1,720,964 research outputs found

    “Potential carbon efficiency” as a new index to track the performance of biofuels production processes

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    In a carbon constrained economy which targets a massive reduction of the CO2 emissions, biogenic carbon is bound to be a scarce resource with high economic value. In such scenario, the carbon efficiency may become the key performance index to represent the revenues of the biomass-to-X conversion plants. In this work, the potential carbon efficiency (PCE) indicator is defined to quantify the achievable carbon efficiency (i.e. the amount of carbon contained in the final product with respect to the available input carbon), of a stream or of a process unit. Compared to the conventional carbon efficiency (CE), that is affected only by the separation/addition of carbon-containing species, the PCE allows quantifying the potential variation of the achievable carbon efficiency in process units where no carbon separation occurs, but where a limiting element is added (e.g. hydrogen through steam addition) or oxygen content is increased (e.g. oxygen injection in a reformer). The difference between the CE and the PCE along a biomass conversion process is typically due to the excess of oxygen atoms in the syngas, which is removed as CO2 in the syngas conditioning unit. Therefore, the difference between CE and PCE shows the potential gain in carbon efficiency that can be obtained by the addition of H2 from an electrolysis process. In this paper, the PCE and the CE have been calculated along the process units of different biomass-to-X plants. The selected case studies allow comparing different gasification technologies (direct gasification, indirect gasification and sorption enhanced gasification) in plants for the production of methanol and synthetic natural gas, showing how CE and PCE are influenced by process units such as the gasification technology, syngas reforming, syngas conditioning and hydrogen addition

    The Potential of Power and Biomass-to-X Systems in the Decarbonization Challenge: a Critical Review

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    Purpose of the Review: The scope of this work is to present a critical review of the novel class of plants for the enhanced production of bioproducts in power and biomass-to-X (PBtX) plants, where the excess carbon in the feedstock is converted into a product thanks to the addition of hydrogen from water electrolysis, rather than being vented as CO2. Recent Findings: The review of the recent literature shows that (i) a significant gain in carbon efficiency can be achieved with this class of plants compared to corresponding biomass-to-X plants; (ii) there is high dependency of the power-to-X efficiency on the efficiency of the electrolysis system and a relatively low dependency on the final product; and (iii) the economic competitivity of PBtX plants is closely associated to the cost of hydrogen (i.e., electrolysis capital cost, electricity cost, and capacity factor) and such systems cannot rely only on green hydrogen from the low expected amounts of excess electricity from intermittent renewables. Summary: In this work, through a simplified economic analysis, the region of competitiveness of this class of plants compared to other possible uses of biomass has been qualitatively identified. The research gaps mainly lie in the lack of assessments on the design and operating criteria of flexible PBtX plants and of studies providing insights on the value of flexibility for a PBtX plant, when integrated in the electric energy systems of the future

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

    Variations on the Author

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We 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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