1,720,975 research outputs found
The economic sustainability of smallâscale biogas plants in the italian context: The case of the cover slab technology
No full texthe growing interest on renewable energies, together with the public financial incentive systems established in several countries, has driven a fast innovation in the field of energy technologies, with the main objective to increase their sustainability. This paper focuses on the production of biogas from agro–residues and animal manure; with particular attention to small-scale plants. Based on a real case located in northern Italy, and taking into consideration the Italian public financial incentive system currently in force, the economic profitability of the cover slab technology is analysed, putting into evidence the main factors that affect it. © 2017
An innovative parallel fuzzy scheme for low-power consumption in IEEE 802.11 devices
No full textWireless devices are mainly used in mobile systems because they do not need any physical connection for the communication and the energy supply. Therefore, reducing the power consumption of their batteries is a critical task in order to prolong their lifetime. The main aim of this paper is to dynamically adjust both the sleeping time and the transmission power of mobile devices in an IEEE 802.11 wireless network in order to reduce the power consumption. The algorithm runs on the access point that provides the wireless connection to the devices, so no extra circuitry or computation is required to the devices. The proposal is validated through simulations, which show a battery life 20% higher than other state-of-the-art approache
A comparative cradle-to gate impact assessment: Primary and secondary aluminum automotive components case
No full textRoad transports release a significant percentage of global CO2. In this field, one of the most effective solution is the reduction of vehicles' mass, which can be obtained through the substitution of heavy metals with light alloys (i.e. aluminum). In addition, in order to maximize the environmental benefits a current trend is to use secondary material (from scrap) in substitution to primary one (from ore). For this purpose, the present case study compared the environmental burden related to the same light-weighted automotive component (suspension cross beam) made in primary aluminum (from ore) or in secondary one (from scrap). In particular, a cradle to grave Life Cycle Assessment has been analyzed through the software SimaPro 7.3 with the Recipe impact method. The study highlighted and confirmed the relevance of the environmental benefits related to recycling and secondary material use
Life cycle approach for the sustainability assessment of intensified biorefineries
No full textIn the global push to develop bio-based products that can help meet climate-related goals, researchers have increasingly utilized life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies. These methodologies have been applied to understand environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of an existing product or process. These methods have also evolved into a powerful eco-design tool, where LCA can be applied in the initial stages of the development of a product or process, with the aim of guiding choices toward a greater sustainability. In recent years, LCA approach has expanded to include economic (life cycle cost or LCC) and social (social life cycle assessment or S-LCA) considerations, and thus it has emerged as a reference for more comprehensive assessments aimed at including the multiple dimensions of sustainability. This chapter presents the main LCA tools that can be used to assess the environmental, economic and social impact of emerging bioproducts. To properly evaluate new bioproducts requires a review of the facilities that can produce them (“biorefineries”) as well as impacts felt both upstream and downstream of the processing facility. Some of the challenges with LCA, as well as with S-LCA implementation are considered. A case study is then presented more in detail in order to demonstrate how these assessment tools can guide research and development activities in this field
Smart Wireless Sensor Networks and Biometric Authentication for Real Time Traffic Light Junctions Management
No full textThe main challenge of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) is to deal with ‘real-time’ information to improve vehicular traffic management. Road data can be processed and used for dynamic traffic light management in order to reduce waiting times in queues. This paper proposes an innovative distributed architecture based on a wireless sensor network (WSN) with a network coordinator providing remote and ubiquitous authentication module for managing unexpected events. The architecture is completed by a dynamic module for street priority management depending on traffic rate. Many experimental trials have been carried out considering three different levels of traffic intensity to prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In a street with high traffic intensity (120 vehicles in queue), the average vehicles/second rate decrease from 6.135, using a fixed cycle traffic light, to 0.365 using the proposed traffic light measurement system. Moreover, to improve the system security, a fingerprints-based embedded authentication system has been implemented as a self-contained sensor to increase the security of distributed personal data storage. The best achieved FAR and FRR indexes are respectively 0.73% and 9.21%, with a mean elaboration time of 192.46 ms and a working frequency of 22.5 MHz
Fuzzy Techniques for Access and Data Management in Home Automation Environments
No full textHome Automation Environments are characterized by the integration of electronic devices as well as
by the performance of communication and control systems. Environment infrastructure has to meet
several requirements including Quality of Service (QoS), safety, security, and energy saving.
However, Home Automation deals with complex environments, so that advanced data management
systems are required to meet the above constraints. Fuzzy Logic based techniques can be successful
used to improve system performance management. This work proposes and describes the use and
application of fuzzy rules on a two-tiered architecture integrating a biometric authentication module
and communication real-time constraints. The goal is to combine the advantages of wired and
wireless networks as well as the biometric recognition accuracy to increase the flexibility and the
performance of the proposed deadline oriented architecture. The experimental results of the user
authentication module, the energy consumption module and the scheduling module for real-time
mobile communication are also outlined
Wastewater and waste CO2for sustainable biofuels from microalgae
No full textIn the new frontier of energy, biofuels will play an important role in overcoming our dependence on fossil fuels and its associated environmental impacts. In the biofuels sector, the exploitation of microalgal biomass has the potential to be beneficial, as they do not compete on land use with food crops and their cultivation systems can be designed to have a lower water footprint. Even though a number of LCAs (Life Cycle Assessment) involving biofuel production from microalgae have been reported, few of them have focused on the use of by-product streams in algal biomass production, such as wastewater or waste CO2 recovered from flue gas, which could further reduce the environmental impact of the recovered biofuels, and none have considered a combination of different by-product streams. In this paper, an LCA is applied to compare 6 alternative scenarios, where the potential environmental benefits achievable using CO2 from different sources (commercial liquid CO2, CO2 recovered from flue gas and flue gas as is) and wastewater in the cultivation of microalgae for the production of biofuels are investigated. The analysis is based on a virtual, but realistic case, using an open microalgal cultivation pond facility located in Kingston (Canada). The results indicate that the source of CO2 is the most relevant factor affecting environmental impacts, and that the direct injection of flue gas into the algal pond and the use of wastewater represent the most environmentally friendly alternative. © 2017 Elsevier B.V
Usability analysis of a novel biometric authentication approach for android-based mobile devices
Full text linkMobile devices are widely replacing the standard personal computers thanks to their small size and user-friendly use. As a consequence, the amount of information, often confidential, exchanged through these devices is raising. This makes them potential targets of malicious network hackers. The use of simple passwords or PIN are not sufficient to provide a suitable security level for those applications requiring high protection levels on data and services. In this paper a biometric authentication system, as a running Android application, has been developed and implemented on a real mobile device. A system test on real users has been also carried out in order to evaluate the human-machine interaction quality, the recognition accuracy of the proposed technique, and the scheduling latency of the operating system and its degree of acceptance. Several measures, such as system usability, users satisfaction, and tolerable speed for identification, have been carried out in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach
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