exploitation of their energy potential.

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This study is the first investigation carried out in EU in a switchgrass field large enough to enable the use of high frequency continuous monitoring. The objective of this study is to describe the net ecosystem exchange of CO2 and the water use efficiency of the agro-ecosystem during the establishment phase.

The extra-tropical atmosphere is characterized by robust cir- culations which have time scales longer than that associated with develop- ing baroclinic systems but shorter than a season. Such low frequency vari- ability is governed to a large extent by non-linear dynamics, and hence is chaotic. A useful aspect of this low-frequency circulation is that it can often be de- scribed by just a few quasi-stationary regime states, broadly defined as re- current or persistent large scale structures, that exert a significant impact on the probability of experiencing extreme surface weather conditions. We review a variety of techniques for identifying circulation regimes from reanalysis and numerical model output. While various techniques often yield similar regime circulation patterns, they o?er di?erent perspectives on the regimes. The regimes themselves are manifest in planetary scale patterns. They a?ect the structure of synoptic scale patterns. Extra-tropical flow regimes have been identified in simplified atmospheric models and comprehensive coupled climate models and in reanalysis data sets. It is an ongoing challenge to accurately model these regime states and high horizontal resolutions are often needed to accurately reproduce them. The regime paradigm helps to understand the response to external forcing

Climate change poses a serious challenge for the scientific communities to develop new concepts for research and modeling to provide better and more realistic answers and predictions of what the impact will be. INCREASE is an EU-funded research infrastructure based upon large scale field experiments with non-intrusive manipulations of temperature and precipitation since 1999. The experiments are placed in vulnerable scrubland ecosystems across Europe. Shrubland ecosystems were chosen because they represent an important natural resource, which are known to be sensitive to observed changes in environmental pressures. The experiments combine 2 different approaches to study climate effects on ecosystems. The first approach is known as "space for time" substitution, where the long term effect of a pressure on an ecosystem at any particular site is studied by moving to another site along temperature and precipitation gradients. This was done by carrying out the same studies in comparable ecosystems in UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary, Spain and Italy - which are naturally exposed to large differences in the climatic conditions. The other approach applied is "ecosystem manipulations", which means that the ecosystem is exposed to the changes in the field by realistic manipulations of temperature and water and in one experiment in combination with CO2. This combination of gradients and experimental manipulation increases the potential for evaluating the generality of the observed responses to the changes in the climatic drivers. Within INCREASE we improve the technology and methodology for studies of climate change effects on European shrublands and stimulate collaboration within the scientific community around climate manipulation experiments. In addition, data and results from the research infrastructures were collected into an integrated database (INCREASE DB) with the aim to improve capacities in the protection, management and storage of data and to provide a web-based access to data and results for a larger research community. The effects of the treatments on key ecosystem pools and processes were studied throughout the project together with the effects of the climate manipulations (artefacts). We observed effects of both warming, drought and increased atmospheric CO2 on a number of key processes. However, the combined effects of the treatments often counteracted the main effects. This emphasizes the need to investigate interactions between climate change factors as these may be unpredictable based only on single factor studies. We will present the experimental approach and a summary of climate change effects on ecosystem processes and functions.

This document describes our proposal for the joint implementation of a European Geothermal Information Platform (EGIP). EGIP’s target is to increase the share of potential geothermal energy users - primarily international operators, and surveyors - primarily European bodies. Two appendicies are included in the document. Appendix 1 reports the collect references and links organized by category resulting from the questionnaire set up in task 3.2 and 2.1. Appendix 2 describes the most important technical aspects for EGIP implementation following INSPIRE implementing rules. FP7

Photon-enhanced thermionic emission (PETE) devices applied to solar energy may be considered as high-temperature solar cells. A cathode structure for PETE was designed for high temperature energy conversion in solar concentrating systems. Surface-hydrogenated diamond is one of the few semiconductors showing negative electron affinity and a work function as low as 1.7 eV if nitrogen doped, that is connected to a significant thermionic emission at moderate temperatures (up to 800 °C, where hydrogen desorbs inducing a positive electron affinity). But diamond is transparent to solar radiation, consequently advanced techniques for preparing an efficient sunlight absorbing diamond are necessary.