Libros UCLV { BETA }

As the world looks for alternative energy resources, renewable energy and energy effi ciency shine as the most appropriate alternative solutions. However, there are technical, political, social, economic, and environmental challenges. This volume investigates these challenges. Chapters 1 through 3 review policies which are likely to increase the adoption of renewable energy technologies. These three chapters provide a good introduction to the different policies for different types of energy sources as well as an approach on how to evaluate these policies for different cases. Chapters 4 through 9 present cases around the evaluation of renewable energy. Chapter 4 presents a wind energy case from Pakistan. This case presents a technical approach to assess the wind potential. Chapter 5 presents a technology assessment framework evaluating conversion of solid waste to energy. Chapters 6 and 7 provide two different perspectives on biofuels. They review national and local cases. Chapter 8 presents a case on residential solar electric systems. The chapter provides a framework on evaluating the adoption phenomenon. Finally, Chap. 9 provides a case on portfolio optimization in the electricity market and thus provides us with a fi nancial perspective. Chapters 10 and 11 review energy effi ciency technologies and programs as well as approaches to evaluate them. These two chapters provide a solid introduction to the energy effi ciency concept through a local case and a comprehensive review of the literature. Chapters 12 through 15 present different cases in the energy effi ciency area. Chapters 12 and 13 present two different approaches to evaluate clothes dryers which are major consumers of power in the residential market. One of the approaches relies on expert judgment quantifi cation while the other one on intelligence through patent analysis and modeling based on such intelligence. Chapter 14 presents a case on furnace fan motors, while Chap. 15 on insulation material for home construction. We hope that this volume will provide some guidance to those who are just planning to explore renewable energy and energy effi ciency as alternatives.

This book was inspired by my travels and fi eldwork in Cuba over the past 8 years. The fi rst time in 2003, I was invited to speak at a conference in Havana sponsored, in part by the University of Havana and its Geography Department. From the moment I landed until the time I left, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of the people, the impressive knowledge presented by scientists about the myriad of ecosystems in Cuba, and the beauty of the island. And as I returned to Miami from that fi rst trip, I was struck that while Cuba seems so far away in our typical American mindset due to politics; it is so close in terms of geographic distance, that it seemed a travesty to not become involved in scientifi c research on the island. On subsequent trips my fi rst impressions were only strengthened as I explored the island with my student. Upon traveling across the island to many different preserves, conservation areas and World Heritage Sites, it became clear that the management of Cuba’s natural resources was a complicated and monumental task. I wanted to better understand how the Cubans administered these very different areas with distinctive conservation strategies. However I found that this administrative framework was exceptionally complicated and my only hope for grasping the full implications of current laws and policies was to go back in time and appreciate the many stages of landscape evolution that Cuba has undergone. This was the impetus for this book. This book is the culmination of research that gives the reader a nonfi ction view of how Cuba’s landscape has changed since the time when Columbus fi rst set foot on the island and encountered the Indigenous peoples who lived there in 1492 to present day. I touch on several topics that are relevant to analysis of landscape change over time to help the reader understand the full complexity of Cuba’s physical transformation. That transformation from a heavily forested island to less than (currently) 18% forest cover is quite drastic and during more recent decades the government has established a system of protected areas and strong governmental controls over environmental policies and the manner with which the island can be built upon by foreign investors, urban expansion projects, or natural resource exploitation.

The 2nd International Congress on Energy Efficiency and Energy Related Materials (ENEFM2014) provided all scientists the opportunity to meet, present their work, discuss, and mutually interact in order to enhance and promote their research work. This volume, published by Springer, includes selected papers presented at this Congress, held in Oludeniz, Turkey, during October 16–19, 2014. On behalf of the organizing committee we would like to thank all the plenary and invited speakers for their valuable contribution. We would also like to thank TURA Tourism for their support in the organization of the Congress as well as the publishers for the quality of this edition

The 3rd International Congress on Energy Efficiency and Energy Related Materials (ENEFM2015) provided all scientists the opportunity to meet, present their work, discuss and mutually interact in order to enhance and promote their research work. This volume, published by Springer, includes selected papers presented at this Congress, held in Oludeniz, Turkey, October 19–23, 2015. On behalf of organizing committee we would like to thank all the participants, plenary and invited speakers for their valuable contribution. We would also like to thank AIGTUR for their support in the organization of the Congress as well as the publishers for the quality of this edition.

In physics, there are only a few fundamental laws that decide what is possible and what is not. Among them, the second law of thermodynamics is the most important law in physics which prohibits perpetual motion machines and distinguishes what is possible and impossible with regard to heat and energy. Around 1867, through a Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment), J.C. Maxwell demonstrated that the second law of thermodynamics can be violated by postulating an imaginary demon that can observe and operate microscopic states. The so-called Paradox of Maxwell’s Demon caused prolonged debates on information and thermodynamics. Nowadays, we are able to observe single-molecule dynamics and even manipulate them, thanks to development of modern technology. Thus, Maxwell’s demon comes closer to reality. Later, it was clarified that Maxwell’s demon does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics, implying that one can convert information to free energy in principle. Recent development of fluctuation theorems in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics moved us to the next stage for understanding well the relation between information and thermodynamics. The so-called information thermodynamics deals with the simplest Maxwell’s demon system, Szilard’s engine, which can extract work from an isothermal system by a feedback control. By separating Szilard’s engine into two subsystems, i.e., the demon that observes and performs feedback control and the system controlled by the demon and considering mutual information between two subsystems, our understanding of the relation between information and thermodynamics made great advances and finally the paradox was resolved.

This book explains the role of energy efficiency in economic development and analyzes trends in energy demand to explore the feasibility of regional economic growth under environmental constraints. Amidst growing environmental constraints, a comprehensive examination is needed of sustainable policies to stimulate regional economic development, while balancing energy use and addressing environmental problems. To accomplish this objective, the book closely examines energy demand trends in Japan by region and clarifies the factors behind changes in energy demand. In addition, this book focuses on the effects of energy efficiency on energy demand, demonstrates quantitatively the factors behind energy efficiency improvements, and explains the use of energy efficiency indicators. From these analyses, readers can investigate favorable regional economic and environmental policies that promote improvements in energy efficiency and contribute to the realization of a low-carbon society. To date, while various publications have presented studies that individually evaluated energy demand levels and energy efficiencies on a country-by-country basis, I am not aware of any publications that have explained the trends and determining factors for energy demand and energy efficiency from the perspective of regional economies. In particular, hardly any investigations have been conducted on favorable energy efficiency indicators suited to the study of energy and environmental policy. To overcome this issue, I present in this book the results of an extended analysis based on an indicator that I developed to determine the factors behind improvements in energy efficiency. In addition, the book highlights various factors behind changes to energy demand within regional economies. The purpose of this research is twofold. First, this book aims to understand the actual regional energy demand situation, in order to clarify the manner in which energy efficiency influences energy demand fluctuations. Second, this book develops an index to measure energy efficiency and analyze its determinants. Based on the above results, the present work identifies the desirable economic environments that will increase energy efficiency

Soon after the invention of the Scanning Probe Microscopies family (STM and AFM), an AFM was modified to be able to measure friction forces. Subsequent developments led to their use in studies of scratching, wear, and indentation and measurements of mechanical and electrical properties. Now they are routinely used in many fields including micro/nanotribology. Before becoming involved in Scanning Probe Microscopies (SPMs), the author had carried out projects in Nanophysics, in particular single-molecule experiments and weak interactions from quantum nature, which include molecular beams and nanoscopic/spectroscopic analyses. Collaboration of Nanotribology and Scanning Local Probes was timely expected and in 1996, I organized with the author the NATO Study Advanced Institute on Micro/Nanotribology in Sesimbra, Portugal, where important and interesting results were presented. The development of this field has attracted numerous physicists and SPMs in Nanotribology have made an immense impact on the field of Advanced Nanotechnology. As an example, studies with SPMs involve properties and size scales of critical relevance to energy-related components. As a pioneer of Nanotribology I must say that advanced local probe techniques and in particular emergent scanning probe microscopy methods addressing several nanoscale functionalities have been gradually implemented in energy storage and conversion applications. Friction is also an important limitation of energy efficiency performances in electro-mechanical components and some SPM techniques already are used for electric energy storage studies to study nano-friction.

The Energy Studies Institute (ESI) at the National University of Singapore started its China energy research in 2012. Its first conference on “China Energy Issues in the 12th Five-Year Plan and Beyond”, held in February 2012, examined the economic, environmental, and security aspects of China’s energy and carbon mitigation strategies. During this event, speakers and participants shared their opinions on China’s overall energy developments, and some of these discussions have been published in journals, such as in volume 73 of Energy Policy (Special Issue, 2014). ESI has established formal relationships with energy think-tanks in China—such as the Institute of Policy and Management, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the College of Economics and Management in Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics—to look into China’s latest energy issues and their influences on the region. In 2013, the Institute launched a series called the “Singapore–China Energy Forum” to discuss the opportunities and challenges faced by China’s recent and future energy developments. The topics included energy efficiency and conservation, energy and carbon markets, energy security, climate change, and many others. This volume is the compilation of presentations on the subject of energy efficiency and conservation delivered at the first forum, held in November 2013. On behalf of the ESI research team, I would like to express our sincerest thanks to our Executive Director, Prof. S.K. Chou, and ESI’s board members for their unwavering support towards our China energy research and the Singapore–China Energy Forum series. We are also grateful to our administrative colleagues, including Mr. Peter Yap, Ms. Jan Lui, and Ms. S. Telagavathy, who assisted in the management of our events. Our special thanks also go to ESI’s Publications Committee, especially our Editor Ms. Eunice Low, who spent much time reading and copyediting earlier drafts of our manuscripts. Last but not least, we would like to thank all the speakers, authors, reviewers, participants, and research partners. With our continued efforts in China energy research, we hope to generate constant and fruitful discussions in this area.

This work deals with the very timely theme of enhancing energy efficiency in irrigation, exemplified by a pilot project in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. Notwithstanding its declining contribution to the national gross domestic product, a natural corollary to the development process, the agricultural sector in India is still crucial to the all-round development of the nation. The sector currently employs nearly half of the population and has a critical role to play in the attainment of the national goals of increasing food security and reducing rural poverty. The temporal growth pattern of the Indian economy in the last decades bears out the direct and significant relationship to the state of agriculture today. In the last fifty years, Indian agriculture has made tremendous progress, initiated by what is commonly known as the Green Revolution. Food production rose from 82 million tons in 1960–1961 to an estimated 263.2 million tons in 2013– 2014. The Green Revolution was primarily characterized by employment of a package of practices—seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, and plant protection measures— to be supported by strong institutions. Irrigation occupied a pivotal role among these mainsprings of production growth, enabling the cultivation of two or more crops per year from the same piece of land. Due to huge investments in irrigation, the irrigated area in India now exceeds 63 million hectares, the largest of any country in the world.

Rising oil prices and uncertainty over the security of existing fossil fuel reserves, combined with concerns over global climate change, have created the need for new transportation fuels and bioproducts to substitute for fossil carbon-based materials. Ethanol is considered to be the next-generation transportation fuel with the most potential, and significant quantities of ethanol are currently being produced from corn and sugarcane via a fermentation process. Utilizing lignocellulosic biomass as a feedstock is seen as the next step toward significantly expanding ethanol production. The biological conversion of cellulosic biomass into bioethanol is based on the breakdown of biomass into aqueous sugars using chemical and biological means, including the use of hydrolytic enzymes. From that point, the fermentable sugars can be further processed into ethanol or other advanced biofuels. Therefore, pretreatment is required to increase the surface accessibility of carbohydrate polymers to hydrolytic enzymes. The goal of the pretreatment process is to break down the lignin structure and disrupt the crystalline structure of cellulose, so that the acids or enzymes can easily access and hydrolyze the cellulose. Pretreatment can be the most expensive process in biomass-to-fuels conversion but it has great potential for improvements in efficiency and lowering of costs through further research and development. Pretreatment is an important tool for biomass-to-biofuels conversion processes and is the subject of this e-book.

Energy and eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes are of great interest to manufacturers, consumers, government and others. This is due to the soaring energy costs and the environmental impacts caused by high-energy consumption levels. However, the energy consumption of manufacturing processes and the associated environmental impact has been historically overlooked. The unit process is the fundamental and dynamic element of any manufacturing system. Thus, it requires careful evaluation of its energy and eco-efficiency in order to derive further improvement measures. In this book, Dr. Li has developed a reliable methodology for characterizing energy and eco-efficiency of unit manufacturing processes. The Specific Energy Consumption, SEC, has been identified as the key indicator for the energy efficiency of unit processes. An empirical approach has been used to develop unit process energy consumption models based on SEC. Then these models have been validated on different machine tools and manufacturing processes to characterise the relationship between process parameters and energy consumptions. The tested cases cover a wide range of manufacturing processes including turning, milling, grinding, injection moulding and electrical discharge machining. All the derived SEC models agree with a universal form, where the Material Removal Rate (MRR) or throughput rate plays a decisive role in the model. The statistical results and additional validation runs have further proved the high accuracy of the derived models which is capable of predicting energy consumption with an accuracy of over 90 %. In order to characterise the eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes, Dr. Li also discussed the value and the associated environmental impacts of the processes. Besides the electricity energy consumption, other resource consumptions such as tool and coolant have been taken into account. The interrelationship among process parameters, process value and the associated environmental impact has been integrated in the characterization of eco-efficiency. The results have been further investigated to develop strategies for improving the energy and eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes.

This textbook aims to briefly outline the main directions in which the geometrization of thermodynamics has been developed in the last decades. The textbook is accessible to the people trained in thermal sciences but not necessarily with solid formation in mathematics. For this, in the first part of the textbook a summary of the main mathematical concepts is made. In some sense, this makes the textbook self-consistent. The rest of the textbook consists of a collection of results previously obtained in this young branch of thermodynamics. The content is organized as follows.