Huge Investment Costs Research Articles

Economic Analysis of High-Speed Railways: A Holistic Methodological Approach

The most controversial issue regarding a high- speed railway investment is the huge capital cost, and the main question is whether its benefits will be worth the huge investment costs. High-speed railways have long planning processes and face great risks. Therefore, a holistic approach has been required under conditions of uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is to unify the methods for determining the huge rail investment costs. This paper investigated the economic analysis of high- speed railways as a part of a new silk iron road corridor, in terms of both passenger and freight railway transport between Europe and Asia. In this context, a benefit-cost evaluation of the Ankara-Sivas high-speed railway as a part of the backbone railway line of Turkey's Edirne- Kars high-speed railway corridor has been carried out. A holistic methodological method is presented for evaluating the benefit-cost analysis of both high-speed and freight railways. The economic analysis results show that in cross-continental countries, network effects must be taken into consideration when evaluating the high- speed railway's benefit-cost analysis.

A New Industry 4.0 Approach for Development of Manufacturing Firms Based on DFSS

The adoption of Industry 4.0 is attracting manufacturing companies, but the implementation barriers they expect to face, such as huge investment costs, and lack of skilled workers and infrastructure, make many of them hesitate to go through with implementation. The lack of a standardization approach also adds more difficulties in the implementation of advanced key technologies. Based on the design for the six sigma (DFSS) method, a new decision-making and implementation approach (DM&I) is proposed to address some implementation barriers and provide strategic guidance to implement the Industry 4.0 advanced key technologies. In this study, a systematic literature review was conducted to determine the impact of the implementation barriers for Industry 4.0 adoption. The DM&I approach has been applied in a bearing ring production line as a real case. The proposed method consists of two steps: decision-making, which consists of the define phase in determining the exact system weak point in order to reduce the improvement risk and system operation disturbance; the evaluate phase, which is the determining of the level of use of key technologies; the visualize phase, which is the stage of designing and modeling the proposed system and creating the virtual environment to simulate the system in real-time in order to support the improved decision-making process and avoid the fear of high costs; and then the optimize phase, where the optimal level of use of key technologies is determined. Then, the implementation phase consists of the develop phase, which encompasses the stage of physical system construction and hardware software development, followed by the validate phase and the integrate phase. These phases support infrastructure improvement. However, the proposed approach can be used by manufacturing companies to improve production efficacy and competitiveness.

Low temperature atmospheric synthesis of WAlB and Mn2AlB2 MAB phases by modified molten salt shielded synthesis method

Nowadays, transition metal-based boride-like layered MAB phases are getting more attention due to their excellent combination of metal-ceramic properties, like good thermal and electrical conductivity, oxidation and thermal shock resistance, excellent wear resistance etc. So far, WAlB was synthesized at high temperature (1550 °C) with 24 hr soaking time by aluminium flux technique with nominal single-phase purity, which requires huge investment and production costs. However, Mn2AlB2 was recently synthesized using KBr salt via molten salt shielded synthesis (MS3) at a relatively low temperature 1000 °C for a longer soaking time (12 hr) which may enhance the chances of oxidation. Therefore, the motivation of this work is to synthesize WAlB and Mn2AlB2 MAB phase at lower temperatures with high purity via a newly developed simple, cost-effective, environmental-friendly method named modified molten salt shielded synthesis method. This paper synthesized both these phases with high yield at lower temperatures and much shorter soaking time than earlier reported literature.

Shipping decarbonization: E-fuels as a potential solution and the role of resources

The scope of this paper is to examine proposed e-fuels (e-hydrogen, e-ammonia, e-methanol) as alternative maritime fuels. A techno-economic analysis is conducted considering the current energy demand of the shipping sector, the solutions for decarbonisation that are based on e-fuels, and the projections and scenarios regarding the energy mix towards 2050, to meet the IMO targets. According to the current preliminary study, apart from the barriers related to technological maturity levels, applicability and safety, there are barriers related to (a) the Well-to-Wake characteristics of e-H2, e-NH3, and e-CH3OH, (b) the existing infrastructure that utilises Renewable Energy Sources and the current and projected percentage of RES in the global energy mix, and (c) the availability of resources required for the development of the infrastructure to support e-fuels’ utilisation. Estimated fuel prices in 2050 that include production and distribution costs, indicate that alternative fuels are expected to be uncompetitive. Though they become relatively competitive when carbon-price is added to production and distribution costs of fossil fuels, the Well-to-Wake Analysis of biofuels and e-fuels proves that a significant RES rump-up is required, which further requires huge capital investment costs and raw materials. Ultimately, a re-prioritisation is proposed targeting decarbonisation of “easier-to-abate” sectors before decarbonising “hard-to-abate” sectors such as shipping and aviation.

Optimization of two-echelon last-mile delivery via cargo tunnel and a delivery person

More and more people live in urban areas in general and in “megacities”, with 10 million inhabitants and more, in particular. One innovative instrument to reduce surface traffic and its negative impact on health, congestion, environment, and safety when supplying these urban inhabitants with goods is a cargo tunnel. Within the cargo tunnel concept, autonomous rail-bound, maglev, or automated guided vehicles deliver goods underground toward small inner-city hubs, from where the final leg toward customer homes can be executed with environmentally-friendly vehicles such as cargo bikes or electric vans. In addition to the huge investment costs for tunnel boring, this last-mile delivery option faces a challenging operational problem, which is the synchronization of goods arrivals at a capacity-restricted inner-city hub with the delivery tours. We formulate a basic two-echelon optimization problem that captures all main operational challenges of this synchronization task, derive suitable optimization procedures, and apply them in a computational study. The latter explores the interdependence between tunnel throughput, storage capacity at the hub, and vehicle capacity of the delivery person and their impact on delivery performance. An additional benchmark test with conventional truck-based deliveries shows that the reductions of carbon dioxide emissions promised by a cargo tunnel come for the price of excessive cargo bike traffic, especially if large urban regions are to be serviced from a micro hub.

Frequency Regulation Service Provision for Virtual Power Plants Through 5G RAN Slicing

The virtual power plant (VPP) has the potential to provide frequency regulation services by aggregating demand-side distributed energy resources (DERs). Cellular communication networks are commonly utilized for connecting DERs. Nevertheless, conventional cellular networks prior to 5G were unreliable, while private cellular networks incur huge investment costs. Radio access network (RAN) slicing in 5G communications can address these issues by providing the VPP with virtual private networks in public cellular networks. The VPP must evaluate the benefits of 5G RAN slicing and determine the size of slices before implementing it. This paper proposes to apply 5G RAN slicing to assist the VPP in participating in frequency regulation services. First, an optimization model is developed for the VPP to maximize the profit of engaging DERs in various frequency regulation services. Its solution determines the VPP’s DER portfolio schedule of regulation services and communication needs. Then, the effects of communication reliability on the regulation performance are quantified. 5G RAN slicing enhances the predictability of communication reliability, and its benefit is explicitly modeled as its contribution to reducing VPP’s risk profit loss. Next, based on the 5G RAN slicing benefit, an optimization model for determining the size of slices is further established, considering the cost of purchasing slices from mobile service providers. Additionally, an online solution method is developed, such that DERs’ regulation service portfolio can be determined in real-time. Numerical case studies are conducted to demonstrate the benefit of 5G RAN slicing for the VPP’s frequency regulation services.

A Perspective on Innovative Drying Methods for Energy‐Efficient Solvent‐Based Production of Lithium‐Ion Battery Electrodes

An increasing number of production plants for lithium‐ion batteries (LIB) are being built every year to meet the global battery demand for battery electric vehicles, mobile devices, and stationary energy storage systems. Currently, the state‐of‐the‐art convective drying process employed during solvent‐based electrode production is a key reason for the high electrical energy consumption of the LIB production process and also requires long dryer sections with huge investment costs. The need for energy, CO2 footprint, and cost reductions in LIB production has sparked interest in developing innovative electrode drying technologies that improve the drying rate and introduce the heat more efficiently into the coating. Herein, a perspective of possible drying technologies, which are used in other industries and can be adapted for LIB electrode production, is given. Furthermore, a combination of convective and inductive drying technologies for simultaneous double‐sided coating is proposed. The complementary heat introduction pathways may offer an advantageous approach to meet the demand for rapid and high‐efficiency electrode drying.

A multi-port hybrid DC circuit breaker based on current injection

Against the background of the application of the Voltage Source Converter (VSC)-based DC grid technology, fault isolation by combining the converter without fault self-clearing ability with DC circuit breaker (DCCB) is one of the most promising solutions for multi-terminal DC system protection. However, in order to ensure the selectivity of protection, the traditional two-port DCCB needs to be configured at both ends of each DC line, and the huge investment cost limits its largescale application. In view of the above problems, a multi-port hybrid DC circuit breaker based on current injection (CIMPHCB) is proposed in this paper. Multiple DC lines effectively reduce the cost under the premise of ensuring selectivity by sharing one transfer branch and energy dissipation branch. In the CI-MPHCB transfer branch, the thyristor is used to replace IGBT as the switching element, which cooperate the pre-charge capacitor are used to realize the transfer of fault current, which further reduces the cost while ensuring the bidirectional blocking of fault current. Finally, the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed CI-MPHCB are verified based on PSCAD/EMTDC simulation platform.

Hierarchical multi-objective design of regional integrated energy system under heterogeneous low-carbon policies

Fossil-to-renewable energy system transition is an inevitable future trend considering carbon dioxide emissions mitigation burdens. However, huge investment costs and insufficient policy support are still the two main barriers to further expand renewable energy penetration. To transcend these barriers, from the perspective of both policy makers and energy suppliers, this study simultaneously integrates low-carbon policy formulations and regional integrated energy system (IES) reshaping to achieve an affordable decarbonization pathways. Mixed Integer Quadratically-Constrained Programs (MIQCP) models are constructed, and hierarchical multi-objective optimization is applied to quantify local government's decision-making costs and energy suppliers' system transition costs. A new rural community in Dalian (China) is taken as a case study to capture the relationship among energy structure adjustment, energy system reshaping, and renewable subsidy and carbon tax adjustment under different CO2 emission reduction regulations. The result shows that under the same CO2 emission reduction rate, portfolio policies can benefit both the policy maker and the energy supplier by balancing the local government revenue and expenditure, and reducing the annual total costs of IES. In addition, via IESs optimization, a higher renewable energy penetration rate could be obtained and the energy supplier could achieve a competitive cost within 40% CO2 emission reduction targets.

Optimal siting and sizing of charging stations for autonomous electric vehicle fleet with local renewable energy generation

With the large-scale development of AEV's in the future, the additional electric demand will create strong constraints on the existing distribution network, particularly in terms of network capacity and nominal currents. Upgrading the public electrical infrastructure is surely a sustainable long-term option but requires important time delay (in years) and huge investment costs. While previous works have been done on optimal siting of charging stations and AEV fleet operation, this paper discusses the utilization of local renewable energy sources to fulfill additional electricity demand by AEVs while taking into account the uncertainty of renewable energy production. Thus, it proposes a framework to optimize the location and sizing of charging stations based on solar irradiation spatial distribution data, charge requests, and minimization of the present value of the investment and operational costs.

A Study of Optimal Utilization of Radio-diagnostics at Acharya Vinoba Bhave Rural Hospital, Wardha, India

Background: Radiology has its own role in day to day healthcare services especially in diagnosis, patient management and treatments. Current advances in technology allows for exploring every tissue, organ and problem in details. The radio diagnostic imaging modalities include ultrasonography, X-ray, CT, MRI etc. Diagnosis is influenced by proper utilization of imaging equipment and techniques. These modern amenities need a huge investment and maintenance cost. This study insisted on assessment of working condition, level of utilization, and barriers in the utilization of the radiological facilities in AVBRH, India.
 Methodology: This cross sectional study will be conducted at AVBRH, Wardha. A structured questionnaire will be used for data collection through interviews of selected professionals and health care workers. It will assess the utilization of radiodiagnostic equipment’s in radiology department of AVBRH, breakdown occurrences and cost of repair, turn-around time, repair and maintenance contract.
 Expected Results: Data on radio diagnostic equipment’s in radiology department of AVBRH, breakdown occurrences and cost of repair, turn-around time, repair and maintenance contract will be generated and gaps in service delivery will be outlined.
 Conclusion: Kay critical gaps in efficient equipment use and service delivery will be outlined.

Exploring the Challenges of Implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning in Small and Medium Enterprises

Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SME) are key players in Sri Lankan economy due to the fact that it contributes 52% to the Gross Domestic Product (National policy Framework for SME Development, 2015) and considered as the back born of the economy. ERP offers the best solution for SMEs without the overheads of the huge investment and management costs that are associated with traditional ERP systems, yet the SME sector faces many challenges in their adoption. Traditional ERP studies have predominantly focused on large organizations, and gaps within in the literature indicate that both vendor and consumer perspectives require more understanding with new technology offerings for SMEs and short of challenges are faced by SMEs in the implementation. However, SMEs enthusiasm to adopt ERP system is low. This study aims to explore the challenges faced by the SME in implementing ERP system. In order to achieve the research objective an exploratory research approach was used. Interviews were executed by means of face-to-face approach. Interview techniques are used to extract understanding, opinions and challenges faced by SMEs on their way to adopt ERP system. Based on the responses, the researcher found six (6) themes that are challenges in adopting ERP in SMEs. However, this study endeavors to explore the challenges of implementing ERP project in selected SMEs and contributes the lack of literature on ERP implementation and provides insight for future study by the researcher and respondents.

Study of the possibility of using transmission in the lte system on a selected railway line for the purpose of running railway traffic

The railway and the Rail Traffic Control Systems installed on it in Poland have recently experienced rapid technologi-cal development. This is undoubtedly due to the funds that Poland receives from the European Union for the moderni-zation of railway infrastructure. The development of modern railway infrastructure means not only stations, modern rolling stock, but also safe and reliable train control systems based on the latest telecommunications and information technologies. For a longer time, radio communication based on the GSM-R (GSM for Railways) standard is being introduced on PKP. For this purpose, dedicated infrastructure is being built in order to use this technology for railway traffic. This is associated with huge investment costs. Since the beginning of its existence, research has been conducted worldwide on the use of LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology for conducting railway traffic. For economic and technological reasons, it is necessary to study other possibilities of using modern telecommunications infrastructure not yet dedicated to railway tasks in these open networks. The article will present research on the use of open radio communication network based on LTE standard for rail traffic and passenger comfort. It will discuss the research method and selected results of measurements made on railway line no. 4. The choice of this railway line was dictated by two factors. The first one resulted from the maximum train speed, the second one is the variety of rolling stock used on this line (compartmental and non-compartmental wagons). The part of research concerning collection of measurement material was performed within the framework of completed research work PBS3/A6/29/2015. As a result of conducted in-depth literature analysis as well as performed measurements and calculations, it allowed to develop a model and software for simulating system operation in real conditions. This system allows to send railway telegrams on appropriate safety level defined in standardization documents. The research proved the possibility of using an open system in the LTE standard for the transmission of signals for railway traffic control and passengers while maintaining an appropriate level of safety. The only limitations which were indicated by the tests are improper radio interface coverage of railway lines. Appropriate planning of radio coverage of railway areas by radio communi-cation operators (so far ignored) with proper cooperation of infrastructure manager can lead to launching efficient communication system without necessity to build specialized infrastructure for railway.

DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN STANDARDS FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES WITHIN THE EUROPEAN UNION POLICY

This study is aimed at identifying the weaknesses and strengths of the mechanism for managing industrial energy efficiency (EE) under the EU policy. It is of interest not only for countries consuming energy raw materials but also for its suppliers, since they are to predict the situation on the markets and follow global trends in energy saving and environmental protection. Within the framework of the research, the methods of analogies and comparisons are used to determine the costs of switching industrial enterprises to the EE principles. The modeling method is applied to five companies in the EU, the USA, Russia, and China. By comparing the existing mechanism for EE regulating, excellent results for the EU industrial companies can be observed. They are characterized by the achievement of a high level of energy saving (10-12%) at low costs. For most US companies, an adequate level of potential energy conservation can be noticed. Russian industrial enterprises are characterized by low energy saving at a huge investment cost. For companies in China, favorable conditions are created to achieve efficient energy conservation, however, the cost for EE remains high.

Wireless Monitoring Of Industrial Drives Using Internet Of Things Technology (Iot)

Electrical motors and drives consumes about 45% of the power generation. However, if the electrical machines are not maintained properly the drives consumes about 5% to 10 % of excess power which affects the productivity and revenue. Continuous monitoring of critical parameters of the drives is crucial for an industry which continuously operates large number of electrical drives. Before the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, monitoring of the machine parameters were carried out using Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), which can store data temporarily, after which that data will be overwritten by more recent data. Also the online monitoring of the machine is not feasible. In the IoT technology the data collected can be safely stored in the Cloud and retrieved whenever needed. Moreover the data collected can be easy integrated through any platform to any application, which benefits the end user by cutting down huge investment costs. In the presented work, the machine parameters like current, voltage, speed and number of working hours of the machine, temperature are measured using the sensors for continuous monitoring. The data is collected and processed using microcontroller and transferred to a remote server wirelessly using Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol. The received data is then sent to the telegram server. Any deviation from the safe operating conditions is reported to the server and control room through chatbot in telegram mobile app for immediate action

Selection of appropriate load compositions for predicting the dynamic performance of distribution grids

In this study, the significant effects of the load models used to analyse low-voltage power systems are presented and a systematic process for selecting appropriate load compositions to evaluate the performance of distribution systems containing distributed generation is proposed. The driving force behind, and key reasons for, voltage instability are analysed by evaluating different load models subjected to grid disturbances. The stability conditions of distribution systems are also checked through time-domain simulations performed on various network configurations, such as radial, loop, and mesh topologies. The system's responses to changes in the substation's voltage and contingency events are also demonstrated. It is found that the types and order of load models used greatly affect a system's voltage stability and therefore, an accurate load modelling is necessary to support the renewables integration in distribution systems. As the system's response is found to be sensitive to the network's topology and actual load composition, an approach that selects appropriate load compositions which, in turn, reduces the huge investment costs of improper planning, is proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified by connecting static synchronous compensators to the network under varying load compositions.

Investment appraisal and risk assessment of protected vegetable cultivation under Leyte conditions

Protected cropping technology has been introduced to address the inability of farmers to achieve a successful year-round vegetable production. However, small scale farmers are reluctant to adopt this technology due to huge investment costs and the risk associated with extreme weather conditions. Hence, this study was conducted in some parts of Leyte, to evaluate the profitability and assess the risk of protected and open-field cultivation during the occurrence of extreme weather conditions such as tropical cyclones and strong wind phenomena. Results show that protected cultivation generates higher yields compared to open field cultivation. In Baybay site, investment on steel-type high-strength-tunnel covered with polyethylene plastic is the most viable option as it attained the highest net present values (NPVs), benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) and internal rate of return (IRRs). It also has the earliest payback period across different climatic scenarios. At the Cabintan site, the low-tunnel-structure is the most viable when a high-end market is established. This implies that market outlet is one of the critical factors affecting profitability and pricing. Given the potential of protected cultivation in minimizing crop failures, it is recommended that the government and private sector shall extend financial and technical assistance to farmers. Investors shall be covered with crop and structure insurances as risk of crop failures and loss of capital is high during inclement weather conditions.

Challenges and Success Factors of ERP Systems in Australian SMEs

Today, great potential is envisaged for ERP systems in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and software vendors have been repackaging their ERP systems for SMEs with a recent focus on cloud-based systems. While cloud ERP offers the best solution for SMEs without the overheads of the huge investment and management costs that are associated with traditional ERP systems, the SME sector faces many challenges in their adoption. Traditional ERP studies have predominantly focused on large organizations, and gaps in the literature indicate that both vendor and consumer perspectives require more understanding with new technology offerings for SMEs. This paper describes some of the common challenges, such as cost effectiveness, alignment between software and business processes, customized governance and training, which form the major SME constraints for ERP system adoption. Due to the dynamic nature of SME businesses, best practice guidelines for an SME’s ERP implementation could be arrived at through closer investigation of its business requirements in order to avoid misfits. This forms the main objective of the study. We identify key success factors of ERP implementation in an Australian SME as a case study. These target success factors are then compared to the actual outcomes achieved. Factors such as business process alignment with the ERP system, meeting customer and stakeholder needs and reducing recurring and maintenance costs were key to the success of ERP implementation for the Australian SME. In particular, the IT and business strategy alignment with a customer focus and flexible reporting features of ERP systems has resulted in business agility.

Integration of satellite and LTE for disaster recovery

Wireless communications are critical for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) professionals during the emergency operations that follow natural or man-made disasters, scenarios in which both commercial and dedicated terrestrial networks often fail to provide the necessary support. The reason is threefold: they simply get destroyed by the disaster, they cannot sustain the sudden surge of network demand or they fail to deliver the necessary bandwidth and/or other QoS guarantees. Because LTE is expected to become the main wireless technology for broadband communication, a lot of studies have been devoted to assess its compliance for PPDR purposes and to find suitable architectural solutions able to meet mission-critical requirements. This approach is surely worthy, but it is based on the assumption that infrastructure-based terrestrial systems are reliable. As a consequence, in worstcase emergency scenarios appropriate guarantees can be provided only in the hypothesis of huge investment costs. Recent developments in satellite technologies are bringing the availability of non-terrestrial high performance channels, with better properties when comparing to LTE for what regards availability and reliability. On this basis, the paper proposes a network architecture based on the integration of satellite and LTE networks for both infrastructure-based and infrastructure-less scenarios. The proposal aims to provide field operators and people in distress with transparent accessibility, coverage guarantees and broadband performance when terrestrial infrastructures are lacking, and to expand their coverage, capacity and resilience otherwise.

Low-cost 3D systems: suitable tools for plant phenotyping.

Over the last few years, 3D imaging of plant geometry has become of significant importance for phenotyping and plant breeding. Several sensing techniques, like 3D reconstruction from multiple images and laser scanning, are the methods of choice in different research projects. The use of RGBcameras for 3D reconstruction requires a significant amount of post-processing, whereas in this context, laser scanning needs huge investment costs. The aim of the present study is a comparison between two current 3D imaging low-cost systems and a high precision close-up laser scanner as a reference method. As low-cost systems, the David laser scanning system and the Microsoft Kinect Device were used. The 3D measuring accuracy of both low-cost sensors was estimated based on the deviations of test specimens. Parameters extracted from the volumetric shape of sugar beet taproots, the leaves of sugar beets and the shape of wheat ears were evaluated. These parameters are compared regarding accuracy and correlation to reference measurements. The evaluation scenarios were chosen with respect to recorded plant parameters in current phenotyping projects. In the present study, low-cost 3D imaging devices have been shown to be highly reliable for the demands of plant phenotyping, with the potential to be implemented in automated application procedures, while saving acquisition costs. Our study confirms that a carefully selected low-cost sensor is able to replace an expensive laser scanner in many plant phenotyping scenarios.