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This work has been developed under the AGROinLOG Project, “Demonstration of innovative integrated biomass logistics centres for the Agro-industry sector in Europe”. An Integrated Biomass Logistics Center (IBLC), is based on the introduction of new production chains into existing agro-industries by using new biomass feedstock. The AGROinLOG Project has dedicated great attention to investigate the potential of cereal chaff as a valuable resource.Chaff is the fine fraction of the thrashing residues, not usually collected. Chaff is made up of glumes, seed husks, rachis and the tinner part of the cereal stems, whole and cracked kernels, as well as weed seeds.Currently there are several mechanical solutions available on the market for chaff recovery, and others are still at prototype stage, but theyare not so common and very often unknown to the farmers.So far, the literature reportsfew cases of chaff collection with the specific purpose of weed seeds removal, but it still lacks specificexperiments on these machinesintentionally used for biomass collection.For this reason, during the Project AGROinLOG a series of large field tests were performed using an independent scientific approach with different kind of chaff harvesting technologiesin France, Sweden and Italy from 2017 to 2019.The present study collects the results of these activities with the aim to fill that gap and provide deeper understanding in the possibility to enhance the current cereal harvesting method, in order to improve the quantity of biomass collected by including the chaff. Proceedings of the 29th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 26-29 April 2021, Online, pp. 62-68

Building materials have played a more and more important role in saving building energy since the central government of China set higher standards and requirements for new-constructed and retrofit buildings after 2005. Glazing units, especially energy-saving units including LOW-E coated glazing units and PVB laminated glass, are utilized nation-wide. This paper employs energy simulation to analyze the energy-saving effects of different glazing units in residential buildings in the city of Guangzhou, as an example of hot-humid climate in China. It appeals that the PVB laminated glass can refuse 44 % solar radiation to enter rooms and reduce 40 % of the shading coefficient comparing to clear glass. Meanwhile, in the aspects of operation and design of the HVAC system, 28 % of cooling load, 21 % of installed capacity and 8.6 % of full-load operation time can be saved.

The pitch control system has a profound impact on the development of wind energy, and yet a delay or non-minimum phase can weaken its performance. Thus, there is a strong incentive to enhance pitch control technology in order to counteract the negative effects of unidentified delays and non-minimum phase characteristics. To reduce the complexity of the parameter-tuning process and improve the performance of the system, in this paper, we propose a novel control method for wind turbine pitch angle with time delays. Specifically, the proposed control method is state-space PIDD2, which is based on internal model control (IMC) and the open-loop system step response. Then, considering the tracking, disturbance rejection and measurement noise, the proposed controller is verified through simulations. The simulation results demonstrate that the state-space PIDD2 (SS-PIDD2) can provide a trade-off between robustness, time domain performance and measurement noise attenuation and effectively improve pitch control performance in contrast to series PID and PI control methods.

An extensive experimental investigation was carried out to study the energy absorbing characteristics and progressive deformation behavior of unidirectional pultruded composite tubes subjected to an axial impact load. Pultruded square and circular profiles with glass-polyester and glass-vinylester combinations were used to study the specific energy absorption characteristics. Two types of triggering profiles were incorporated to investigate the effect of triggering on energy absorption. All the above combinations were investigated for three impact velocities. The effects of geometry profile, triggering and strain rate on energy absorption of composite tubes were studied in detail. A numerical simulation using finite element method was carried out to assess the energy absorption capability of composite tubes. To model the delamination between the composite plies, a new approach was adopted using cohesive elements. The progressive failure modes and crushing characteristics of the composite tubes are presented. From these studies, the composite tubes can be considered as energy absorbing members for impact applications.

With the development of SoC technology in recent years, the ultra-low power WiFi System on SoC Chip has emerged. As a result, WiFi-based Wireless Sensor Networks come into use, especially used in Automatic Meter Reading. While because the nodes of Wireless Sensor Networks have limited energy supply, smaller storage capability and slower calculation ability, the current WiFi technology cannot be directly applied to WiFi-based Wireless Sensor Networks. The protocols should be upgraded and the security algorithms should be improved to meet the new requests. Firstly, this article describes the network architecture of WiFi-based WSN for AMR system and discusses the reason for using this analogous Mesh architecture. Secondly, the new Hardware architecture of WiFi-based WSN node is designed to realize the AMR system and verify the research work. The node can collect the data of power meter by WiFi and can be powered by a Lithium Battery. Thirdly, on the basis of study work of WiFi original routing protocol HWMP, a new method on improving the energy saving ability of HWMP to adapt the new features of WiFi-based WSN is proposed. And the simulation work on the new routing protocol E-HWMP has been done with NS2 and the simulation results show that the life cycle of the network has been extended to some degree.

This paper deals with analysis of energy consumption of Ukrainian bromine plant. Process integration allows reducing the energy consumption on 1.5 MW by heat recovery. It is achieved by improvement of recuperative heat exchangers network. Additionally heat recovery may be increased by multistage evaporation of sodium bromide and ferrous chloride. Increase the heat recovery leads utility reduction. This is not only heating and cooling duty but also power pumping and pipe heat losses. The investment for retrofit project is about 757 100 € and payback period about 2 years.

The EFQM excellence model is a famous quality management tool. We have translated it to be useful in e-learning quality management. EFQM will be used as a framework for self-evaluation. We developed the e-learning stakeholder model. We identified the main criterion and positioned them in the stakeholder model.We present short the Kirkpatrick evaluation model of e-learning.We developed a Kirkpatrick-EFQM self-assessment framework. We propose the limited learner-centric self-assessment framework. A preliminary set of quality criteria have been identified for self-assessment by the learners.

With the introduction of distributed generators (DG), the traditional distribution system characterized by radical network becomes a multi-source one. Therefore the accuracy of the equivalent model of distributed generators directly affects the precision of fault location. To solve this problem, this paper proposed a fault location method based on complex correlation Thevenin equivalent and strong tracking filter (STF) in distribution network with DG. Strong tracking filter (STF) can be used for real-time extraction of fundamental wave phase and amplitude of single phase voltage and current, and fast track the power parameters mutation. The method of complex correlation Thevenin equivalent takes into account the randomness of measurement data, DG impedance and load to overcome measurement error caused by the uncertainty of the data, so that the construction of the DG impedance model is more accurate. Simulation results show that the method of fault location proposed in this paper has advantages of high accuracy and strong robustness.

Stopping and accelerating at traffic lights is one of the main contributing factors to vehicular emissions in urban environments. The work in this paper demonstrates a generic guideline for minimizing CO2 emissions at traffic lights. This was done using an adaptive control, which uses a cost function for optimization, rather than network-specific control parameters. A new version of the emission model PHEMlight was used, which added of a fuel cut-off mode during coasting and other improvements compared to the previous version. Using this model, it could be determined that the emission optimal ratio between delay time and stops for the cost function of an adaptive control should be 1:4.8. Using this ratio a reduction of 7.6 % of CO2 emissions was achieved compared to a vehicle actuated control.