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The energy considered as waste heat in industrial furnaces owing to inefficiencies represents a substantial opportunity for recovery by means of thermal energy storage (TES) implementation. Although conventional systems based on sensible heat are used extensively, these systems involve technical limitations. Latent heat storage based on phase change materials (PCMs) results in a promising alternative for storing and recovering waste heat. Within this scope, the proposed PCM-TES allows for demonstrating its implementation feasibility in energy-intensive industries at high temperature range. The stored energy is meant to preheat the air temperature entering the furnace by using a PCM whose melting point is 885 °C. In this sense, a heat transfer model simulation is established to determine an appropriate design based on mass and energy conservation equations. The thermal performance is analysed for the melting and solidification processes, the phase transition and its influence on heat transference. Moreover, the temperature profile is illustrated for the PCM and combustion air stream. The obtained results prove the achievability of very high temperature levels (from 700 to 865 °C) in the combustion air preheating in a ceramic furnace; so corroborating an energy and environmental efficiency enhancement, compared to the initial condition presenting an air outlet at 650 °C.

Abstract The central role of occupants for achieving energy savings in residential buildings is increasingly recognised. Simulation programmes able to take into account occupant behaviour are considered to be powerful tools for bridging the gap between the predicted and the actual energy consumption for new buildings. Nevertheless, the majority of residential buildings that will constitute the housing stock in 2050 have already been built today, therefore occupant behaviour and building simulation tools need to be fully exploited for supporting the renovation of existing housing stock. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of occupant behaviour modelling in supporting decision-makers dealing with the design of renovation strategies for residential buildings. An Italian multi-family public housing building is assumed as case study to estimate the influence of three dimensions linked with occupant behaviour – management of the thermostat, management of the heating system, variation of building characteristics – on energy heating consumption. The results show that, while the occupant behaviour influences the heating loads up to 1/3 in case of high level of building retrofit, the less the building is renovated, the higher is the behavioural impact in absolute terms of energy reduction. Therefore, in order to be effective, renovation strategies are required to design appropriate informative instruments at an early stage to support behaviour changes towards responsible energy consumption.

Climate change is expected to increase temperature and decrease summer precipitation in Central Europe. Little is known about how warming and drought will affect phenological patterns of oaks, which are considered to possess excellent adaptability to these climatic changes. Here, we investigated bud burst and intra-annual shoot growth of Quercus robur, Q. petraea and Q. pubescens grown on two different forest soils and exposed to air warming and drought. Phenological development was assessed over the course of three growing seasons. Warming advanced bud burst by 1–3 days °C−1 and led to an earlier start of intra-annual shoot growth. Despite this phenological shift, total time span of annual growth and shoot biomass were not affected. Drought changed the frequency and intensity of intra-annual shoot growth and advanced bud burst in the subsequent spring of a severe summer drought by 1–2 days. After re-wetting, shoot growth recovered within a few days, demonstrating the superior drought tolerance of this tree genus. Our findings show that phenological patterns of oaks are modified by warming and drought but also suggest that ontogenetic factors and/or limitations of water and nutrients counteract warming effects on the biomass and the entire span of annual shoot growth. PLoS ONE, 9 (2) ISSN:1932-6203

The main objective of this paper is to illustrate the current state of the art of the newborn smart gas grid concept. We provide a detailed discussion of the envisaged features of the smart gas grid, giving attention to both the related academic literature and to the ongoing world-wide projects. In doing so, we also discuss the potentialities of rethinking the smart grid paradigm from the perspective of a whole energy system, that both encompasses the electrical and the gas grid, and identify some critical key aspects that must be handled while developing the new smart energy paradigm.

We present the architecture and design of the IANOS scheduling framework. The goal of the new Grid scheduling system is to provide a general job submission framework allowing optimal positioning and scheduling of HPCN applications. The scheduling algorithms used to calculate best-suited resources are based on an objective cost function that exploits information on the parameterization of applications and resources. This standard-based, interoperable scheduling framework comprises four general web services and three modules. The middleware is complemented with one client and one admin console. The implementation is based on proposed Grid and Web services standards (WSRF, WS-Agreement, JSDL, and GLUE). It is agnostic to a specific Grid middleware. The beta version of IANOS has been tested and integrated with UNICORE. The validation of IANOS is in progress by running different types of HPCN applications on a large-scale Grid testbed.

With the aim to fully exploit the by-products obtained after the industrial extraction of starch from sweet potatoes, a cascading approach was developed to extract high-value molecules, such as proteins and pectins, and to valorize the solid fraction, rich in starch and fibrous components. This fraction was used to prepare new biocomposites designed for food packaging applications. The sweet potato residue was added to poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) in various amounts up to 40 wt % by melt mixing, without any previous treatment. The composites are semicrystalline materials, characterized by thermal stability up to 260 °C. For the composites containing up to 10 wt % of residue, the tensile strength remains over 30 MPa and the strain stays over 3.2%. A homogeneous dispersion of the sweet potato waste into the bio-polymeric matrix was achieved but, despite the presence of hydrogen bond interactions between the components, a poor interfacial adhesion was detected. Considering the significant percentage of sweet potato waste used, the biocomposites obtained show a low economic and environmental impact, resulting in an interesting bio-alternative to the materials commonly used in the packaging industry. Thus, according to the principles of a circular economy, the preparation of the biocomposites closes the loop of the complete valorization of sweet potato products and by-products.