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Coastal areas are more densely populated than inland areas and present faster rates of population increase and urbanization. This trend is expected to continue in the coming decades, and thus, the demand of natural resources in coastal areas, such as water and energy resources, increasing the pressure and impact on the environment, superposed to the effects of climate change. Currently, in Europe, the demand for heating in buildings and businesses outnumbers the demand for cooling. However, the latter is gradually catching up due to rising demand for air cooling or refrigeration for industry such as food, technological and medical supplies. The energy required to cool buildings in Europe is expected to increase by more than 70% by 2030, while energy used to heat buildings may decrease by 30% (UE, 2018). Low Temperature Geothermal Energy (LTGE) is most likely the green energy production method for heating and cooling with the highest potential to provide affordable and clean energy and meet the CO2-emissions reduction goals of the Green Deal. Despite advances on LTGE technologies, the efficiency of these systems remains inherently sensitive to changes in hydrodynamics and the media (e.g., changes in the groundwater thermal regime). Groundwater, on the other hand, is the world's largest freshwater resource, and it is especially important in coastal areas because interactions between aquifer systems and sea water may lead to salinization and resource loss. Because geothermal systems and coastal aquifers interact directly, specially at groundwater discharge areas, it is clear that a better understanding of the potential interactions of geothermal systems with current and prospective coastal aquifer processes is essential for their design and foreseeing potential environmental effects. To address these issues, we model variable-density groundwater coupled with heat transport to simulate the long-term evolution of groundwater salinity and aquifer thermal energy discharge. We find that the heating/cooling-induced water density variations affect the seawater intrusion. Understanding the behavior of the groundwater system is required to ensure sustainable water, energy, and coastal ecosystem management.

AbstractAn eco‐friendly and sustainable salt‐templating approach was proposed for the production of anode materials with a 3D sponge‐like structure for sodium‐ion capacitors using gluconic acid as carbon precursor and sodium carbonate as water‐removable template. The optimized carbon material combined porous thin walls that provided short diffusional paths, a highly disordered microstructure with dilated interlayer spacing, and a large oxygen content, all of which facilitated Na ion transport and provided plenty of active sites for Na adsorption. This material provided a capacity of 314 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1 and 130 mAh g−1 at 10 A g−1. When combined with a 3D highly porous carbon cathode (SBET ≈2300 m2 g−1) synthesized from the same precursor, the Na‐ion capacitor showed high specific energy/power, that is 110 Wh kg−1 at low power and still 71 Wh kg−1 at approximately 26 kW kg−1, and a good capacity retention of 70 % over 10000 cycles.

Laboratory rotational spectra of norbornadiene and its cyano derivatives were recorded using chirped-pulse millimetre-wave spectroscopy. These molecules were then searched for in the starless core TMC-1 using the QUIJOTE line survey.

6 páginas.- 2 figura.- 29 referencias.- 1st Conference on Information Technology for Social Good, GoodIT 2021, Rome 9-11 September 2021 New challenges such as climate change and sustainability arise in society influencing not only environmental issues but human's health directly. To face these new challenges IT technologies and their application to environmental intelligent monitoring become into a powerful tool to set new policies and blueprints to contribute to social good. In the new H2020 project, WatchPlant will provide new tools for environmental intelligence monitoring by the use of plants as "well-being"sensors of the environment they inhabit. This will be possible by equipping plants with a net of communicated wireless self-powered sensors, coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) to become plants into "biohybrid organisms"to test exposure-effects links between plant and the environment. It will become plants into a new tool to be aware of the environment status in a very early stage towards in-situ monitoring. Additionally, the system is devoted to be sustainable and energy-efficient thanks to the use of clean energy sources such as solar cells and a enzymatic biofuel cell (BFC) together with its self-deployment, self-awareness, adaptation, artificial evolution and the AI capabilities. In this concept paper, WatchPlant will envision how to face this challenge by joining interdisciplinary efforts to access the plant sap for energy harvesting and sensing purposes and become plants into "biohybrid organisms"to benefit social good in terms of environmental monitoring in urban scenarios. © 2021 Owner/Author. Project WatchPlant has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the FET grant agreement, no. 101017899 Peer reviewed

20 figures, 5 tables. An important percentage of biogas is made of CO2, which decreases its heating value. If CO2 is adsorbed two advantages can be achieved: CO2 capture and the increase of biogas heating value. Biomethane is a renewable fuel, which can provide energy autonomy and a reduction of greenhouse gases emissions. CO2 capture from power plants by using solid adsorbents is an effective method for the reduction of CO2 emission and an excellent solution for methane enrichment of biogas. This work evaluates the CO2 removal and methane enrichment of biogas by adsorption of gas molecules to solid surfaces of sorbents in a pilot-scale biogas upgrading system. The materials selected to remove CO2 from gases were three: calcium hydroxide, commercial activated carbon and solid amine adsorbent, loaded on commercial activated carbon. The amine adsorbent used in this work was polyethylenimine (PEI). The adsorbents were characterized by thermal stability through thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA), X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), specific area, pore size distribution and particle size distribution. The CO2 adsorption capacities of the sorbents were measured using a thermogravimetric analyzer with pure CO2 at atmospheric pressure. The CO2 adsorption capacity test was 0.00653 mol/g for calcium hydroxide, 0.00219 mol/g for commercial activated carbon with 0,1 wt% of amine and 0.00168 mol/g for commercial activated carbon. The effect of adsorbent dosage as a function of time was also investigated. The result showed that the CO2 adsorption of the sorbents increases with adsorbent dosage. The results obtained from the upgrading tests conducted in the lab-scale system showed that a purity of 99.9 % methane was obtained using 15 g of calcium hydroxide, a purity of methane of 87 % was obtained using 30 g of commercial activated carbon with 0.1 wt% amine and a purity around 86 % methane was obtained using 30 g of commercial activated carbon. The authors would like to thank H2CU for the possibility of performing the exchange with the Columbia University. Authors want to acknowledge for funding, the project: “Technical, Environmental and Socio-Economic study of power-to-fuel solutions for a sustainable path towards a green future: achieving 80 % renewable electric energy and 40 % renewable primary energy supply within the next two decades”. Funded in 2020 by PRIN Italian national funds and registered with the code: 2020AA9N4M. This work has been funded by the GTCLC-NEG project that has received funding from the Euro-pean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodow-ska-Curie grant agreement No. 101018756. Peer reviewed

Classical thermal rectification arises from the contact between two dissimilar bulk materials, each with a thermal conductivity (k) with a different temperature dependence. Here, we study thermal rectification in a Si(1−x)Gex alloy with a spatial dependence on the atomic composition. Rectification factors (R = kmax/kmin) of up to 3.41 were found. We also demonstrate the suitability of such an alloy for logic gates using a thermal AND gate as an example by controlling the thermal conductivity profile via the alloy composition. This system is readily extendable to other alloys, since it only depends on the effective thermal conductivity. These thermal devices are inherently advantageous alternatives to their electric counterparts, as they may be able to take advantage of otherwise undesired waste heat in the surroundings. Furthermore, the demonstration of logic operations is a step towards thermal computation.

Solar energy is an energy intermittent source that faces a substantial challenge for its power dispatchability. Hence, concentrating solar power (CSP) plants and solar process heat (SPH) applications employ thermal energy storage (TES) technologies as a link between power generation and optimal load distribution. Ordinary Portland cement (OPC)-based materials are widely used in sensible TES, but their use is limited to operation temperatures below 400 to 500 °C because of thermal degradation processes. This work proposes a geopolymer (GEO)-based concrete as a suitable alternative to OPC concrete for TES that withstands high running temperatures, higher than 500 °C. To this end, thermophysical properties of a geopolymer-based concrete sample were initially measured experimentally; later, energy storage capacity and thermal behavior of the GEO sample were modeled numerically. In fact, different thermal scenarios were modeled, revealing that GEO-based concrete can be a sound choice due to its thermal energy storage capacity, high thermal diffusivity and capability to work at high temperature regimes.