Analysis of the Effect of Mn on the Recrystallization Kinetics of High Nb Steel: An Example of Physically-based Alloy Design

Major US electric utility climate pledges have the potential to collectively reduce power sector emissions by one-third

The conductivity mechanism of non-illuminated n-type TiO2 semiconductor films (prepared by electrophoretic deposition) modified with either terpyridine “tpy-Ru(II)” or bipyridine “bpy-Ru(II)” ruthenium complexes, has been investigated using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) measurements at different temperatures. While all the films (bare TiO2 and TiO2/Dye) showed that the electronic conductivity in a low temperature window (T < 313.24 K) can be described by a mechanism that follows the Mott equation (3D Variable Range Hopping, 3D-VRH), in a high temperature window (T >313.24 K), the conduction mechanism corresponds to the Nearest Neighbor Hopping (NNH) mechanism. The effect of the complexes is reflected in changes of the energetic parameters caused by the modifications in the distribution of energetic sites induced by the electronic overlapping of the π- molecular orbitals in the bpy or tpy ligands and the TiO2 films.

Trade-offs between crop production and GHG emissions following organic material inputs in wheat-maize systems.

Analysis of Material Based GHG Emissions and Costs for Assembly Products Using Asian Lifecycle Inventory Databases: Cell Phone Case Study

Estimating the pre-harvest greenhouse gas costs of energy crop production

In recent years, sustainable supply chain management has gained increasing attention, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout supply chains have been identified as one of the most important sustainability issues. This paper presents an investigation of the problem of transshipment among distribution centers (DCs) in a cold supply chain to achieve sustainable inventory cross-filling. Although transshipment is an effective tool for supply chain pooling, the possibility of increased GHG emissions raises environmental concerns. This study establishes a sustainable cold-chain logistics model that considers GHG emissions from DC storage and transshipment trucks. The new sustainable cold-chain model also reflects laden status and cargo weights of trucks for accurate emission assessment. An optimization model is also developed to minimize both GHG emissions and costs in the cold chain. Numerical simulations are conducted for diverse problem cases to examine important problem characteristics. The result analysis identifies that inventory service levels and demand variability have a strong impact on GHG emissions in transshipment; small p-values in the statistical analysis verify the significance of this effect. The different effects of demand variability and service levels on each emission source are also analyzed. The results demonstrate that transshipment among DCs can effectively reduce both GHG emissions and costs in cold supply chains. This study provides useful models and tools to assess GHG emissions and optimize decisions for the design and operation of transshipment. The proposed models will enable the assessment of sustainable alternatives and achieve sustainability objectives effectively for cold supply chains.

Livestock production is under growing public and scientific scrutiny for its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This article contains a preliminary assessment of the inclusion of upstream life-cycle GHG emissions in concentrated feeds design, using the most common nonlinear programming optimization algorithms to determine feed composition. First, GHG emissions are included as costs in a single criteria optimization problem. The unit price of GHG emissions was obtained using a genetic algorithm. Second, GHG emissions are included as a target function to minimize in a multi criteria optimization problem using goal attainment programming. Results obtained after both optimization methods were applied to two case studies, namely fattening pigs and rabbit feeds. Changing ingredients in concentrated feed blends has a marginal effect on GHG emissions due to mandatory nutritional constraints. If the optimization is unconstrained, the maximum possible decrease in GHG emissions is 27.5% for the pigs feed, accompanied by increasing costs and a decrease in feed nutritional quality. To maintain nutritional integrity, the maximum possible reduction in GHG emissions is 7.5%. Considering cost as an optimization variable in the problem, the maximum decreases are even lower. It is possible to decrease emissions by 71% for the rabbits feed, but the cost of the reduction is higher than the opportunity cost for farmers to reduce GHG emissions using other strategies. These results are qualitatively robust but critically depend on feed ingredients GHG emissions and cost data.

In recent years, global warming has become a serious problem in a global supply chain which is a series of cross-border transaction including custom duty that is a tax imposed for imported goods. In order to prevent the global warming, Green House Gas (GHG) emissions needs to be reduced throughout the supply chain. Moreover, procurement costs, material-based GHG emissions, tariff in countries are different by each country. In addition, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is a free trade agreement signed between 11 countries, including Japan and Malaysia, have promoted the trade in parts and products among the TPP participant countries without customs duty. Thus, the network on the global supply chain affects not only costs but also GHG emissions. On the other hand, the disruption by COVID-19 caused adverse impacts to redesign supply chains all over the world, where parts or materials are not provided from current suppliers by the disruption. Thus, the network may be reconfigured, which brings different GHG emissions in the global supply chain network before and after the disruption across TPP countries. The purpose of this study is to evaluate material-based GHG emissions under COVID-19 disruption on redesigning global supply chain network across TPP countries. Firstly, global supply chain network is modeled and formulated. Next, numerical experiments are conducted for evaluating material-based GHG emissions under disruption scenarios. Finally, the results are analyzed in terms of GHG emissions and costs. The result shows that the highest reduction ratio of the total GHG emission on a global supply chain is 58.4% compared to the baseline.KeywordsGreen supply chainEconomic partnershipLifecycle inventory databaseBill of Materials0–1 integer programming

Optimal design and allocation of electrified vehicles and dedicated charging infrastructure for minimum life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and cost

The focus towards the design of light environment friendly fuel efficient vehicles has led to an increase in the demand for high strength steels. As it is true for any developing country, the extra challenge for Indian steel industries is to produce such high strength steels at minimum cost. The aim of the present work was to develop two high strength steel grades with minimum tensile strengths of 540 and 590 MPa, in combination with good ductility and stretch flangeability, through the thin slab casting and rolling route. The present paper describes the alloy and process design methodology used for achieving the target properties. Several mill trials were taken to test the proposed design, wherein the target microstructure and mechanical properties were successfully achieved.

To reduce carbon intensity, an improved management method balancing the reduction in costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is required for Tianjin’s waste management system. Firstly, six objective functions, namely, cost minimization, GHG minimization, eco-efficiency minimization, cost maximization, GHG maximization and eco-efficiency maximization, are built and subjected to the same constraints with each objective function corresponding to one scenario. Secondly, GHG emissions and costs are derived from the waste flow of each scenario. Thirdly, the range of GHG emissions and costs of other potential scenarios are obtained and plotted through adjusting waste flow with infinitely possible step sizes according to the correlation among the above six scenarios. And the optimal scenario is determined based on this range. The results suggest the following conclusions. 1) The scenarios located on the border between scenario cost minimization and GHG minimization create an optimum curve, and scenario GHG minimization has the smallest eco-efficiency on the curve; 2) Simple pursuit of eco-efficiency minimization using fractional programming may be unreasonable; 3) Balancing GHG emissions from incineration and landfills benefits Tianjin’s waste management system as it reduces GHG emissions and costs.

Using data for crude oil transported out of North Dakota in 2014, this paper constructs new estimates of the air pollution, greenhouse gas, and spill and accident costs from long-distance movement of petroleum products by rail and pipelines. Our analysis has three main findings. First, air pollution and greenhouse gas costs are nearly twice as large for rail as for pipelines. Second, air pollution and greenhouse gas costs are much larger than estimates of spill and accidents costs. Third, air pollution and greenhouse gas costs of transporting fuel by rail and pipelines are one-fifth to one-tenth of the costs of combusting fuel in motor vehicles. These results suggest that the policy debate surrounding crude oil transportation may be putting too much relative weight on spills and accidents, while overlooking a far more serious external cost: air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Assessment of unutilized woody biomass energy and the cost and greenhouse gas emissions of woody biomass power plants in Hokkaido, Japan

Anesthesiology has arelevant carbon footprint, mainly due to volatile anesthetics (scope 1emissions). Additionally, energy used in the operating theater (scope 2emissions) contributes to anesthesia-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Optimizing the electricity use of medical devices might reduce both GHG emissions and costs might hold potential to reduce anaesthesia-related GHG-emissions and costs. We analyzed the electricity consumption of six different anesthesia workstations, calculated their GHG emissions and electricity costs and investigated the potential to reduce emissions and cost by using the devices in amore efficient way. Power consumption (active power in watt, W) was measured with the devices off, in standby mode, or fully on with the measuring instrument SecuLife ST. Devices studied were: Dräger Primus, Löwenstein Medical LeonPlus, Getinge FlowC, Getinge FlowE, GE Carestation 750 and GE Aisys. Calculations of GHG emissions were made with different emission factors, ranging from very low (0.09 kg CO2-equivalent/kWh) to very high (0.660 kg CO2-equivalent/kWh). Calculations of electricity cost were made assuming aprice of 0.25 € per kWh. Power consumption during operation varied from 58 W (GE CareStation 750) to 136 W (Dräger Primus). In standby, the devices consumed between 88% and 93% of the electricity needed during use. The annual electricity consumption to run 96devices in alarge clinical department ranges between 45and 105 Megawatt-hours (MWh) when the devices are left in standby during off hours. If 80% of the devices are switched off during off hours, between 20and 46 MWh can be saved per year in asingle institution. At the average emission factor of our hospital, this electricity saving corresponds to areduction of GHG emissions between 8.5and 19.8 tons CO2-equivalent. At the assumed prices, acost reduction between 5000 € and 11,600 € could be achieved by this intervention. The power consumption varies considerably between the different types of anesthesia workstations. All devices exhibit ahigh electricity consumption in standby mode. Avoiding standby mode during off hours can save energy and thus GHG emissions and cost. The reductions in GHG emissions and electricity cost that can be achieved with this intervention in alarge anesthesiology department are modest. Compared with GHG emissions generated by volatile anesthetics, particularly desflurane, optimization of electricity consumption of anesthesia workstations holds amuch smaller potential to reduce the carbon footprint of anesthesia; however, as switching off anesthesia workstations overnight is relatively effortless, this behavioral change should be encouraged from both an ecological and economical point of view.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relation between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cost of debt and to estimate the cost that lenders are imputing to GHG emissions. Data on GHG emissions were hand‐collected from Carbon Disclosure Project reports, whereas data on the cost of debt and other financial data were obtained from Bloomberg Professional database. Using a sample of Canadian firms, the results show that GHG emissions increase firms' cost of debt. In other words, for each additional tonne of GHG emissions, the cost of debt increases on average by 11–15%. These results imply that creditors incorporate firms' GHG emissions into their lending decisions and they penalize the polluting firms. This could encourage firms to reduce and manage their GHG emissions because there is a cost associated with these emissions. This study is one of the first to examine the relationship between GHG emissions and the cost of debt.