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UV/visible light is a promising radiation source for biomass pretreatment, but very little knowledge is available on the effect of UV on the thermal behavior of lignocellulose in comparison with more classical, physical pretreatment methods. In this paper, we investigate the effects of ball-milling and UV irradiation on two species of softwood and two species of hardwood, using X-ray diffractometry (XRD), evolved gas analysis-mass spectrometry (EGA-MS), and pyrolysis-gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). The XRD data showed that the crystalline fraction of cellulose was destroyed by milling, but not by irradiation. The EGA-MS data and isoconversional kinetic analysis showed that both milling and irradiation can reduce the thermal stability of wood up to a limit value. The Py-GC/MS data showed that irradiation caused the most significant changes in the pyrolytic behavior of the wood species, increasing the ratio of holocellulose to lignin pyrolysis products and the reactivity of cellulose toward the derivatizing agent. Softwoods were more affected by irradiation than hardwoods. This paper shows that UV irradiation can decrease the recalcitrance of biomass toward pyrolysis, but its efficiency is highly dependent on the type of lignocellulosic substrate.

The wind power forecasting error restricts the benefit of the wind farm in the electricity market. Considering the cooperation of wind power bidding and energy storage system (ESS) operation with uncertainty, this paper proposes a coordinated bidding/operation model for the wind farm to improve its benefits in the electricity market. The maximum entropy based deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm, Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) is used to construct the model. The maximum entropy framework enables the designed agent to explore various optimal possibilities, which means the learned coordinated bidding/operation strategy is more stable considering the forecasting error. Particularly, penalty terms are introduced into the benefit function to relax the constraints and improve the convergency. The case study illustrates that the learned policy can effectively improve the wind farm benefit while ensuring robustness.

In this paper, we critically analyze the optimization strategy of distribution network based on adapting adjustment of transformer's taps and review a large amount of relevant literature in order to explore the state-of-the-art research progresses in both academia and industry. By the analysis and literature review, a complete research proposal pertaining to the optimization strategy of distribution network based on adapting adjustment of transformer's taps can be formed, which points out the promising future of the relevant techniques as well as the existing problems worth investigating.

Abstract The consumption of takeaway food is increasing worldwide. Single-use containers used for takeaway food represent a significant source of waste and environmental impacts due to their low recyclability. Consequently, it is important to identify the best available alternatives and improvement opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts of fast-food containers. For these purposes, this study estimates and compares for the first time the life cycle impacts of three most widely-used types of takeaway container: aluminium, polypropylene and extruded polystyrene. These are also compared to reusable polypropylene containers. The findings suggest that single-use polypropylene containers are the worst option for seven out of 12 impacts considered, including global warming potential. They are followed by the aluminium alternative with five highest impacts, including depletion of ozone layer and human toxicity. Overall, extruded polystyrene containers have the lowest impacts due to the lower material and electricity requirements in their manufacture. They are also the best option when compared to reused takeaway polypropylene containers, unless the latter are reused 3–39 times. The number of uses needed for the reusable “Tupperware” polypropylene food savers is even higher, ranging from 16 to 208 times, with terrestrial ecotoxicity being always higher than for extruded polystyrene, regardless of the number of uses. However, extruded polystyrene containers are currently not recycled and cannot be considered a sustainable option. If they were recycled in accordance with the European Union 2025 policy on waste packaging, most of their impacts would be reduced by >18%, while also reducing littering and negative effects on marine organisms. Most of the impacts of the other two types of container would also be reduced (>20%) through increased recycling. Implementing the European Union 2025 policy on recycling of waste packaging would reduce all the impacts by 2%–60%, including a 33% reduction in global warming potential. Based on 2025 million takeaway containers used annually in the European Union, the latter would save 61,700 t CO2 eq./yr, equivalent to the emissions of 55,000 light-duty vehicles. The outcomes of this study will be of interest to packaging manufacturers, food outlets, policy makers and consumers.

The successful electricity grid integration of solar energy into day-ahead markets requires at least hourly resolved 48 h forecasts. Technologies as photovoltaics and non-concentrating solar thermal technologies make use of global horizontal irradiance (GHI) forecasts, while all concentrating technologies both from the photovoltaic and the thermal sector require direct normal irradiances (DNI). The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has recently changed towards providing direct as well as global irradiances. Additionally, the MACC (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition & Climate) near-real time services provide daily analysis and forecasts of aerosol properties in preparation of the upcoming European Copernicus programme. The operational ECMWF/IFS (Integrated Forecast System) forecast system will in the medium term profit from the Copernicus service aerosol forecasts. Therefore, within the MACC‑II project specific experiment runs were performed allowing for the assessment of the performance gain of these potential future capabilities. Also the potential impact of providing forecasts with hourly output resolution compared to three-hourly resolved forecasts is investigated. The inclusion of the new aerosol climatology in October 2003 improved both the GHI and DNI forecasts remarkably, while the change towards a new radiation scheme in 2007 only had minor and partly even unfavourable impacts on the performance indicators. For GHI, larger RMSE (root mean square error) values are found for broken/overcast conditions than for scattered cloud fields. For DNI, the findings are opposite with larger RMSE values for scattered clouds compared to overcast/broken cloud situations. The introduction of direct irradiances as an output parameter in the operational IFS version has not resulted in a general performance improvement with respect to biases and RMSE compared to the widely used Skartveit et al. (1998) global to direct irradiance conversion scheme. Cloudy situations and especially thin ice cloud cases are forecasted much better with respect to biases and RMSE, but large biases are introduced in clear sky cases. When applying the MACC aerosol scheme to include aerosol direct effects, an improvement especially in DNI biases is found for cloud free cases as expected. However, a performance decrease is found for water cloud cases. It is assumed that this is caused by the lack of an explicit modelling of cloud-aerosol interactions, while other meteorological forcings for cloud processes like the temperature field are modified by the aerosols.

A new sizing approach is applied in this paper to stand-alone PV systems design, which is based on systems configurations without shedding load. The investigation is based on a detailed study of the minimum storage requirement and an analysis of the sizing curves. The analysis reveals the importance of using daily series of measured solar radiation data instead of monthly average values. For high-reliability systems, it is important that these data series are as long as possible, while the configuration of large generator and small battery seems to deal better with the unpredictability of solar radiation.

With the continuous development of intelligent transportation technologies, new ways of energy usage in transportation continue to emerge, which puts forward new requirements for the planning and design of energy systems. However, comprehensive analyses on the characteristics of transportation energy systems and the development trend of energy usage patterns brought by intelligent technologies have rarely been carried out so far. This paper explores this subject by reviewing the recent development and utilization of intelligent technologies in the transportation system and its impacts on energy usage. This review is carried out from three aspects, covering the representative intelligent transportation and energy technologies on vehicles, infrastructures and systems. The scope is limited within road, railway and water transport domains, with a focus on the recent developments in China as a representative. In terms of vehicles, the development trend of the power systems for new energy vehicles, the characteristics of energy usages in electric vehicles and the effects on energy saving and emission reduction are summarized. In terms of infrastructures, new technologies on smart road, smart port, intelligent railway energy system and the usage of clear energy on electric grid for transportation are reviewed, with the consideration of their potential influences on energy usages and the energy consumption characteristics of typical facilities also being analyzed. As for the transportation system, this review has focused on intelligent and connected transportation systems, train control and autonomous systems, and intelligent shipping system, with the emphasis on the energy saving and emission reduction effects of applying these intelligent technologies. The overall development trend of the transportation energy system is then analyzed based on the above materials, in particular, the future energy usage patterns in transportation system are given and the major challenges and obstacles approaching the future scenarios are also identified.