New Production System Research Articles

Bentonite-enhanced biodiesel production by NaOH-catalyzed transesterification of soybean oil with methanol

A new reaction system for biodiesel production by the base-catalyzed transesterification process has been developed. Bentonite is used as a water adsorbent in the traditional homogeneous base-catalyzed transesterification reaction system to create a heterogeneous system that improves the reaction efficiency. The influence of bentonite on the NaOH-catalyzed methanolysis of soybean oil and the accompanying reaction mechanisms were investigated. It was found that an appropriate introduction of bentonite can promote the methanolysis. By the rapidly removal of the water from the system, bentonite enhances the transformation of NaOH to the catalytically active methoxide species. Further, the main side reactions are significantly inhibited. The methanolysis of triglycerides took place in the liquid phase rather than in the solid phase. The introduction of bentonite also lowered the soap concentration in crude biodiesel, which was beneficial for the post-treatment to generate refined biodiesel.

Toward Sustainable Amino Acid Production.

Because the global amino acid production industry has been growing steadily and is expected to grow even more in the future, efficient production by fermentation is of great importance from economic and sustainability viewpoints. Many systems biology technologies, such as genome breeding, omics analysis, metabolic flux analysis, and metabolic simulation, have been employed for the improvement of amino acid-producing strains of bacteria. Synthetic biological approaches have recently been applied to strain development. It is also important to use sustainable carbon sources, such as glycerol or pyrolytic sugars from cellulosic biomass, instead of conventional carbon sources, such as glucose or sucrose, which can be used as food. Furthermore, reduction of sub-raw substrates has been shown to lead to reduction of environmental burdens and cost. Recently, a new fermentation system for glutamate production under acidic pH was developed to decrease the amount of one sub-raw material, ammonium, for maintenance of culture pH. At the same time, the utilization of fermentation coproducts, such as cells, ammonium sulfate, and fermentation broth, is a useful approach to decrease waste. In this chapter, further perspectives for future amino acid fermentation from one-carbon compounds are described.

Development of Production Control in Small Batch Production

Our aim with this paper is to develop a new performance measurement and control system for small batch production in the automotive industry. For this reason, we present our previous research results for warehouse performance measurement and adopt its methodology to production control. The proposed method is based on artificial intelligence (neural networks).

A New Challeng for Hydrogen Isotope Electrolytic Separation System Combined with Fuel Cell

1. Introduction Hydrogen isotopes are important elements for nuclear and fusion reactors. The technique of hydrogen isotope separation has been investigated in several approaches [1-3]. However, the most methods are ineffective processes and shows low separation factor. That is, a large scale plant is generally necessary to deal with enormous water for the isotope enrichment. In Japan, a novel separation technology of tritium in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is urgently required. Although water electrolysis has been mainly used for heavy water production since the 1930s, it is no longer used except in the final separation stage. The reason is that water electrolysis consumes an enormous amount of the electric energy for a large-scale production. However, the electrolysis process is still attractive due to the highest separation factor and less polluted exhausts. In the conventional electrolysis process, no attempts have been made to recover energy from the gases evolved from the water electrolysis cell. The gases evolved from the electrolysis are recombined in a burner or catalytic exchange tower, and the left water vapor is condensed and fed to a lower stage. Supposed that the evolved hydrogen and oxygen gases are fed into a fuel cell as seen in Fig. 1, a large amount of energy will be recovered as electricity. For exploring this new concept [4], we have comprehensively investigated the electrochemical kinetics of hydrogen electrode reactions and separation factors in fuel cell and water electrolysis [5]. 2. Experimental The kinetic study was conducted by the rotating electrode with the rotation rate of 900, 1600, 2500 and 3600 rpm. The working electrode was a 0.785 cm-2 polycrystalline Pt disk and the counter electrode was coiled Pt wire. The reference electrode was Hg/Hg2SO4 saturated with K2SO4. The polarization curves were recorded by linear sweep voltammetry at the scan rate of ±0.01 V s-1. The electrolytes of 0.05 M D2SO4and 0.05 M KOD were maintained at 298 K. 3. Results and discussion Figure 2 shows Tafel plots of mass transfer corrected currents for the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) and deuterium oxidation reaction (DOR) at low anodic overpotential (η ≤ 0.08 V). The Tafel region of HOR began to be observed at η ≈ 0.04 V. The slope value of HOR was 0.091 V dec-1, which was larger than that of DOR (0.055 V dec-1). Concerning on the exchange current density, the ratio of i 0(H2) / i 0(D2)was 0.46. The present kinetic comparison of deuterium with protium data supported the isotope effect by which the deuterium was more easily dissociated on platinum electrode, pointing out a new separation by fuel cells. We will calculate the total energy consumption in fuel cell and water electrolysis and discuss the possibility of new separation system for heavy water production. ACKNOWLEGMENT The authors appreciate the financial aid given by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Project NO. 26870234). One of the authors, H. Matsushima, wishes to express his sincere gratitude to Inamori Foundation in Japan. REFERENCES [1] C. Banglin et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 130, 6411 (2008). [2] I. Cristescu et al., Fusion Eng. Des., 82, 2126 (2007). [3] I. A. Alekseev et al., Fusion Sci. Technol., 41, 1097 (2002). [4] H. Matsushima, T. Nohira, T. Kitabata, Y. Ito, Energy, 30, 2413 (2005). [5] S. Shibuya, H. Matsushima, M. Ueda, in preparation. Figure 1

A new transient expression system for large-scale production of recombinant proteins in plants based on air-brushing an Agrobacterium suspension

Plant transient expression using virus-based vectors is advantageous when high level of gene expression is desired within a short time. In this study, a new system, named “air-brush,” has been developed to facilitate a scale-up production of recombinant proteins in plants. GFP was expressed successfully in Nicotiana benthamiana (Nb) plants by air-brushing an Agrobacterium suspension that contained the TMV-based vector p35S-30B-GFP. Key factors influencing the gene expression were optimized, including the Agrobacterium cell density, seedling age, and the growth temperature of plant materials. In addition, the pharmaceutical protein human acidic fibroblast growth factor (ha FGF) was also expressed in Nb plants by the air-brush system. The results demonstrated that using this system is highly advantageous; it is convenient, quick, easily scaled-up, and has a higher expression efficiency than leaf infiltration.

A solar assisted microbial electrolysis cell for hydrogen production driven by a microbial fuel cell

Solar energy, a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) and a microbial fuel cell were combined as a new MEC system for hydrogen production.

Iranian Modern Art in Perspective

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 (and the subsequent eight years of the Iraq-Iran war) divided the history of Iran and its art, into two. The name Iranian Cultural Revolution (1980-1987) says it all. With the revolution, a whole new system of image production took charge of the local visual culture. A different curriculum was imposed on art universities and a different system of art patronage took over, dictating a new official understanding of art. For an Iranian modern art which had previousl...

New electrospinning nozzle to reduce jet instability and its application to manufacture of multi-layered nanofibers.

A new nozzle system for the efficient production of multi-layered nanofibers through electrospinning is reported. Developed a decade ago, the commonly used coaxial nozzle system consisting of two concentric cylindrical needles has remained unchanged, despite recent advances in multi-layered, multi-functional nanofibers. Here, we demonstrate a core-cut nozzle system, in which the exit pipe of the core nozzle is removed such that the core fluid can form an envelope inside the shell solution. This configuration effectively improves the coaxial electrospinning behavior of two fluids and significantly reduces the jet instability, which was proved by finite element simulation. The proposed electrospinning nozzle system was then used to fabricate bi- and tri-layered carbon nanofibers.

Analysis and assessment of a continuous-type hybrid photoelectrochemical system for hydrogen production

In this study, we conceptually develop and thermodynamically analyze a new continuous-type hybrid system for hydrogen production which photoelectrochemically splits water and performs chloralkali electrolysis. The system has a potential to produce hydrogen efficiently, at low cost, and in an environmentally benign way by maximizing the utilized solar spectrum and converting the byproducts into useful industrial commodities. Furthermore, by using electrodes as electron donors to drive photochemical hydrogen production, the hybrid system minimizes potential pollutant emissions. The products of the hybrid system are hydrogen, chlorine and sodium hydroxide, all of which are desired industrial commodities. The system production yield and efficiencies are investigated based on an operation temperature range of 20 °C–80 °C. A maximum energy efficiency of 42% is achieved between the temperatures of 40 °C and 50 °C.

Evaluation of the profitability of a new precision fungicide application system for strawberry production

This study evaluates farm-level risk and profitability of a new web-based expert system developed for precision fungicide management for strawberry production in a humid and warm climate. The Strawberry Advisory System (SAS) examined in this study allows for a temporally-variable, weather-dependent fungicide application to manage anthracnose and Botrytis fruit rot diseases in strawberry production in the southern United States (U.S.) and specifically Florida. Using results from six-year production trials combined with historical state-level data, we simulate the distribution of the ten-year net present value (NPV) of profits for SAS-based and traditional Calendar-based strawberry fungicide management. The joint probability distributions of yields and sale prices driven by weather variability are modeled with Monte Carlo stochastic simulation. The new expert system is estimated to significantly reduce crop losses (23.7% on average for anthracnose and 20% for Botrytis) and decrease fungicide use (47% on average for anthracnose and 49% for Botrytis), while increasing profit 41.6% on average in the case of anthracnose and 16.8% for Botrytis. Although the use of the new expert system increases the variability of yield and profit, SAS significantly increases both yield and profit compared to those of Calendar-based method. Based on the risk-adjusted profitability analysis, SAS is a preferred method of fungicide application. Assuming a representative Florida strawberry farm of 10.5 hectares (26 acres), the value of SAS is estimated on average to be $1.76 million for anthracnose and $0.89 million for Botrytis, over a ten-year horizon of use. SAS fungi management is a viable and practical decision-support system for fungicide application that can increase profit, and potentially reduce the environmental footprint from strawberry production. It can add significant economic value to the strawberry producer in the United States and in other countries.

A versatile system for USER cloning-based assembly of expression vectors for mammalian cell engineering.

A new versatile mammalian vector system for protein production, cell biology analyses, and cell factory engineering was developed. The vector system applies the ligation-free uracil-excision based technique – USER cloning – to rapidly construct mammalian expression vectors of multiple DNA fragments and with maximum flexibility, both for choice of vector backbone and cargo. The vector system includes a set of basic vectors and a toolbox containing a multitude of DNA building blocks including promoters, terminators, selectable marker- and reporter genes, and sequences encoding an internal ribosome entry site, cellular localization signals and epitope- and purification tags. Building blocks in the toolbox can be easily combined as they contain defined and tested Flexible Assembly Sequence Tags, FASTs. USER cloning with FASTs allows rapid swaps of gene, promoter or selection marker in existing plasmids and simple construction of vectors encoding proteins, which are fused to fluorescence-, purification-, localization-, or epitope tags. The mammalian expression vector assembly platform currently allows for the assembly of up to seven fragments in a single cloning step with correct directionality and with a cloning efficiency above 90%. The functionality of basic vectors for FAST assembly was tested and validated by transient expression of fluorescent model proteins in CHO, U-2-OS and HEK293 cell lines. In this test, we included many of the most common vector elements for heterologous gene expression in mammalian cells, in addition the system is fully extendable by other users. The vector system is designed to facilitate high-throughput genome-scale studies of mammalian cells, such as the newly sequenced CHO cell lines, through the ability to rapidly generate high-fidelity assembly of customizable gene expression vectors.

A novel self-cleavage system for production of soluble recombinant protein in Escherichia coli

Many approaches for generating large quantities of recombinant protein in Escherichia coli fuse the protein of interest to a protein tag to enhance solubility and improve recovery. However, the fusion tags can confound downstream applications, as the fusion partner can alter the structure and biological activity of the recombinant protein and proteolytic removal of the fusion tags can be expensive. Here we describe a new system for production of native proteins in E. coli that allows for removal of the fusion tag via intracellular self-cleavage by the human rhinovirus 3C (HRV3C) protease. This system allows for parallel cloning of target protein coding sequences into six different expression vectors, each with a different fusion partner tag to enhance solubility during induction. Temperature-regulated expression of the HRV3C protease allows for intracellular removal of the fusion tag following induction, and the liberated recombinant protein can be purified by affinity chromatography by virtue of a short six-histidine tag. This system will be an attractive approach for the expression and purification of recombinant proteins free of solubility-enhancing fusion tags, and should be amenable to high-throughput applications.

Methodology and technology directions at Statistics New Zealand

Statistics NZ aims to produce statistics that are fit for purpose in an efficient, sustainable and adaptive manner. However, balancing sound methodological solutions and agility is challenging. Statistics NZ has taken advantage of well-developed IT environments and clear strategic directions in terms of statistical architecture to develop and implement production systems that support the organisation’s goals. Production systems are composed of standard methods, tools and processes. Outputs that use similar production methods are processed on common platforms. The platforms also offer analysts the opportunity to create new production systems without the help of IT teams. The new platforms have encouraged standardisation and provide methods and tools that can be used to process and analyse data collected from traditional sample surveys or from an administrative source. When processing large volumes of data, the focus is on error reduction and automation of standard methods for each of the steps in the business process model. Centralised governance systems and a constructive culture of innovation make these changes possible by creating an environment conducive to managing change.

Bioenergy: Risks to food-, energy- and environmental security

There are growing opportunities and demands for the use of biomass to provide additional renewables, energy for heat, power and fuel, pharmaceuticals and green chemical feedstocks. However, the worldwide potential of bioenergy is limited, because all land is multifunctional, and land is also needed for food, feed, timber and fiber production, and for nature conservation and climate protection. The recent expansion of the bioenergy industries together with a strong increase in many commodity prices has raised concerns over the land use choices between energy needs and food and feed. New systems of energy production must be developed based on cost of environmental damage due to production and use of fossil energy and certain chemicals and materials. This article presents risks to food and energy security, estimates of bioenergy potential and the challenges of the environmental and social impact associated with expansions in bioenergy production.

Forum 1 m2/sek 08/15: Von der Negentropie zur Entropie

1m2/sec stands for the speed of urbanization processes that are generally associated with urban sprawl. 08/15 – an idiom in colloquial German describing run-of-the-mill phenomena – stands for the mediocre standards associated with urban development. The formula 1m2/sec 08/15 addresses the modus operandi of contemporary urban production and combines the velocity of land consumption with generally agreed-upon standards. Few know that 08/15 was the designation of a German infantry machine gun issued during the First World War. Model number 08/15 stood for a new system of production. The institutional network established to produce the automatic weapon had all the characteristics of a megamachine, a term used by Lewis Mumford to describe a specific form of collective organization put in place to realize large-scale projects and requiring an efficient bureaucratic apparatus. Assemblies of this type have the tendency to take on a life of their own. Similarly, the mechanism at work in urbanization processes adhere to principles of megamachines, producing a form of 08/15 city. Urbanization entails the deployment of normed components, applied again and again. Each element follows precisely determined standards. One always encounters the same housing and retail developments, with similar densities, identical set backs, and given typologies. Instead of differentiation: a featureless substance framing the reality of contemporary agglomerations.

EOQ Model: The Case in Which the Placing of Orders Is Rewarded

The first models of optimization of inventory management costs have undergone few changes since they were developed at the beginning of the last century. It is only with the passage of time that new scenarios have appeared with the introduction of new systems of production, and consequently of new strategies in the logistics chain. In this article, we analyze and propose a revision of the basic inventory model of economic order quantity first defined by Harris in 1913 for a scenario in which the owner of the stock receives a bonus or reward each time he replenishes his stock. This situation arises when the supplier receives a benefit which he then shares with the customer when managing his stock replenishment. An array of nested models is shown to illustrate this scenario, from which the constraints of previous scenarios have been removed. The model provides insights into the negotiation of batch size between supplier and buyer in a win-win environment in the specific situation in which the supplier gives a bonus to the buyer at each stock replenishment. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Field sprayer for inter and intra-row weed control: performance and labor savings

Studies of new tools and methods for weed control have been motivated by increased consumer demand for organic produce, consumer and regulatory demands for a reduction in environmentally harmful herbicide use, and the decreased availability of farm workers willing to perform manual tasks, such as hand weeding. This study describes the performance of a new sprayer system for commercial production that integrates two herbicide applications in a single pass, selective herbicide (SH) application in narrow bands over the crop row, and a non-selective herbicide (NSH) application between crop rows. A real-time kinematic (RTK) global positioning system (GPS) was used for auto-guidance in seeding and spraying operations. Conventional broadcast SHs and experimental treatments were applied at a constant nominal speed of 5.5 km h-1 for comparison. Trials in commercial sugar beet fields demonstrated the following: (i) average hand-weeding time can be reduced by 53% (ii) the new sprayer system reduced SH use by 76%, and (iii) sugar beet density did not change significantly during treatment. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using the new RTK-GPS controller sprayer system for differential and efficient herbicide application in inter- and intra-row zones in row crop production.

Materialities of Text: Between the Codex and the Net

The cultural authority of the codex form of the book appears to be in a process of displacement ensuing from the rise of on-line digital media. The traditional material structures of the book--its physical forms and its institutional forms of production, circulation, and preservation--are often seen as being subject to dematerialisation; evaporating in the transitory appearances of the digital screen and in the proliferation of new systems of production. However, this issue of New Formations makes the case that the present historical juncture should be understood as a mixed media milieu, in which traditional and digital forms of writing and publishing coalesce and conflict in a complex array of textual materialities. Such materialities of text are at once sites of political and aesthetic experimentation, and of intense capitalization, intersecting features which are approached in the articles collected here through a broad range of theoretical and empirical themes: diagrammatic writing; the material reading formations of a best-seller novel; grey literature in the institutions of cultural studies; Black Twitter; the politics of Open Access and the artists' book; digital humanities and its political problematics; the bibliopolitics of the passport; and the political and aesthetic forms of independent publishing. New Formations has faced its own dilemmas in recent years around the politics of publishing and its materiality. Even during the relatively brief tenure of the current editorship, the nature of academic publishing has changed radically. Five years ago, the journal was still primarily a paper product; today only a tiny proportion of its readership will ever hold a bound and printed copy of the journal in their hands. This is in part because digitisation has made possible a very significant increase in readership, especially outside the UK, but it also because the key mode of distribution for scholarly journals has decisively changed: the vast majority of our readers now access the journal digitally, primarily through the vast bundles of electronic journal subscriptions that university libraries purchase from aggregators such as ebsco. Although this vastly increases the reach of the journal, it also massively decreases the effective income-per-subscription earned by the publisher. New Formations is an almost unique position for a British scholarly journal, in that it is neither wholly self-published, like the much-admired Radical Philosophy, nor the property of one of the large international publishing conglomerates. Our publisher, Lawrence & Wishart is one of the last remaining, and possibly now the oldest, independent progressive publisher in the UK, responsible for the dissemination of large parts of the work of writers such as Marx and Gramsci, among others; and university library subscriptions to the journal remain an important income-stream for them. As such, our obvious desire continually to expand the availability of the journal must always be balanced with the need to try to protect this important source of revenue for a great radical institution. …

Application of Continuous Improvement in Furniture Manufacturing Industry

This thesis documents a research on continuously improvement of process in EUROSPAN Furniture Sdn Bhd. The process improvement focused on dining table’s assembly line. High product variety and flexibility become the main challenges of the production floor. As to improve the productivity, there are few factors have been considered in this thesis; redesign of workflow layout, labor utilization and continuous flow. Line balancing had been used to analyze the utilization of the current state pull system. Several techniques have been suggested such as 5Why’s analysis, line balancing and Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) in order to eliminate and minimize non-value added activities and to enhance the new work cell production. Results indicated manpower has been effectively reduced by 30% in the new production system and the productivity has increased successfully by 45%. The effectiveness of the new system in this study gave positive impact on productivity, flexibility and production utilization.

Design como recurso de valorização de bens e culturas: projeto de competitividade e integração no território da Estrada Real, Brasil. (Fase II)

The study presented here aims to demonstrate the advances of the in fieri Project: Design and Competitive Integration in the Estrada Real Territory (PER), in the context of material, immaterial and historical culture, in a route corresponding to eight cities of the Estrada Real (ER) in the region of Minas Gerais - Brazil. Through the research partnership between the Design School of UEMG and Politecnico di Torino, we saw the need, continuing as a second phase of this project, to define effective actions, through out the breadth and scope of design, which should be able to articulate and enhance the development of the territory in question, having as basis the increase in value of the local identity and culture, in pursuit of socioeconomic and environmental balance. This research involves the opportune participation of students and teachers from both Athenaeums, in a design action that also includes the insertion and distribution of territorial marketing in the Estrada Real through the following pilot localities: São Brás do Suaçuí, Entre Rios de Minas, Casa Grande, Lagoa Dourada, Resende Costa, Coronel Xavier Chaves, Pratos and Bichinho. Actions aimed at the increase in value of local products and services have been established through the recognition of the territorial potential and skills, as well as through the communication relationship between these means and the investigated context, in order to strengthen and propose new systems of production and services that respect the regional vocation and establish creative and innovative cooperation networks of sustainable emphasis. In this second phase of the research, we show the results of the project alternatives that were generated, analyzed, improved and developed by the Italian-Brazilian work team (POLITOUEMG), in which we prospect possible project issues, such as: information networks, sustainable handicrafts, local nature, typography with regional icons, mapping of local cultural events, merchandising products for hotels and restaurants, local music and melodies (ER Net, Eco-art Zoo, Zoom in on Nature, (Re)Write, Calendar, Info-tools for food and table, Book of Musical Traditions). We emphasize that all concepts to be developed focus on the interface “territory, sustainability and design” ands eek to contribute, in an original and innovative way, with the many actions inherent to the Estrada Real territory.Key words: design and local increase in value, territorial culture, meta-project and eco-museum, sustainable development.