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The utilization of electric vehicles (EV) and their used batteries in supporting small-scale energy management systems were studied. Both theoretical study and practical demonstration were performed to measure the feasibility of the developed system. Each five EVs and used EV batteries were used along with 20 kW photovoltaic (PV) panels as a renewable energy source. The main objective of the developed system is performing a peak-load shifting by utilizing EVs, used EV batteries and PV panels. The planning of load leveling was performed 24 h ahead for each 30 min period. The studies showed that the application of EVs and used EV batteries in supporting certain small-scale energy management systems is feasible. In addition, some findings during the demonstration test were listed and analyzed for the purpose of further system development and deployment.

State-of-the-art integrated macroalgae utilization processes, consisting of drying, gasification, and combined cycle, are proposed and their performance with respect to energy efficiency are evaluated. To achieve high exergy efficiency, the integration is performed through two main principles: exergy recovery and process integration. Initially, the energy involved in one process is recirculated intensively through exergy elevation and effective heat coupling. Furthermore, the unrecoverable energy from one process will be utilized in the other processes through process integration. As the result, the total exergy destruction from the whole integrated processes can be minimized significantly leading to significant improvement in energy efficiency. The first analysis relates to the performance of integrated drying process, especially the influence of target moisture content to energy consumption. Furthermore, the influences of gasification fluidization velocity to the total generated power and power generation efficiency are also calculated. As the results of study, the proposed integrated-processes proved a very high energy efficiency. A positive energy harvesting with the total power generation efficiency of about 40% could be achieved.

The increasing global demand for palm oil and its products has led to a significant growth in palm plantations and palm oil production. Unfortunately, these bring serious environmental problems, largely because of the large amounts of waste material produced, including palm kernel shell (PKS). In this study, we used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to investigate the PKS co-firing of a 300 MWe pulverized coal-fired power plant in terms of thermal behavior of the plant and the CO2, CO, O2, NOx, and SOx produced. Five different PKS mass fractions were evaluated: 0%, 10%, 15%, 25%, and 50%. The results suggest that PKS co-firing is favorable in terms of both thermal behavior and exhaust gas emissions. A PKS mass fraction of 25% showed the best combustion characteristics in terms of temperature and the production of CO2, CO, and SOx. However, relatively large amounts of thermal NOx were produced by high temperature oxidation. Considering all these factors, PKS mass fractions of 10%–15% emerged as the most appropriate co-firing condition. The PKS supply capacity of the palm mills surrounding the power plants is a further parameter to be considered when setting the fuel mix.

Background Infected acute necrotic collections (ANC) and walled-off necrosis (WON) of the pancreas are associated with high mortality. The difference in mortality between open necrosectomy and minimally invasive therapies in these patients remains unclear. Methods This retrospective multicenter cohort study was conducted among 44 institutions in Japan from 2009 to 2013. Patients who had undergone invasive treatment for suspected infected ANC/WON were enrolled and classified into open necrosectomy and minimally invasive treatment (laparoscopic, percutaneous, and endoscopic) groups. The association of each treatment with mortality was evaluated and compared. Results Of 1159 patients with severe acute pancreatitis, 122 with suspected infected ANC or WON underwent the following treatments: open necrosectomy (33) and minimally invasive treatment (89), (laparoscopic three, percutaneous 49, endoscopic 37). Although the open necrosectomy group had a significantly higher mortality on univariate analysis ( p  = 0.047), multivariate analysis showed no significant associations between open necrosectomy or Charlson index and mortality ( p  = 0.29, p  = 0.19, respectively). However, age (for each additional 10 years, p  = 0.012, odds ratio [OR] 1.50, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09–2.06) and revised Atlanta criteria-severe ( p  = 0.001, OR 7.84, 95% CI 2.40–25.6) were significantly associated with mortality. Conclusions In patients with acute pancreatitis and infected ANC/WON, age and revised Atlanta criteria-severe classification are significantly associated with mortality whereas open necrosectomy is not. The mortality risk for patients undergoing open necrosectomy and minimally invasive treatment does not differ significantly. Although minimally invasive surgery is generally preferred for patients with infected ANC/WON, open necrosectomy may be considered if clinically indicated.

The fast-increasing introduction of renewable energy sources (RESes) leads to some problems in electrical power network due to fluctuating generated power. A power system must be operated with provision of various reserve powers like governor free capacity, load frequency control and spinning reserve. Therefore, the generator’s schedule (unit commitment schedule) should include the consideration of the various power reserves. In addition, it is necessary to calculate the annual operational costs of electric power systems by solving the unit commitment per week of thermal power generators and pumped storages in order to compare and examine the variance of the operational costs and the operating ratio of the generators throughout the year. This study proposes a novel annual analysis for the thermal power generator and pumped storages under a massive introduction of RESes. A weekly unit commitment schedule (start/stop planning) for thermal power generator and pumped storages has been modeled and calculated for one year evaluation. To solve the generator start/stop planning problem, Tabu search and interior point methods are adopted to solve the operation planning for thermal power generators and the output decision for pumped storages, respectively. It is demonstrated that the proposed method can analyze a one-year evaluation within practical time. In addition, by assuming load frequency control (LFC) constraints to cope with photovoltaic (PV) output fluctuations, the impact of the intensity of LFC constraints on the operational cost of the thermal power generator has been elucidated. The increment of the operational cost of the power supply with increasing PV introduction amount has been shown in concrete terms.

Algicidal bacteria that attack Dolichospermum crassum were isolated from the Karasuhara Reservoir in October 2010. Phytoplankton monitoring was performed from April 2010 to March 2011, and D. crassum was detected from August to November. At its peak frequency (in early October), it accounted for 23% of all phytoplankton cells. Heterotrophic bacteria were isolated from the surface water, and an algicidal assay was conducted. As a result, 3 out of 47 bacterial strains showed strong algicidal activity, and they completely destroyed the trichomes of D. crassum. An initial inoculation dose of only 1.0 × 102 cells ml−1 of these strains was enough to digest D. crassum. These strains were identified as Rheinheimera spp. according to 16S rDNA sequence analyses. This is the first report about algicidal bacteria that attack D. crassum. Algicidal bacteria could be key agents for controlling D. crassum in reservoirs.

The two-dimensional (2D) 4 He fluid films show the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transition where pairing and unpairing of the 2D vortices play an important role. However, the vortex properties (the diffusion constant D , the core diameter a 0 ) have not been precisely obtained for various conditions. Here, we accurately determined the parameter D / a 0 2 by the high frequency dependence of the superfluid onset up to 180 MHz for the submonolayer 4 He fluid films adsorbed on gold and H 2 (3.3 layers) preplated on gold, respectively. The superfluid onset coverage changes from 1.6 (gold) to 0.5 layers (H 2 ), which clearly indicates the large difference of the adsorption potential. The parameter D / a 0 2 , on the other hand, has the same value for the coverages with the same KT temperature T KT . This suggests that the vortex diffusions on both substrates have the largest value D ∼ ℏ / m in the quantum limit. The core diameter a 0 was estimated to be the same magnitude as the de Broglie wavelength at T KT between 0.1 and 0.9 K.

An inversely aggregated networking with programmable protection (i-ANP2) architecture is proposed to provide a cost-effective and robust optical network. It is shown to reduce more than 50% of capital expenditure (CAPEX) for protected services and the operational cost by several orders of magnitude.

In this paper, an inversely aggregated networking with programmable protection architecture is proposed to provide a cost-effective and robust optical network. It is shown to reduce more than 50% of capital expenditure for protected services and the operational cost by several orders of magnitude.