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Nitrocellulose is a cellulose derivative that has many potential applications. Nitrocellulose can bemade through nitration reactions by reacting cellulose and nitric acid at low temperatures. Cellulose can be obtained from lignocellulose biomass such as palm oil empty fruit bunches (POEFBs). In this study, techno-economic evaluation of nitrocellulose production from POEFBs was investigated with various types of alkaline and acid pretreatments. Pretreatment of POEFBs with alkaline and acid was used to purify cellulose fraction as raw material for nitrocellulose. The combination process of POEFBs pretreatment with alkaline and acid can be classified into 4 process routes such as ammonium hydroxide and sulfuric acid pretreatment (Route-1), ammonium hydroxide and acetic acid pretreatment (Route-2), sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid pretreatment (Route-3), and sodium hydroxide and acetic acid pretreatment (Route-4). The results showed that ammonium hydroxide and sulfuric acid pretreatment (Route-1) was the most profitable route to produce nitrocellulose. Economic parameter values such as return of investment (ROI), payback period (PBP), net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) from ammonium hydroxide and sulfuric acid pretreatment (Route-1) were 11.49%, 5.85 years, US$ 442,427 and 13.35%.

A metafrontier slack-based efficiency measure is presented to measure environmental efficiency for various regions in China. The objective of the new approach is to investigate the change of environmental efficiency while incorporating group heterogeneities and all variable slack and environmental pollutants into environmental efficiency analysis. Global production technology is used to improve the discriminating power of environmental efficiency measurement. An empirical analysis of regional environmental efficiency is carried out incorporating sulfur dioxide emissions and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of China’s regions from 2000–2011. Results indicate that excessive emissions pollution is the major cause of environmental inefficiency. Most of the regions return environmental efficiency values. Significant regional technology gaps in environmental efficiency are found between the east, central, and west areas. Finally, some policy implications are presented from the empirical results.

AbstractThis paper is about to quantify the effect of China's urbanization on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by separating the part driven by the economic growth from the whole effect. In order to be accurate to estimate unknown parameters, this paper follows the method of Blanchard & Quah (1989), in which identifying conditions are set by assuming some shocks have no long-term effect on corresponding explained variables. We conclude that 1) Urbanization shock has an inverted hump-shaped effect on GHG emissions, in other words, nowadays the process of China's urbanization has been accompanied with saving energy and reducing emissions; 2) The growth rate of GHG emissions, owning to the GDP shock, can be raised by almost 1.53% annually and the urbanization level approximately contributes to 18% of the change of CO2 emissions based on empirical results; 3) China's emission reductions, in the short run, are actualy in expense of decreasing economic growth and delaying the p rocess of its urbanization.

The purpose of this research is to substantiate the need to develop a professional standard “Management specialist in industries and at enterprises of the agro-industrial complex” to improve the provision of the Russian agro-industrial complex with management personnel. Methods. To achieve this purpose, it is rational to apply analytical and statistical research methods: to analyze the provision of the Russian agro-industrial complex with specialists with economic and managerial competencies, to carry out a comparative analysis of the job responsibilities of managers and chief specialists of agricultural organizations performing the functions of personnel management and production processes, and the content and volume of economic-management training for the agro-industrial complex. Results. The heads of agricultural organizations, their deputies and chief specialists do not always meet the requirements for educational level and possession of economic and managerial competencies. On average, in the system of the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia, only 66 % of heads of agricultural enterprises have higher education, among the main specialists – 71 %. In the agricultural sector, there is an obvious shortage of managerial personnel, a high proportion of them are without professional education, a large proportion is occupied by employees of retirement age. Training of personnel for the agro-industrial complex is carried out in 54 universities subordinate to the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia. The number of graduates in the main agricultural areas and specialties trained internally at the expense of the federal budget is more than 19 000 people, but there are only about 6 000 graduates of the specialist and magistracy who have the right to occupy leadership positions. In addition, in the main professional educational programs of personnel for the agro-industrial complex, little study time is allocated for the study of economic and management disciplines, which does not allow the formation of the necessary competencies in graduates to perform the functions of organizing agricultural production. To provide agricultural organizations with personnel with modern economic and management competencies, it is proposed to recommend that agricultural universities, when teaching students in the main specialties of the agricultural profile, determine the list of relevant disciplines, their volume and content in the main professional educational programs in accordance with the labor functions, knowledge and skills specified in the draft professional standard “Specialist in management in industries and enterprises of the agro-industrial complex”.

The "solid-liquid" leakage and low thermal conductivity of organic phase change materials limit their wide range of applications. In this paper, a novel carbon fiber/boron nitride (CF/BN)-based nested structure was constructed, and then, a series of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-based phase change composites (PCCs) with high thermal conductivity and mechanical strength were prepared via the simple vacuum adsorption technology by employing the CF/BN nested structure as the heat conduction path and supporting material and the in situ obtained cross-linking epoxy resin as another supporting material. The thermal conductivity of the obtained PCC is as high as 0.81 W/m K, which is 7.4 times higher than that sample without the CF/BN nested structure. The support of the double skeletons confers the obtained PCCs with excellent mechanical strength. Surprisingly, there is not any deformation for PCCs under the pressure of 128.5 times its own weight during the phase change process. In addition, the phase change enthalpy of the obtained PCC is as high as 107.9 J/g. All the results indicate that the obtained PEG-based PCCs possess huge application potential in the field of industrial waste heat recovery.

The growing interest in sustainable development is reflected in both the market’s sensitivity to environmental and social issues and companies’ interest in the opportunities that sustainable development objectives provide. SMEs, which account for most of the world’s pollution, have significant resource constraints for a sustainable development. Sharing their scarce resources can help them to overcome these constraints and to gain agility and organisational resilience against uncertainties, but the distrust inherent in belonging to different companies prevents them from sharing the necessary information for coordination purposes. This paper presents a coordination mechanism proposal with information asymmetry to allow independent companies’ resources to be sustainably shared as a technological driver. The proposed distributed coordination mechanism is compared to both a decentralised–uncoordinated and a centralised situation. The interest of the proposal is evaluated by a computer simulation experiment employing mathematical programming models with independent objectives in the Generic Materials and Operations Planning formulation with a rolling horizon procedure in different demand, uncertainty and product scenarios. Competitive improvement is identified for all members for their excess capacity use and their operations planning.

One of the factors involved in goat milk production is the role of women as farmers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of women on dairy goat farms, considering: (1) the profile of women occupationally involved, (2) the organization of the women’s work, (3) the degree of involvement by women in the decision-making on these farms, and (4) the influence of women’s work on productive results. This study was conducted on 52 dairy goat farms in southern Spain. A descriptive analysis and means comparisons were performed to describe the farms where any women were involved or not. In 61.5% of the farms, at least one woman was involved, with an age of 42.2 ± 8.8 years. Very few women were farm owners, although women took binding decisions in 81.25% of these farms. Their work is dedicated to milking and caring for the kids. Women had a positive influence on the productive variables analysed, and for mastitis in herds, the incidence was lower in herds where women participated (p < 0.01). In conclusion, it is recommended to include women’s work as a factor when characterizing dairy goats farms’ systems to evaluate their positive effect on a farm’s performance.

The demand for sustainable functional materials with an eco-friendly preparation process is on the rise. Lignocellulosics has been attributed as the most sustainable bioresource on earth which can meet the stringent requirements of functionalization. However, cellulose nanomaterials obtained from lignocellulosics which has reached advanced stages as a sustainable functional material is challenged by its preparation procedures. These procedures can not best be described as sustainable and eco-friendly owning to lots of energy and chemicals spent in the pre-treatment and purification processes. These processes are intended to aid fractionation into the major components in order to remove lignin and hemicellulose for the production of cellulose nanomaterials. This work is thus centred on reviewing the progress achieved in introducing a new cellulose nanomaterial containing lignin. The preparation processes, properties and applications of this new lignin-containing cellulose nanomaterial will be discussed in order to chart a sustainable preparation route for cellulose nanomaterials.