Economic Performance Assessment Research Articles

Technical and Economic Performance Assessment of Solar Milling Plants in Zambia

In 2015, the Zambian government embarked on a proactive endeavor to enhance the accessibility of economical maize meal through the inception of the Solar Powered Milling Plants (SMPs) Project. The Chinese Government and the Government of the Republic of Zambia jointly provided co-financing, supporting this audacious initiative with a significant financial commitment of US$200 million. However, there have been no documented results on the technical and economic performance of the solar milling plants. To this effect, this study aimed to establish the technical and economic performance of the milling plants installed by the Zambia Cooperative Federation. To achieve this, the study sought to: (1) establish the technical operational characteristics of the installed SMPS; (2) establish the factors that influenced the sitting of the plants; (3) determine the economic benefits of the SMPs; and (4) benchmark the technical operating conditions of the installed SMPs. The study employed a mixed methods approach, where benchmarking observations and semi-structured questionnaires were used as data collection instruments. The sample size of the study was 168, comprising cooperative leaders, solar milling plant operators, and community members from the 12 sites in Masaiti, Chikankata, Solwezi, and Kapiri Mposhi districts where the milling plants were installed. The field observations and questionnaires that were used for the study showed that all twelve sites in the Solwezi, Masaiti, Kapiri Mposhi, and Chikankata Districts needed the same amount of power to run, which was between 7.5 kW and 9.0 kW. However, only Site 3 in Solwezi and Sites 4 and 5 in Masaiti Districts strictly followed the standard operation time of 8 hours. The study has also shown that the two main factors that influenced the placement of the solar milling plants were proximity to the main roads of the communities and the availability of land near the Food Reserve Agency(FRA) shades. With regards to economic benefits, the generated results showed that the installed milling plants brought about employment creation as two operators were employed for each of the 12 sites. However, the revenues generated by the solar milling plants were not economically viable for loan repayment. The study recommended that predictive and corrective maintenance, in addition to project management training for cooperatives and operators, be carried out to improve the technical and economic performance of the solar milling plants.

Advancing the Adoption of Net Metering: An Economic Assessment of Grid-Tied Solar Photovoltaic Systems in Urban Homes in Ghana

Net metering schemes are pivotal in advancing grid-tied solar PV systems and promoting renewable energy adoption in developing nations. This study investigates the economic viability of implementing net metering within urban households in Ghana, considering the existing block tariff structure and a proposed time-of-use (ToU) structure for grid-tied PV systems. The study employed PVSOL premium (2023 R3) software for the economic performance assessment of the net metering schemes for simulated grid-tied residential PV systems in selected cities of Ghana’s Coastal, Forest, and Savannah climatic zones. The evaluation encompasses key economic metrics, including the levelized cost of electricity, accrued cash flow, annual cash savings, internal rate of return, and payback period. The study findings showed that, in most scenarios, the existing block tariff structure initially proved more economically favourable than the proposed two-tier Time-of-Use (ToU) structure. Consequently, financial investments were recouped within the project’s lifespan under net metering schemes based on the existing block tariff structure, whereas investments were not recouped under the ToU-based schemes. Nevertheless, factors such as improved daytime consumption, rising electricity tariffs, and aligning peak demand pricing hours with solar power generation hours emerged as potential drivers that could make ToU-based net metering schemes more attractive than block tariff structures. The study findings have significant implications for policy development related to tariff structures, particularly concerning the implementation of net metering for grid-tied solar PV systems within the residential sector of Ghana and other developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Technical and economic performance assessment of blue hydrogen production using new configuration through modelling and simulation

Steam methane reforming (SMR) is the dominant process for hydrogen production, which produce large amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a by-product. To address concerns about carbon emissions, there is an increasing focus on blue hydrogen to mitigate carbon emissions during hydrogen production. However, the commercialization of blue hydrogen production (BHP) is hindered by the challenges of high cost and energy consumption. This study proposes a new configuration to address these challenges, which is characterized by: (a) the use of piperazine (PZ) as a solvent, which has a high CO2 absorption efficiency; (b) a more efficient heat exchange configuration which recovers the waste exergy from flue gas; (c) the advanced flash stripper (AFS) was adopted to reduce the capital cost due to its simpler stripper configuration. In addition, the technical and economic performance of the proposed energy and cost-saving blue hydrogen production (ECSB) process is investigated and compared with the standard SMR process. The detailed models of the SMR process and the post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) process were developed and integrated in Aspen plus® V11. The results of the technical analysis showed that the ECSB process with 30 wt.% PZ achieves a 36.3 % reduction in energy penalty when compared to the standard process with 30 wt.% Monoethanolamine (MEA). The results of the economic analysis showed that the lowest levelized cost of blue hydrogen (LCBH) was achieved by the ECSB process with 30 wt.% PZ. Compared to the BHP process with 30 wt.% MEA, the LCBH was reduced by 19.7 %.

Assessment of economic performance of an industrial building using life cycle cost & refined benefit-cost analysis – A case study

This study utilizes Life cycle costing (LCC) analysis to assess the economic viability of an industrial building. It has been adapted to estimate daily costs and the resulting benefit-cost ratio (BCR), determining whether the new facility investment is worthwhile. Additionally, the study investigates awareness and usage of the LCC concept among civil engineers and architects. A survey was conducted on 500 technically qualified individuals in the construction industry in the study area. Results show that LCC for buildings is underrated. The study breaks down construction, operation, maintenance, and deconstruction cost and calculates the total cost over the building's life. The BCR, based on daily costs and expected annual profit, is 9. A sensitivity analysis accounts for market fluctuations, with the worst-case ratio being 2. This innovative technique can aid in assessing the proposed building's feasibility and profitability during the design phase. However, LCC concepts are not widely known or used for cost estimation, so more awareness is needed to convey its economic advantages to stakeholders.

Scenario Analysis of Offshore Wind-Power Systems under Uncertainty

Wind-energy systems are strongly affected by uncertainty and variability. Therefore, uncertainty sources should be considered during the economic evaluation of this type of system. In the literature, a framework for the economic performance assessment of wind-power systems has been proposed. Furthermore, in another contribution, the random discontinuities of political and regulatory scenarios have been included by using scenario analysis. However, the implemented models neglected the uncertainty related to disruptive events and the effect of climate change on the wind resource. To fill this gap, in this paper, climate change and disruptive events are included in a new model for evaluating the economic performance of wind turbine systems using scenario analysis. Analysis of a numerical example has been carried out to show the framework’s capabilities and to evaluate the effects of the added issues. The main results confirm previous findings on the necessity of including regulatory and political risks to achieve a proper economic evaluation. Additionally, they show that disruptive events increase the variability of the expected value of the Net Present Value (NPV). Therefore, even though climate change is expected to increase wind producibility in the numerical example location, the inclusion of disruptive events constrains the NPV growth.

Energy, economic, and environmental (3E) performance assessment, comparison, and analysis of airport cargo terminal microgrid system under the islanded and grid-connected modes

Microgrids, which can be grid-connected or isolated, may experience dependability issues as a result of intermittent renewable energy. The implementation of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) could alleviate this problem but is still a challenging task because of its interference, uncertain, and unpredictable nature. Currently, the absence of comprehensive assessment impedes large-scale applications. In this study, a novel 3E assessment method-based complete quantitative assessment is suggested and inventively integrated with a newly proposed triangle evaluation scheme. Loads of an airport cargo terminal, which are used to test the assessment approach, are classified into critical and non-critical categories according to their necessity. The microgrid system flexibility is considered by the trade-off of non-critical loads. Results show that the assessment method is more intuitive in quantifying the system's performance. The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) in the islanded mode is lower than the current electricity price (from 0.5407 to 0.5439 CNY/kWh) and the annual carbon emission is reduced to one-third of that in the grid-connected mode. Its flexibility can effectively reduce dependence on backup power generation, where the daily peak shedding increases from 217.88 kW to 555.04 kW and daily hours without charging from 6.7 h to 8.9 h. The carbon emission decreases by 32 % considering the impacts of the system flexibility. Besides, the critical distance exists when the LCOE exceeds the current market electricity price.

Techno-economic analysis of a solar-assisted heat pump dryer for drying agricultural products.

Postharvest losses (PHLs) of biomaterials, such as vegetables and fruits, significantly impact food security and economic stability in developing nations. In Tanzania, PHLs are estimated to range between 30% and 40% for cereal crops and even higher for perishable crops such as fruits and vegetables. Open-sun drying (OSD) is the most extensively employed method because of its affordability and simplicity. However, OSD has several drawbacks, including difficulties in managing drying parameters, long drying times owing to adverse weather, and product contamination. The solar-assisted heat pump dryer (SAHPD) is a technology designed as an alternative solution for drying biomaterials and reducing PHL. A limited number of SAHPDs have been constructed in developing nations. Most of the works have concentrated on the performance analysis of the systems. This neglects the techno-economic assessment, which is important to provide both a quantitative and qualitative understanding of the financial viability of the technology. The present study therefore investigates the techno-economic analysis of a novel SAHPD for drying agricultural products, particularly vegetables and fruits. To determine whether the SAHPD technology is technically and economically viable, tomatoes and carrots were dried and analyzed to determine their thermal and economic performance. The results show that the initial moisture contents of tomatoes (Lycopersicum esculentum) and carrots (Daucus carota) were reduced from 93% and 88% to 10% in 11 and 12 h, respectively. The coefficient of performance (COP), drying time (DT), specific moisture extraction ration (SMER) and thermal efficiency () were found to be 3.4, 2.3 kg/h, 1.33 kg/kWh and 54.0%, respectively. The economic analysis was assessed using the annualized cost, lifecycle savings, and payback period for the dryer's life span of 15 years. The initial investment of the SAHPD was $5221.8 and the annualized cost was $1076.5. The cumulative present worth for 15 years was found to be $23,828.8 and $27,553.1 for tomatoes and carrots, respectively. The payback period for tomatoes was found to be 3 years, whereas for carrots it was 2.6 years. Based on thermal and economic performance assessment results, the developed SAHPD is technically and economically viable to be considered for further investments.

Multidimensional performance assessment, government competition and ecological welfare performance.

Improving the efficiency of converting natural resources into social benefits is an important issue for sustainable development in today's world. Based on this background this paper applies the super-efficient SBM model with non-expected output to measure the ecological welfare performance (EWP) of Chinese provinces from 2005-2019, and explores the relationship between government competition and EWP under different assessment systems. The research results show that government competition under economic performance assessment is self-interested and short-sighted, which can negatively affect ecological welfare performance in the current period as well as in the next four years. In contrast, government competition under the environmental assessment system promotes EWP in both the current and long term, balancing short-term and long-term benefits. The results of the spatial GMM found that government competition under economic performance appraisal can deteriorate EWP in local as well as surrounding areas, but government competition under the environmental assessment system can achieve an increase in local ecological welfare performance and the spillover effect is not significant. To alleviate the limitations of a single appraisal system, this paper incorporates both economic and ecological appraisals into the multidimensional appraisal system. When the weights of both are between 1:9 and 3:7, the government competition under multidimensional performance appraisal can promote both current and longer-term EWP, and achieve its own ecological welfare performance without affecting the surrounding areas.

Offshore wind power system economic evaluation framework under aleatory and epistemic uncertainty

Design and assessment of energy systems is affected by many sources of uncertainty and variability determining their technical and economic performances. This is even more relevant in systems exploiting renewable energy sources, given the intrinsic uncertainty in their availability. In this case, traditional design and evaluation methods based on deterministic analysis assuming average nominal values of involved parameters may lead to inaccurate decisions and underestimating inherent risk. Software tools for evaluating investment in renewable power systems are widespread, but uncertainty is often only included in the form of simple sensitivity analysis, changing one-element at time, thus failing to give a complete picture of uncertainty propagation effects. Some contributions on the economic evaluation of renewable energy systems under uncertainty are available in the literature, but only a few sources of uncertainty are considered. As a contribution to filling this gap, in this work, a framework for economic performance assessment of offshore wind power systems considering the effects of both epistemic and aleatory uncertainty is proposed by simultaneously considering the uncertainty of the correlations used to model the system, the variability of resource availability and energy sale price as well as the impact of failures and major disruptive events. The approach allows a thorough and realistic assessment of uncertainty propagation on the profitability of the investment, and is demonstrated in an accompanying application example.

Transient behavior of a falling-film drain water heat recovery device, thermal and economic performance assessments

The drain water heat recovery device (DWHR) is a vertical, counter-flow heat exchanger, which is designed to recover heat from warm grey water in buildings. In this study, the transient characteristics of a DWHR device is experimentally and analytically investigated. A transient model is developed to predict the response time of the DWHR device under different flow conditions. The thermal performance of the system is evaluated with the transient and steady state effectiveness. The effect of system operating conditions and geometry on the response time was investigated experimentally and well predicted analytically. It was found that the response time increases with the volume of water in the system and decreases with the water flow rate. In addition, a large decrease in the effectiveness is observed when short and frequent use of hot water occurs. An economic analysis concluded that there is a 37% overall reduction in annual savings when the device transient performance is taken into consideration, where individually the sink and shower usage annual saving decreases by 56% and 13% respectively.

Exergy, economic, and climate performance evaluation of an efficient clean cogeneration system driven by low-temperature waste-heat

Currently, waste-heat emissions from industrial processes contribute significantly to climate change. Effective recovery of waste-heat is crucial for saving energy and mitigating global warming. In this study, we proposed a clean, low energy consuming cooling and power generation system driven by waste-heat at 130 °C, and compared it to the existing system. For comparing the two systems, R1234yf was used as the refrigerant, which was the best-performing refrigerant among the seven HFOs evaluated. The performance, economic efficiency, and environmental impact of the two systems were comprehensively compared based on exergy, economic, and climate performance assessments. The results showed that exergy efficiency of the proposed system was 85.46%, which was 10.08% higher than that of the original system. The equipment investment cost by the proposed system decreased by 21.17% (from $3.36 × 105 to $2.65 × 105), as compared to the original system. Moreover, the annual operating and total costs were reduced by 24.59% and 21.28%, respectively, compared to the original system. In terms of climate performance assessment, the proposed system reduced emissions by 1.18 × 107 kg CO2eq. Additionally, the proposed system reduced 1.33 × 107 kg CO2eq compared to the original system that produced 1.50 × 106 kg CO2eq. Taken together, the proposed system achieved higher exergy efficiency while reducing costs and environmental impact. This was due to the heat integration technology used to achieve energy cascading, low-energy ejectors instead of energy-intensive compressors, and the use of environmentally friendly HFO as refrigerant. In future, the proposed system could provide a reference for efficient recovery of low-temperature industrial waste-heat and development of energy systems adapted to current trends in clean industrial production.

Energy and economic performance assessment of a solar-assisted regenerative vacuum membrane desalination system

Vacuum membrane water desalination is a promising technology for freshwater production with the advantages of low conduction heat loss and mass transfer resistance, compared to other membrane technologies. Such systems can be driven by solar thermal collectors for green water production, yet there is a lack of dynamic system simulations in the literature to comprehensively assess the energy and economic system performance and evaluate the impact of brine recirculation as a method of regeneration, especially under hot desert climates where solar resources are abundant, but freshwater resources are scarce (e.g., the northern coast of Egypt, considered as the case study here). In this study, a dynamic system simulation model is developed in TRNSYS, where a new “Type” is introduced for the vacuum membrane module. Initial sizing of the system with ∼20 % solar fraction resulted in annual average gained output ratio and specific thermal energy consumption of 2.51 and 133.5 kWh/m3, respectively, with levelized cost of water and payback period of 14.7 USD/m3 and 1.53 years, respectively. By increasing the solar collectors’ area from 8 to 16 m2, the levelized cost of water increased by 14.54 %. The storage volume was highly influential on the solar fraction, which increased by 101.39 % as the volume increased from 0.3 to 0.7 m3. Increasing the membrane area from 0.3 to 0.5 m2 increased the gained output ratio by 76.75 % while decreasing the levelized cost of water by 14.79 %. Internal heat regeneration through brine recirculation enhanced the system performance at lower recirculation ratios. Without recirculation, the levelized cost of water increased by 117.41 % and the system met the daily distillate water demand for only 90 days of the year.

Assessing and optimizing the hydrological performance of Grey-Green infrastructure systems in response to climate change and non-stationary time series

Climate change has led to the increased intensity and frequency of extreme meteorological events, threatening the drainage capacity in urban catchments and densely built-up cities. To alleviate urban flooding disasters, strategies coupled with green and grey infrastructure have been proposed to support urban stormwater management. However, most strategies rely largely on diachronic rainfall data and ignore long-term climate change impacts. This study described a novel framework to assess and to identify the optimal solution in response to uncertainties following climate change. The assessment framework consists of three components: (1) assess and process climate data to generate long-term time series of meteorological parameters under different climate conditions; (2) optimise the design of Grey-Green infrastructure systems to establish the optimal design solutions; and (3) perform a multi-criteria assessment of economic and hydrological performance to support decision-making. A case study in Guangzhou, China was carried out to demonstrate the usability and application processes of the framework. The results of the case study illustrated that the optimised Grey-Green infrastructure could save life cycle costs and reduce total outflow (56–66%), peak flow (22–85%), and TSS (more than 60%) compared to the fully centralised grey infrastructure system, indicating its high superior in economic competitiveness and hydrological performance under climate uncertainties. In terms of spatial configuration, the contribution of green infrastructure appeared not as critical as the adoption of decentralisation of the drainage networks. Furthermore, under extreme drought scenarios, the decentralised infrastructure system exhibited an exceptionally high degree of removal performance for non-point source pollutants.

Electrohydrodynamic drying versus conventional drying methods: A comparison of key performance indicators

Preserving fruits and vegetables by drying is a traditional yet effective way of reducing food waste. Existing drying methods are either energy-intensive or lead to a significant reduction in product quality. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is an energy-efficient low-temperature drying method that presents an opportunity to comply with the current challenges of existing drying methods. However, despite its promising characteristics, EHD drying is yet to be accepted by industry and farmers. The adoption of EHD drying is hindered due to different reasons, such as uncertainties surrounding its scalability, quality of dried product, cost of operation, and sustainability compared to conventional drying methods. To address these concerns, this study quantifies and benchmarks the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of EHD drying compared to the standard conventional drying methods based on lab-scale experiments. These drying methods include hot-air, freeze, microwave, and solar drying. The results show that drying food using EHD is at least 1.6, 20, and 70 times more energy-efficient than the microwave, freeze, and hot-air, respectively. Similar results could be observed for exergy efficiency. EHD drying has superior product quality compared to other drying methods. For instance, it could retain 62% higher total phenolic content with 21% less color degradation than freeze-drying. Although microwave drying resulted in significantly higher drying kinetics than other techniques, EHD performed better than solar and freeze-drying but was comparable with hot-air drying. EHD drying also shows promising results in economic performance assessment. It is the cheapest drying method after solar drying and has the highest estimated net present value (NPV) after hot-air drying. Overall, compared to the currently used drying methods for small to medium-scale drying, EHD was found to be a more exergy and energy-efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable alternative that can provide higher-quality dried products. However, its drying kinetics should be improved for industrial applications.

The effect of a currency board arrangement on subjective assessments of a country's economic performance

We present a novel approach to evaluating the effect of a monetary exchange rate regime on economic performance, focusing on countries with a currency board arrangement (CBA). This approach is designed to evaluate the impact of the regime on the perceptions and expectations of a population. We utilise seemingly unrelated regressions to analyse data from large-sample surveys conducted by the Austrian National Bank over the period 2007-2016 in ten European transition economies. The analysis indicates that the probability of the economic situation in a country being perceived as good by its citizens is lower in countries with a currency board arrangement. However, this negative effect almost disappears among respondents who do not trust their government and when there is a significant recession in the country. These findings suggest that a CBA should be maintained for its stabilising effects: 1) when the economic situation is unfavourable, although it might not be beneficial once the situation is stabilised; 2) in countries with low levels of trust in government.

Thermodynamic and Economic Performance Assessment of Double-Effect Absorption Chiller Systems with Series and Parallel Connections

Absorption cooling technologies converting excess heat and renewable heat resources to cooling energy have shown progress in recent years. In this study, two 400 kW LiBr solution absorption chiller types with series and parallel connected are analyzed over a range of parameter values to better understand their applicability for different uses. Thermodynamic models for the components were constructed and validated. The performance of the chillers related to heat transfer, energy, exergy, and economy performance was comprehensively analyzed. The operating performance was investigated by considering the external variables, including inlet cooling water, chilled water, and inlet steam temperatures and the solution allocation ratio. The results indicate that the parallel connected chiller reaches higher energy and exergy performance than the series-connected chiller, but the heat transfer and economic performance was lower. The coefficient of performance and the exergy efficiency of the parallel chiller were for the reference system 1.30 and 24.42%, respectively. Except for the exergy efficiency, the inlet steam and inlet chilled water temperature had positive impact on the heat transfer, energy, and economic performance, while the inlet cooling water temperature trends the opposite. The sensitivity analysis on solution allocation ratio showed that a higher ratio decreases the heat transfer and economic performance, but considering the energy and exergy performance, a suitable allocation ratio would be 0.54.

PENGARUH GOOD CORPORATE GOVERNANCE DAN KEBIJAKAN MANAJEMEN CSR TERHADAP PROFITABILITAS DI INDEKS SAHAM SYARIAH INDONESIA

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether good corporate governance and corporate social responsibility can affect the level of company profitability. Which is where GCG is proxied by managerial ownership, institutional ownership, and the independence of the Board of Commissioners. CSR is proxied using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G-4 indicator with 91 assessment indicators, which consist of 9 points of economic performance assessment, 34 points of environmental performance assessment, 16 points of assessment of labor practices and work comfort, 12 points of human rights assessment. people, 11 points for community assessment, and 9 points for product performance assessment. This study uses data on the financial statements of companies in the consumer goods industry listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange Sharia Stock Index (ISSI) for the period 2017-2020. The population in this study includes all companies in the consumer goods industry listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange as many as 41 companies. The data collection method used in this research is purposive sampling. The sample in this study were 14 companies with an observation period of 4 years so that a total of 56 companies were observed. The conclusion of this study shows that good corporate governance does not partially affect the company's profitability. Corporate social responsibility partially affects the company's profitability. And good corporate governance and corporate social responsibility simultaneously affect the company's profitability.

Assessment of environmental, economic and technical performance of geopolymer concrete: a case study

Although several studies report the CO2 reduction obtained from alkali-activated materials/geopolymers, only a few investigate their engineering, environmental and economic aspects. The present paper provides an evaluation approach to address these three major aspects of geopolymer concrete by choosing three scenarios for industrial precast applications. Using the analytical hierarchy process, a single sustainability score was determined for three scenarios using technical, environmental and economic parameters. Such sustainability sensitivity analysis led to decision-making for various scenarios. This case study provides an example of reaching these parameters for choosing suitable concrete mixtures for a given application or requirements. The technical and environmental results showed that a wide range of late and early age compressive strength could be achieved by changing the mix composition and proportions. However, all the geopolymer concrete samples exhibited a lower environmental footprint than OPC concrete.

Comprehensive Evaluation of Government Economic Management Performance Based on Multidimensional Data Mining in Fuzzy Comprehensive Environment.

Economic, political, social, and military activities all fall under the umbrella of government duties. The modification and reinterpretation of economic functions are the primary focus of the innovation in government administration style under the wave of economic globalisation. The effectiveness of the government's economic administration determines the general level of public administration at the federal level. An essential issue of national public administration that has a significant impact on the political growth of many nations is the performance evaluation of government economic administration. The people are the subject of government economic administration performance evaluation, and the people adjudicate the outcomes. An essential method of assessing the productivity of various departments is through performance review. The nation is currently in the process of switching from its long-standing planned economic system to a market economic system. The internal and external environments of governmental organisations are continually changing in addition to the strong trend of economic globalisation. Determining and advancing the national government's economic administration model is so crucial. The article offers a multidimensional data mining-based optimum design scheme for the thorough assessment of government economic administration performance. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation rule is an effective method for quantifying the qualitative indicators when the quantitative indicators in the evaluation index system are difficult to measure. It is relatively simple, reasonable, and simple to operate in practise, which is conducive to the thorough and scientific performance evaluation of the government economic administration's science and technology administration functions. Following an assessment of the system's performance using association rule data mining technologies, a simulation test analysis is completed. The accuracy of the proposed arithmetic, which is 8.26% higher than the conventional arithmetic, is demonstrated by simulation results. The development of an evaluation model that incorporates both subjective and objective criteria, as well as the thorough assessment of the effectiveness of government economic administration based on data mining technologies, has excellent application prospects and practical value.

Economic, energy and environmental performance assessment on wheat production under water-saving cultivation strategies

Improvements in economic profit, energy-use efficiency and environmental friendliness are critical for the sustainability of wheat production. The present study was aimed at evaluating the suitability of wheat production shifting conventional flat planting (CFH) and supplemental irrigation (SIH) with water-saving cultivation strategies [straw mulching (SML) and plastic film mulching (PFL) with 50% less N fertilizer] from economic, energy, and environmental perspectives on the Loess Plateau of China. Results showed that the PFL exhibited ∼18.5% and 12.7% higher grain yields, and 74.0% and 59.9% higher economic profit over the CFH and SML, while reduced grain yields by 9.6% retative to the SIH. Meanwhile, the economic profit and the ratio of income to cost remained consistent between the PFL and SIH. The PFL had the highest net energy out, energy use efficiency and energy productivity, but had the lowest specific energy. Compared with the SIH, the total environmental emissions final score increased by 36.6% under SML, while decreased by 24.8% under PFL. Overall, the strategy of plastic film mulching with 50% less N fertilizer has great potential to cater to the demands of wheat production with environmental sustainability on the Loess Plateau of China.