Biomass is one of the most frequently used sources of renewable energy. For centuries, wood has been used by people to heat their homes, and nowadays it is also used to generate electricity. The article discusses legal issues related to biomass, classification of biomass for energy purposes, quality parameters of selected ecological fuels, quality requirements for biomass, as well as biomass trade in the world. The article compares the quality requirements for biomass purchased by individual companies from the power sector (mainly dimensions, calorific value, moisture content, ash content, sulfur and chlorine). An analysis of the price of wood pellets on international markets, represented by the biomass stock exchanges: RBCN, EEX and BALTPOOL was also performed. The market analysis clearly shows that the international market for industrial pellets is dominated by intercontinental trade, which mainly concerns exchanges between the United States of America as a producer and Europe as a consumer. The largest amount of biomass is imported by the United Kingdom, mainly for its Drax biomass power plant, and this biomass comes from the USA and Canada. In addition to Great Britain, significant importers of wood pellets are the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. Judging by the interest of Polish energy companies in the purchase of biomass, also in Poland, the development of the biomass market should be expected.
DNA sequencing remains one of the most important problems in molecular and computational biology. One of the methods used for this purpose is sequencing by hybridization. In this approach usually DNA chips composed of a full library of oligonucleotides of a given length are used, but in principle it is possible to use another types of chips. Isothermic DNA chips, being one of them, when used for sequencing may reduce hybridization error rate. However, it was not clear if a number of errors following from subsequence repetitions is also reduced in this case. In this paper a method for estimating resolving power of isothermic DNA chips is described which allows for a comparison of such chips and the classical ones. The analysis of the resolving power shows that the probability of sequencing errors caused by subsequence repetitions is greater in the case of isothermic chips in comparison to their classical counterparts of a similar cardinality. This result suggests that isothermic chips should be chosen carefully since in some cases they may not give better results than the classical ones.
The use of shredded tyre in civil engineering applications is a significant potential end use market. The reuse of tyre chips may not only address growing environmental and economic concerns, but also help to solve geotechnical problems associated with low shear strength. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the properties of tyre chips and tyre chips – sand mixture, and to find the mixture with the highest shear strength. In this study, an experimental testing program was undertaken using a large – scale triaxial apparatus with the goal of evaluating the optimum percentage of tyre chips in sand. The effects on shear strength of varying percentage of tyre chips and varying confining pressure were studied. Tyre chips content was suspected to have influence on stress – strain and volumetric strain behaviour of the mixture. Some tests were conducted to check the influence of number of used membranes, of saturation and compaction, on sample properties.
Results of experimental and numerical investigations of wood chips drying are described in the paper. Experiments are carried out on two test facilities: a small laboratory rig and a larger pre-prototype dryer. Both facilities are thorough-circulation convective air dryers. The first one is a batch dryer, whereas the second one is a continuous dryer with wood chips flowing down by gravity from a charging hopper to a gutter with the aid of screw-conveyor. The latter is considered a half scale model (preprototype) for professional drying installations. A low feeding rate of wood chips into the pre-prototype dryer makes the process quasi-stationary and the difference between it and a batch drying is negligible. So, most experiments at this facility were carried out as batch dryers with non-agitated packed beds. The investigations exhibit the same linear correlation between the mass of evaporated water from the packed bed and the drying air velocity for both facilities. Numerical analysis of the drying process is conducted using the Ansys Fluent software enriched in drying capabilities by means of self-written procedures – user defined functions. Simulations confirmed a phenomenon of a drying front observed in the small laboratory rig. A thin layer of wood chips comprises the whole heat exchange and moisture evaporation phenomenon. The drying front travels downstream in the course of the process separating the already dried layer and still wet layer.
The objective of the study was to assess the potential use of optical measuring instruments to determine the minimum chip thickness in face milling. Images of scanned surfaces were analyzed using mother wavelets. Filtration of optical signals helped identify the characteristic zones observed on the workpiece surface at the beginning of the cutting process. The measurement data were analyzed statistically. The results were then used to estimate how accurate each measuring system was to determine the minimum uncut chip thickness. Also, experimental verification was carried out for each mother wavelet to assess their suitability for analyzing surface images.
Production waste is one of the major sources of aluminium for recycling. Depending on the waste sources, it can be directly melted in furnaces, pre-cleaned and then melted, or due to the small size of the material (powder or dust) left without remelting. The latter form of waste includes chips formed during mechanical cutting (sawing) of aluminium and its alloys. In this study, this type of chips (with the dimensions not exceeding 1 mm) were melted. The obtained results of laboratory tests have indicated that even chips of such small sizes pressed into cylindrical compacts can be remelted. The high recovery yield (up to 94 %) and degree of metal coalescence (up to 100 %) were achieved via thermal removal of impurities under controlled conditions of a gas atmosphere (argon or/and air), followed with consolidation of chips at a pressure of minimum 170 MPa and melting at 750 oC with NaCl-KCl-Na3AlF6 salt flux.
An application specific integrated design using Quadrature Linear Discriminant Analysis is proposed for automatic detection of normal and epilepsy seizure signals from EEG recordings in epilepsy patients. Five statistical parameters are extracted to form the feature vector for training of the classifier. The statistical parameters are Standardised Moment, Co-efficient of Variance, Range, Root Mean Square Value and Energy. The Intellectual Property Core performs the process of filtering, segmentation, extraction of statistical features and classification of epilepsy seizure and normal signals. The design is implemented in Zynq 7000 Zc706 SoC with average accuracy of 99%, Specificity of 100%, F1 score of 0.99, Sensitivity of 98% and Precision of 100 % with error rate of 0.0013/hr., which is approximately zero false detection.
Basing on experimental data, the possibility of consolidating side products of turning, milling and drilling of aluminum alloys into the form and properties of solids metals using low-temperature KoBo extrusion method has been assessed. Research regarding mechanical and structural properties of the final products revealed their total consolidation and proved their compatibility with requirements for products made of bulk billets. Importantly, the chips consolidation process does not require high or even raised temperature, which significantly reduces the unfavorable phenomenon of chips oxidation and its negative influence on the structure and mechanical properties of products. A very good effect of chips compaction has been proved by KoBo method, which has been confirmed by relatively slightly different mechanical properties of the material after recycling compared with the bulk one. Among currently applied techniques of consolidation of dispersed fractions in a solid state (leaving the melting stage out), the KoBo method seems an innovative way of utilizing metallic chips, as it enables a cold deformation process.
The paper presents investigations using 2024 and 7075 aluminum alloys chips from manufacturing process, formed into briquettes and deformed under conditions of KoBo extrusion process, which enables to obtain long product by cold forming. The final product characterized by good microstructures, mechanical features and low cost of production.