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The innovation debt penalty: Cost of debt, loan default, and the effects of a public loan guarantee on high-tech firms
No full textSemantic Analysis of Public Spaces in Brussels, London and Turin living labs: A Taxonomy of the Interventions
No full textThe aim of this paper is to conceptually transfer the knowledge about the domain of urban public spaces in three case-projects, into a hierarchical and interrelated semantic structure of micro-design interventions and their mutual relationships, providing definitions of the interventions themselves. Drawing on the Incubators of Public Spaces JPI Urban Europe research project, the paper sets the ground for a digital design tool, to support co-creative urban design processes. The conceptual and operational instrument adopted for this purpose is the ontology, a method of knowledge representation and management coming from Artificial Intelligence. Ontologies, as branch of AI, are helpful to set the domain for a clear, simple and user-friendly representation of concepts and their relationships. Incubators has developed the Taxonomy of Interventions based on the experience in three ‘living labs' in Brussels, London and Turin. Each living lab had the opportunity to unfold its own particular and context-based configuration that can best support the local self-organisation of places
Phosphate glass fibers for optical amplifiers and biomedical applications
No full textPhosphate glass optical fibers were designed and fabricated for applications in the fields of remote sensing and biomedicine. Main results are reported together with the recent development
Analysis of damage mechanisms suffered by Italian fortified buildings hit by earthquakes in the last 40 years
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Lo specchio distorto di un quartiere. Il caso Vallette all'estremo nord della capitale italiana dell'industria (1958-83)
No full textRecovery of D-limonene and energy from orange peel waste
No full textCurrently, there is not a harmonized definition of food waste. Parfitt et al. (2010) suggested the following definition: "Food losses or waste are the masses of food lost or wasted in the part of food chains leading to edible products going to human consumption". Therefore, food waste has taken on disquieting proportions worldwide in all steps of the food production and supply chain, and in industrialized countries more than 40 % of the food waste occurs at retail and consumer levels (FAO, 2014). More than one-third of the food produced for human consumption, between 1.2 and 2 billion tonnes per year (FAO, 2014), gets lost or wasted globally, equivalent to 6-10 percent of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions (Gustavsson, 2011; Vermeulen et al., 2012). Food waste is an abundant and renewable biomass for the recovery of high-added value compounds and for the production of bio-fuels, representing a valid alternative for the displacement of polluting and limited fossil fuels. Waste-to-Energy concept is supported by Directive 2008/98/EC (EU, 2008), which is the main effort of European legislation on waste. In this directive, concepts and definitions related to waste management are laid down, as well as waste management principles such as the "polluter pays principle" and the "waste hierarchy". It is of the utmost importance to integrate all of those initiatives/activities aimed at minimizing waste with high recycling targets, in order to respect and protect the environment as well as to promote process sustainability. It is necessary to abandon the idea that an improved quality of life corresponds to immediate economic growth. And, in fact, economic development itself would not be possible without safeguarding the environment and its natural resources. What is the future going to be like if we cannot guarantee the next generations with any resource? The aim of this Thesis is the valorization of by-products generated within a specific sector, namely the citrus processing industry, to help Europe become more resource efficient and sustainable. The principal objective is the evaluation of several processes aiming at the recovery of D-limonene and energy from orange peel waste (OPW), with the task of using collected experimental data for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) inventory. In order to fulfill this purpose, first, a detailed review was written (and published), with the aim of achieving a deep knowledge on the toxicity of D-limonene, which represents the main challenge when anaerobic digestion is performed. Therefore, experimental works were performed in order to investigate several extraction techniques - including accelerated processes at moderate temperature and pressure-, anaerobic digestion valorization and pyrolysis technology. Afterwards, results were compared through LCA modelling performed by means of EASETECH, a software developed by Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and specifically dedicated to waste management. The most salient results were published on scientific journals, and this Thesis is an assortment of the Author's literature works. Therefore, this work is structured in the following sections. CHAPTER I reports a deep overview of the most relevant notions concerning citrus waste issue and the main routes implemented for the valorization of this specific waste, both in terms of recovery of high-added value compound and in terms of bio-fuels. To accomplish this, several research works were carefully reviewed in detail. CHAPTER II addresses the effect of several pre-treatment processes on anaerobic digestion, mainly focused on the inhibitory effect of D-limonene. Basic and thermal treatments as well as extractive processes were evaluated in order to select the best strategies for scale-up operation. In CHAPTER III, several anaerobic co-digestion strategies were implemented with the intent of reducing the concentration of toxicants. First, toxicity batch tests were carried out in order to experimentally determine the threshold concentrations for toxic compounds and, afterwards, four Continuous Flow Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTRs) were utilized to investigate the co-digestion process of orange peel waste with manure and/or seaweed. The experimental set-up and work were totally carried out at the Environmental DTU, supervised by Irini Angelidaki and Merlin Alvarado-Morales (from Bio-Energy Group). CHAPTER IV compares the pyrolysis process of orange peel waste with hazelnut shells, a biomass generally accepted as a suitable feedstock for thermochemical processes. After the extraction of D-limonene by Soxhlet extraction with hexane as solvent, the residual waste was subjected to a natural de-hydration at room temperature and then used as a feedstock for pyrolysis process. In CHAPTER V, an accelerated extraction at moderate temperature was suggested as alternative to traditional Soxhlet extraction, with the task of increasing D-limonene recovery yield. The energy expenditure for D-limonene extraction was evaluated in order to select the optimal operating conditions (extraction temperature, extraction time and ratio OPW-solvent). After a natural de-hydration at room temperature, the citrus residue was valorized through pyrolysis process at different heating rates. Furthermore, the Energy Sustainability Index (ESI) was estimated for pyrolysis process, taking into account the total amount of energy available in the form of pyrolytic products and the amount of energy spent to treat the waste. CHAPTER VI presents several waste management scenarios. Environmental savings and burdens were quantified by means of LCA model for mono-treatments (pyrolysis, incineration and anaerobic mono-digestion), co-treatments (four strategies of anaerobic co-digestion) and non-recovery energy processes (landfilling, composting and animal feeding). The whole modelling section was carried out at the Environmental Department of DTU, supervised by Davide Tonini. Finally, the last CHAPTER VII highlights the main results obtained in this work and depicts future perspectives for waste management
Automated Design and Experimental Validation of a Reconfigurable, Board-Mounted Compact Antenna
No full textMobile Mapping Systems and Spatial Data Collection Strategies Assessment in the Identification of Horizontal Alignment of Highways
No full textThe horizontal alignment of existing highways may be identified by using several terrestrial or aerial geomatics technologies. Such technologies involve different levels of precision and accuracy; hence, different results can be expected. At present, there are no comparisons available between the solutions resulting from the use of different technologies and data sources for the same road alignment. In this investigation, a number of terrestrial mobile mapping techniques and data collection strategies were evaluated. The centerline of a 3.6 km section of a highway was used to estimate radii, centers of curvature and orientation of tangents. Two statistical fitting methods were used to back calculate these parameters, and the results were then compared with as built alignment data. Terrestrial images from a mobile mapping vehicle were used to determine the centerline, which was also estimated as the average line of the carriageway and pavement edges, and as the average line of the two driving trajectories. Positions were surveyed using low-cost sensors (an integrated GPS-IMU platform, HD webcam). For comparison purposes, aerial orthophotos and a GNSS (high-cost) receiver were used simultaneously. Although the GPS IMU data and estimated trajectories provided results comparable to those of the GNSS receiver, the use of georeferenced images proved less accurate. The results and comments in the paper should be of use to survey practitioners when they need to select an acquisition methodology appropriate to the desired level of accuracy and in line with budget constraints
