1,720,988 research outputs found
Towards smart e-waste demanufacturing systems exploiting multisensor vision system capabilities
No full textWaste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the EU, expected to reach more than 12 million tons per year by 2020 [1]. End-of-Life (EoL) products and material mixtures found in E-waste are highly variable and in continuous evolutions. For example Cathod Ray Tube (CRT) televisions are rapidly being replaced by Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) TVs, cellular phones are being replaced by smart phones, traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD) are being replaced by Solid State Disks (SSD). Moreover, new waste flows are entering the recycling streams, including photovoltaic panels and tablet PCs. Under the current business model and waste collection mechanism, the mechanical pre-treatment of these EoL products is usually performed by recyclers which apply (i) manual dismantling processes, and (ii) mechanical shredding and separation processes to reduce the material size and refine the input material into purified material streams which can be sold either to the market or to end-processing plants for further refinement. According to recent studies, the major causes for losses of recoverable metals, including precious and key metals, is due to mechanical pre-treatments (from 40% to 100% depending on the material), while only marginal losses are due to the downstream chemical end-processes. For recycling industries (typically SMEs), having dedicated treatment lines for each specific product type flow is impossible due to space and budget limitations. Therefore, batch production and high utilization of a single or few recycling lines is the typically adopted solution. The process parameters are then selected as a compromise between the different EoL product types. As a matter of fact, in spite of the high variability in the EoL products and material mixtures to be recovered, state of the art mechanical recycling systems are extremely rigid. The process parameters are traditionally set by the recycling machine designer based on a, typically small, material sample provided by the end-user, in the design phase. These parameters are normally kept constants throughout the systems life cycle. This rigidity of the system coupled with the high variability in the input material composition ultimately causes (i) poor recycling rates, (ii) abuse of landfill, also for materials that are potentially recyclable, (iii) lack of competitiveness and, ultimately, (iv) untapped market potentials. This scenario calls for a new generation of highly adaptable demanufacturing systems, endowed with the required level of adaptability to cope with evolving products and variable materials’ market conditions. In this perspective, the integration of specific technologies and on-line control strategies ensure the reconfigurability of process flow and machine parameters according to the specific mixture under treatment, allowing the improvement of process efficiency. In this framework, processes flexibility and reconfigurability capabilities are becoming increasingly important especially when they have to cope with ever-increasing EoL products complexity and variability. However, the lack of appropriate technologies, tools and methods to recover and re-use materials from industrial wastes and post-consumer products can negatively affect the sustainability potential of demanufacturing processes. This paper discusses the advantages related to the installation of a customized multisensor system to support the on-line identification of different material wastes in a new generation of smart demanufacturing systems. An example of integrated multisensor system implemented at the De- and Remanufacturing Pilot Plant at ITIA-CNR is presented
Hyperspectral Imaging for the On-line Identification and Classification of End-of-Life Lamps
No full textThe lighting market is expected to have revenues of over 100 billion euros in 2020. Despite the evident economical
potentialities of this sector, the high products variability, complexity and the presence of materials with potential
negative environmental impacts, make lamps recycling processes a challenging task. The Directive 2002/96/EC
defines 80% as minimum recovery target for lamps containing mercury. Recovery processes currently adopted for
End-Of-Life lamps treatment consist of a preliminary manual phase for sorting different lamp typologies, strictly
correlated to the operator ability of recognize the lamps category. The present work proposes a new approach based
on the application of hyperspectral vision systems for the automatic identification of End-of-Life lamps, aimed at
optimizing recycling processes. These solutions could facilitate the securing of lamps containing hazardous materials,
with the aim of maximizing the degree of purity of the recovered key metals and rare earths, stimulating potential
secondary raw materials markets
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
HyperSpectral Imaging for the in-line characterization of fine mixtures in WEEE mechanical recycling systems
No full textHyperSpectral imaging (HSI) is a promising technique that could support on-line characterization of
multi-material mixtures in recycling. However, this technology currently shows limitations when
analyzing metallic mixtures at relatively low particle sizes. In this paper, the set-up of a fast and
flexible vision system for the characterization of waste from electric and electronic equipment
(WEEE) at fine fractions is presented. The paper deals with technical and chemometric challenges
related to: i) the integration of this approach in an on-line de-manufacturing plant; ii) the development
of an innovative procedures, based on the analysis of NIR spectral features, for the on-line mixture
characterization to perform both sorting of metal and non-metal fractions and the quality control of
End Of Life (EOL) products and the different flow streams inside the recycling plant; iii) the
application of this technique to very fine products (<2mm). The experimental analyses have been
performed on shredded copper and PVC wires from E-waste samples. The achieved results are very
promising, especially and specifically with reference to WEEE recycling sector
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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