In response to the technical bottleneck of the Venlo greenhouse’s inability to achieve year-round production due to the high temperature and humidity in the summer in South China, this study took an existing Venlo-type greenhouse in Guangzhou as the research object and constructed a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the greenhouse by comprehensively considering key factors such as solar radiation, thermal radiation, and crop canopy resistance. After on-site experiments, it was verified that, except for the top area of the greenhouse, the temperature deviation between the model simulation values and the measured values was less than 2 °C, and the error rate was less than 5%, confirming the model’s accurate representation of the temperature field distribution within the greenhouse. Based on the characteristics of the temperature and humidity fields revealed by the CFD simulation (canopy temperature gradient K = 0.144 °C/m, maximum temperature difference between upper and lower layers 20 °C), an optimized scheme of “wet curtain fan + salt bath dehumidification equipment” for local cooling and dehumidification of the crop canopy was proposed, and a non-uniform air duct layout was designed according to the temperature gradient characteristics. Field experiments showed that after optimization, the daytime temperature of the crop canopy was mostly controlled within 30 °C, the relative humidity was stably maintained below 80%, and the maximum temperature difference along the length of the greenhouse was reduced from 7 °C to 2 °C, effectively solving the problem of poor cooling and dehumidification effects of the traditional system. This scheme enabled the stable operation and year-round production of Venlo-type greenhouses in South China during the summer, providing technical support and engineering reference for greenhouse environmental control in high-humidity areas.

Super oxidized water is a disinfectant generated by electrolysis whose effectiveness depends mainly on oxidation–reduction potential and pH. In this study, a 22 factorial Design of Experiments was applied to evaluate the influence of applied potential (8.2–12.2 V) and NaCl concentration (0.05–0.25 wt.%) on the redox properties of SOW, aiming to produce solutions with targeted disinfection profiles. The obtained models showed excellent predictive capacity (R2 > 0.99), identifying NaCl concentration as the most influential factor affecting both oxidation–reduction potential and pH. The system enabled the controlled generation of SOW with ORP values ranging from approximately 950 to 1100 mV and pH between ~3.8 and 5.0, with experimental errors below 1.5%. Stability tests demonstrated that oxidation–reduction potential and pH remained within ±25 mV and ±0.15 units, respectively, over 24 weeks of storage. Microbiological evaluation revealed effective antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and Candida albicans, with inhibition halos of up to ~5 mm depending on ORP and microorganism. The results demonstrate that Design of Experiments enables precise adjustment of SOW redox properties, allowing optimization of antimicrobial performance for specific applications. This positions super oxidized water as a flexible, stable, and scalable disinfection technology for industrial and clinical use.

Improving the energy performance of existing multi-apartment residential buildings is critical for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in Central and Eastern Europe, where large stocks of post-war buildings with limited insulation are connected to district heating systems. This study evaluates façade insulation retrofit strategies for two representative typologies in Novi Beograd, Serbia—a high-rise tower and an elongated slab-type (‘lamella’) building—using calibrated dynamic energy models and cradle-to-use lifecycle assessment (LCA) over a 50-year service life. Models were calibrated against measured 2023–2024 heating consumption data (NMBE < 1%, CVRMSE < 15%) and normalized with Typical Meteorological Year weather for consistent scenario comparison. Retrofit scenarios applied expanded polystyrene (EPS) and cellulose insulation at 10, 12, and 15 cm thicknesses. Results show that external insulation reduces annual heating demand by approximately 19–20% compared to the uninsulated baseline (192 kWh/m2·a), with the majority of savings achieved at 10 cm and only marginal gains from additional thickness. Insulation thickness has a stronger influence on operational energy reduction than material choice, as differences between EPS and cellulose remain below 0.5%. LCA indicates 23.6–26.0% lower climate change impacts and 23.6–25.8% reduced cumulative energy demand in retrofit scenarios, with cellulose offering modest advantages due to lower embodied emissions and biogenic carbon storage. These findings support targeted envelope retrofits as an effective strategy for decarbonizing district-heated residential buildings in the region.

Licania tomentosa leaf extract was used to synthesize zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) which were systematically analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-Visible (UV-Vis) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopies and energy-dispersion X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) methods. Based on XRD scans, the green NPs have an average crystallite size of 15.9 nm as estimated using the Scherrer equation and have a roughly spherical shape with an average diameter of 25.15 ± 1.2 nm as calculated from SEM data. As estimated from the Tauc plot based on UV-Vis absorption spectra, ZnO NPs have a small band gap of 3.0 eV. The biosynthesized ZnO NPs were effectively utilized for the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) and crystal violet (CV) dyes under UV illumination with resulting MB and CV degradation efficiencies of ~94% and ~81% after 60 min and 70 min, with pH = 12 and pH = 10, respectively. Different experimental parameters such as NPs quantity, experimental pH, light intensity and initial concentration of dyes were varied to test the performance of the catalyst. Furthermore, efficient recycling of the catalyst was demonstrated. We also undertook antimicrobial studies of the green ZnO NPs. The ZnO NPs demonstrated broad-spectrum antimicrobial efficacy against Escherichia coli ATCC 35218, Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29737, Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 700603, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853, P. aeruginosa B3, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 29213, and S. aureus SA01, with the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and the inhibitory concentrations associated with 50% effect (IC50) values ranging from 250 to 2000 µg/mL and 7.74 to 283.14 µg/mL, respectively. The nanoparticles also significantly inhibited biofilm formation by E. faecalis ATCC 29737, P. aeruginosa ATCC 27856, and S. aureus SA03. The antimicrobial efficiency of the ZnO NPs against Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and Staphylococcus aureus SA03 isolates was also assessed using the disk diffusion assays. Taken together, our results reveal that the biosynthesized ZnO NPs are promising multifunctional materials with potential applications in antimicrobial treatments, biofilm control, and photocatalytic remediation.

The delineation of the Area of Review (AoR) is a fundamental requirement for Class VI carbon storage permits in the United States. The regulatory definition of the pressure front relies on the potential for injected fluids or formation brine to migrate into an Underground Source of Drinking Water (USDW). However, in deep sedimentary basins such as the Texas Gulf Coast and offshore regions, targeted saline formations often lack overlying USDWs. In these scenarios, traditional methods for calculating the critical pressure threshold become mathematically undefined or yield infinite AoR boundaries. This paper proposes a practical, geomechanics-based methodology for defining the pressure front in the absence of a USDW, framed as an alternative site-specific approach under the authority of the UIC Program Director (40 CFR 146.84). By leveraging existing regulatory limits on injection pressure, the proposed framework establishes a threshold based on the minimum horizontal stress, caprock fracture pressure, and fault reactivation limits via Mohr–Coulomb failure analysis. The framework further incorporates capillary breakthrough pressure as a third containment threshold, ensuring that the most restrictive condition governs the AoR boundary. A synthetic case study of a deep Gulf Coast saline formation demonstrates that this approach produces a finite, physically meaningful AoR that scales appropriately with injection operations (evaluated at 1.0 and 2.0 Mt/yr) and captures post-injection pressure evolution during the Post-Injection Site Care (PISC) period. Sensitivity analyses on permeability and fracture gradients confirm the robustness of the method. The study also examines model limitations, injection feasibility boundaries, and extensions toward a probabilistic framework. This framework provides operators and regulators with a defensible, regulatory-consistent pathway for advancing carbon storage projects in deep sedimentary basins, complete with a standardized reviewer checklist and an example AoR delineation report template.

The Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem (FJSP) is central to smart manufacturing, yet standard algorithms often prioritize productivity (makespan) at the expense of cost and reliability. This paper introduces t-MOHHO, a collaborative optimization framework designed to equilibrate machine load, processing costs, and delivery timeliness alongside throughput. By incorporating an adaptive Student’s t-distribution mutation operator and a non-linear energy escape mechanism, t-MOHHO effectively navigates high-dimensional search spaces. Extensive validation on 10 MK benchmark instances reveals that t-MOHHO demonstrates significant advantages over classic HHO, MOPSO, and MOEA/D across most metrics. Notably, in comparison to the state-of-the-art NSGA-III, t-MOHHO executes a clear trade-off: it trades marginal makespan efficiency for substantial reductions in cost and tardiness. Specifically, on the large-scale MK10 instance, t-MOHHO reduces total tardiness by 56.2% and lowers processing costs by 3.4% compared to NSGA-III. These results demonstrate that t-MOHHO can strategically sacrifice maximum speed to secure superior punctuality and cost-efficiency, making it a robust decision-support tool for Just-in-Time (JIT) production environments.

This research presents a two-dimensional transient thermo-hydraulic model designed to study how temperature and pressure change within a wellbore during CO2 tubing fracturing. The model integrates one-dimensional axial compressible flow with radial heat transfer across the tubing, annulus, casing, cement sheath, and surrounding geological formation. Using the predicted temperature and pressure distributions, the phase behavior of the fracturing fluid along the wellbore is assessed. To enhance the accuracy of phase predictions, a visualization experiment is performed on a CO2-based fracturing fluid containing 5 wt% of the thickener HPG. The critical transition conditions obtained experimentally are used to adjust the model accordingly. The study systematically examines the influence of key operational parameters such as injection rate, wellhead pressure, injection temperature, and the geothermal gradient of the formation. Findings reveal that injection conditions mainly govern the temperature and velocity fields, while heat transfer from the formation has a lesser impact during short-term injections. Pressure steadily decreases along the wellbore due to friction and fluid compressibility. A method based on density gradients is introduced to determine the depth at which phase transitions occur. Overall, this work offers a practical approach for predicting thermo-hydraulic behavior and phase changes during CO2 fracturing processes.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) include thousands of fluorinated organic compounds of anthropogenic origin. Their extensive use, combined with their high stability, has led to the widespread contamination of water and soil resources. Here, single-step foam fractionation enhanced soil washing was carried out for the remediation of PFAS-contaminated soil. Concentrations of target Perfluoroalkyl Carboxylic Acids (PFCAs) and Perfluoroalkane Sulfonic Acids (PFSAs) were monitored in foam and leachate along the duration of the treatment. Among PFCAs, only long-chain compounds peaked in foam at the beginning of the treatment. This was consistent with the increase in the sorption affinity to the air–water interface with chain length. The same behavior was observed also in PFSAs by comparing PFHXs, PFHpS and PFOS. The fraction of PFCAs still in the leachate after 40 min of treatment was found to decrease with chain length, with PFSAs showing a similar trend. PFAS removal significantly increased with soil particle size, ranging from 48.2 ± 3.2% (fraction < 0.063 µm) to 64.1 ± 1.9% (fraction > 2 mm). Final mass balance analyses detail PFAS distribution among soil, leachate, and foam, providing valuable information for the additional treatment required to destroy the PFAS load extracted from the contaminated soil.

Vacuum drying is a promising alternative to conventional dehydration for heat-sensitive vegetables, although process temperature can significantly affect both drying behavior and product quality. In this study, vacuum drying of cauliflower florets (Brassica oleracea) was evaluated at 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 °C under 10 kPa, using freeze-drying as a reference. Desorption isotherms were determined at 50 and 70 °C and fitted to common models, where the GAB model provided excellent fits (R2 = 0.9999 and 0.9997, respectively). The drying kinetics were successfully described by four thin-layer models, with the Midilli–Kucuk and Weibull models performing best overall. Color was significantly affected, with total color differences (ΔE) ranging from 15.9 to 20.6 and higher browning indices at elevated temperatures. Bioactive compounds (total phenols, flavonoids, and glucosinolates) and antioxidant potential (by DPPH and ORAC assays) were quantified to assess changes in functional quality across treatments. Bioactive compounds showed the highest values at the highest temperatures (60–80 °C). The DPPH assay remained stable between 50 and 80 °C, but ORAC assay decreased with increasing temperature, suggesting that vacuum drying at 60–70 °C offers the best balance between overall bioactive retention and functionality for producing cauliflower powder.

The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is widely recognized as one of the main drivers of climate change [...]