Total Energy Requirement Research Articles

Effect of reduced dietary protein level on energy metabolism, sow body composition and metabolites in plasma, milk and urine from gestating and lactating organic sows during temperate winter conditions

Energy spent on thermoregulation and the opportunity for increased locomotive activity increases the energy requirements of outdoor relative to indoor housed sows, whilst their protein requirement most likely is comparable on a daily basis. The purpose of this study was to quantify the energy needed for maintenance, maternal retention, milk production, thermoregulation and increased locomotive activity in organic sows.A total of 47 gilts (Landrace x Yorkshire; 190 kg at insemination) were reared outdoor under organic conditions for five months during winter. To study dietary effects of protein, gilts were fed one of two iso-energetic compound feeds, where dietary protein differed by 12%. Gilts had ad libitum access to grass clover silage and were fed similar amounts of metabolisable energy (ME) from compound feed equivalent to the energy recommendations for indoor sows + 15% in both groups.Collection of plasma and urine was performed on d60 and d100 of gestation and plasma, urine and milk was collected on d5, d20 and d40 of lactation. On all collection days, sows and piglets (n=635) were weighed individually, sows were back fat scanned and heartrate and locomotive activity was registered with a tracking system. Sow body composition was estimated using the deuterium dilution technique.Live weight and back fat thickness were not affected by the dietary protein level, neither was the number of total born, still born, piglet birth weight or piglet weight gain until weaning at seven weeks (14.5 kg).There was no effect of protein level on locomotive activity. Milk yield peaked with 12.9 kg/d around d20. In total, 58% of the gross energy intake was associated with milk production at d20 including heat. Milk energy output was 69 MJ ME/d at peak lactation at d20. Sows fed the low protein compound feed had a lower milk yield from d20 to d40 as compared with control fed sows (8.0 vs.10.3 kg/d; P<0.05).In conclusion, the daily feed intake was clearly insufficient in early lactation, and sows lost > 1 kg of body fat/d from d5-d20. The daily protein- and amino acid requirements were met during pregnancy, also when sows were fed the low protein compound feed, but the low protein diet supplied insufficient standardised ileal digestible lysine during lactation and this compromised the milk production. The total energy requirement of high yielding first parity outdoor sows during a mild winter was found to be ~ 68 MJ ME/d in gestation and ~153 MJ ME/d at peak lactation.

Resting metabolic rates increase with elevation in a mountain-dwelling lizard.

Individuals that inhabit broad elevational ranges may experience unique environmental challenges. Because temperature decreases with increased elevation, the ectotherms living at high elevations have to manage limited activity time and high thermoregulatory effort. The resting metabolic rate (RMR) of a postabsorptive animal is related to its total energy requirements as well as many other fitness traits. Mesquite lizards (Sceloporus grammicus) living on La Malinche Volcano, Mexico, inhabit a wide elevational range with some populations apparently thriving above the tree line. We measured the RMR of lizards from different elevations (i.e., 2,600, 3,200, and 4,100 m) at four ecologically relevant temperatures (i.e., 15, 25, 30, and 35°C) and found that RMR of mesquite lizards increased with temperature and body mass. More importantly, lizards from the high-elevation population had mass specific RMR that was higher at all temperatures. While the higher RMRs of high-elevation populations imply higher metabolic costs at a given temperature these lizards were also smaller. Both of these traits may allow these high elevation populations to thrive in the face of the thermal challenges imposed by their environment.

Embodied and operational energy and carbon emissions of passive building in HSCW zone in China: A case study

Passive building is generally regarded as the energy-efficient building to reduce the primary energy consumption and related carbon emissions. It is suggested that the most effective way to minimize the space heating energy demand is to decrease heat loss by enhancing the thermal and airtightness performance of building envelope.And it is suited to the buildings in cold climates for decreasing space heating energy consumption which dominates the operational energy. However, the appropriate design strategy of building depends on climates. In HSCW (hot summer and cold winter) zone in China, for instance, the space heating is just one issue of energy demand in operational stage, the energy use for cooling and dehumidification in summer also accounts for a considerable proportion in operational stage of buildings. The effect of decreasing the cooling energy demand will become smaller as thickness of insulation layer increases, the unfavorable highly insulated envelope may even cause the overheating risk in summer. In addition, embodied energy and carbon emissions will markedly increase as more materials are consumed in passive buildings. Therefore, in order to get an appropriate design strategy of passive buildings in HSCW zone in China, further research on energy consumption and carbon emissions of embodied and operational stage is needed. In this case, detailed life cycle analysis of embodied and operational energy use and carbon emissions of a passive building is given and then compared with a conventional building in the same unique climate zone. The embodied energy consumption and carbon emissions of the passive building is 7.31 GJ/m2 and carbon 0.98 t CO2 eq/m2, 37.6% and 16.2% higher than that of conventional building respectively. Due to the benefits on the operational stage, the total life cycle energy requirement and carbon emissions of passive building is 17.4% and 22.7% lower than that of conventional building, respectively. Towards a zero energy and impact building, the design of passive cooling, high efficiency cooling equipment and renewable energy to reduce remaining energy demand should be paid more attention in further passive buildings in this climate.

Energy Consumption in Residential Buildings: Comparison between Three Different Building Styles

More than one-third of the electricity generated in the world is being consumed in the residential sector. This study aims to model, simulate, and estimate electrical energy consumption in three different building styles. That is in order to compare and contrast energy consumption categories and their related social and architectural aspects for an unaddressed region that have its particular weather conditions and its special social and environmental aspects. The simulation is done by detailed modeling of the buildings using EnergyPlus. The results demonstrate that water heating systems account for almost one-fifth of the annual energy consumption. Cooling loads were found to be more than 5 times the heating loads. The peak of energy consumption was recorded to be in July, while the lowermost recorded in April and in November. The Apartment style requires the lowest annual energy consumption by an amount of 10 kWh/m2 per person followed by the Duplex house with 13 kWh/m2 per person, while the Single-Story house comes with the highest energy consumption of 18 kWh/m2 per person. These represent local power consumption of 69, 79, and 90 kWh/m2, respectively. On average, the water heating, space cooling, plus interior lights consume about 60% of total energy requirements with a mostly equal share for each, while the equipment has the maximum share of 35% of the total, leaving about 5% for the rest. The results of this study may be used as a reference line in the future for the calculations of energy savings in similar regions.

Energy Consumption on Dairy Farms: A Review of Monitoring, Prediction Modelling, and Analyses

The global consumption of dairy produce is forecasted to increase by 19% per person by 2050. However, milk production is an intense energy consuming process. Coupled with concerns related to global greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, increasing the production of milk must be met with the sustainable use of energy resources, to ensure the future monetary and environmental sustainability of the dairy industry. This body of work focused on summarizing and reviewing dairy energy research from the monitoring, prediction modelling and analyses point of view. Total primary energy consumption values in literature ranged from 2.7 MJ kg−1 Energy Corrected Milk on organic dairy farming systems to 4.2 MJ kg−1 Energy Corrected Milk on conventional dairy farming systems. Variances in total primary energy requirements were further assessed according to whether confinement or pasture-based systems were employed. Overall, a 35% energy reduction was seen across literature due to employing a pasture-based dairy system. Compared to standard regression methods, increased prediction accuracy has been demonstrated in energy literature due to employing various machine-learning algorithms. Dairy energy prediction models have been frequently utilized throughout literature to conduct dairy energy analyses, for estimating the impact of changes to infrastructural equipment and managerial practices.

Energy needs in the treatment of uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition: Secondary analysis to optimize delivery of ready-to-use therapeutic foods.

Outpatient therapeutic feeding protocols for the treatment of uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition in children were initially based on weight gain data from inpatient settings and expert knowledge of the physiological requirements during recovery. However, weight gain and energy requirements from historic inpatient settings may differ from modern outpatient settings and therefore may not be appropriate to guide current therapeutic feeding protocols. We calculated the weight gain and average estimated total daily energy requirement of children successfully treated for uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition as outpatients in Niger (n = 790). Mean energy provided by six therapeutic feeding protocols was calculated and compared with average estimated energy requirements in the study population. Overall weight gain was 5.5 g·kg−1·day−1 among recovered children. Average energy requirements ranged from 92 to 110 kcal·kg−1·day−1 depending on the estimation approach. Two current therapeutic feeding protocols were found to provide an excess of energy after the first week of treatment in our study population, whereas four research protocols tended to provide less energy than the estimated requirement after the first week of treatment. Alternative feeding protocols have the potential to simplify and lead to important savings for programmes but should be evaluated to show adequacy to meet the energy needs of children under treatment, as well as feasibility and cost efficiency. Our findings rely on theoretical calculations based on several assumptions and should be confirmed in field studies.

An energy-saving re-use strategy for the treatment of lignocellulosic biomass applied to the production of levulinc acid

A strategy for the re-use of spent liquors during the batch dilute acid treatment of lignocellulosic biomass was evaluated as an alternative to reduce the consumption of water and energy. Using the same spent liquor in the successive treatments of new biomass portions, instead of using fresh liquor, implies the concentration of the hemicellulose-rich liquor. It was compared with the operation without re-use and its effect in the process economy was pointed out for a particular case study, namely, levulinic acid production from pine sawdust hemicellulose fraction. In the studied scheme, extractive-free pine sawdust was treated by dilute acid hydrolysis, and the resulting liquid is first concentrated and then sent to a catalytic reactor in which hemicelluloses are converted to levulinic acid. The effect of liquor re-use on the treatment performance was experimentally evaluated to consider its feasibility. Experimental results showed that the hydrolysis and decomposition rates and yields were only slightly affected by the liquor re-use. The techno-economic analysis showed that energy consumption can be reduced by 45% when the spent liquor is re-used twice, as compared with no re-use. The total energy requirement was covered by burning the residual solid; the production cost can be reduced by 78% when the spent liquor is re-used three times, as compared with no re-use. In these conditions, an internal rate of return of 19.5% was achieved for a production capacity of 156,000 t/year.

Influence of process parameters on the energy requirements and dried sliced tomato quality

AbstractThis study presents the effects of process parameters on the energy demand for drying and quality indices of dried tomato slices. The experiment was designed and analyzed with the Box‐Behnken method of Design Expert and conducted for drying 1800 g batch of a local variety of tomatoes with a solar‐electric dryer. The study examined the impact of varying process parameters: air temperature (50°C, 60°C, and 70°C), sample thicknesses (10, 15, and 20 mm), and air velocities (1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 ms−1) on the total and specific energy requirements, drying time, lycopene content, ascorbic acid, nonenzymatic browning index, brightness, and ratio of redness to yellowness of dried tomato samples, with emphasis on process optimization and drying time. The prediction of the optimal process condition is obtained using the desirability index technique. The results obtained show that the total and specific energy requirements for a batch of tomato varied from 7.82 to 125.48 kJ h and 6.70 to 179.83 kJ h g−1. The results of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicate that all the studied process parameters were significant with P &gt; .05; with the maximum (40.21%) and minimum (19.82%) percent energy contribution by air temperature and air velocity, respectively. The energy of activation varies between 20.26 and 39.35 kJ mol−1. At the optimum process conditions of 57.28°C, 14.08 mm, and 1.3 ms−1, the specific energy requirements, lycopene content, ascorbic acid content, nonenzymatic browning index, brightness, redness to yellowness ratio, and drying duration are obtained as 103.313 ± 2.35 kW h kg−1, 58.7 ± 2.19 mg/100 mg dry matter, 2.9 ± 0.26 mg/g, 0.51 ± 0.033 absorbance unit, 60.074 ± 1.44, 0.77 ± 0.021, and 61.88 ± 8.93 minutes, respectively. The results of the study are of immense benefit to the food drying industry, as it provides food industries with improved drying parameters for enhancing dried tomato quality, as well as increasing dryer energy efficiency and cost‐effectiveness. Sugestions on prospects for further studies were given.

Feasibility Study of Wind-Diesel Stand-Alone System for a Small Village in India

The finite resources of energy like coal, oil, natural gas etc are depleting day by day. On the other hand man is exploring new ways of utilizing energy and thus total energy requirement of the world is increasing continuously. With the present rate of utilization, the underground deposits of coal, oil and natural gas are expected to last for approximately, 100 years, 50 years and 50 years respectively. To cope up with this problem, concerted efforts to generate renewable energy as an alternate source is increasing rapidly with the passage of time. Among the available renewable resources, solar energy and wind energy are the prime candidates getting attention around the world for power generation. Wind energy is a very good option for power generation but suffers due to variation in wind speed and thus the power contained in the wind, when considered on yearly basis. There are various methods to suppress this drawback of wind energy. One such option is the wind-diesel system. This paper highlights, an analysis of the wind-diesel stand-alone system to meet the complete energy requirement such as house lighting, water pumping, laboratory operations for processing the salt, sealing machine operation etc., of a remotely located community in India.&nbsp

Energy performance analysis and low carbon retrofit solutions for residential buildings

The aim of this paper is to investigate the energy performance of residential buildings, through a case study of a typical domestic house located in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece. The building’s energy performance is simulated and analysed using the DesignBuilder software. The study then performs a parametric analysis, in which deviation in various parameters is compared against the current situation in the thermal, cooling load and total energy requirements. The significance of changing each parameter is evaluated by considering the energy balance. Finally, the study uses the Analytical Hierarchy Procedure (AHP) to choose the best sustainable retrofit option in order to reduce the carbon footprint in a domestic house. The alternatives considered are sealing the building envelope (installing cavity-wall insulation), on-site energy generation (solar PVTs), installation of energy efficient appliances, and home monitoring with smart meters. The procedure suggests a solution that best meets the criteria of cost, greenhouse gases emissions reduction, and ease of installation. The case study suggests that smart meters monitoring is the best option, followed by cavity-wall insulation.

Corrigendum to: Improved region-specific emission factors for enteric methane emissions from cattle in smallholder mixed crop: livestock systems of Nandi County, Kenya

National greenhouse-gas (GHG) inventories in most developing countries, and in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, use default (Tier I) GHG emission factors (EFs) provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to estimate enteric methane (CH4) emissions from livestock. Because these EFs are based on data primarily from developed countries, there is a high degree of uncertainty associated with CH4 emission estimates from African livestock systems. Accurate Tier II GHG emission reporting from developing countries becomes particularly important following the Paris Climate agreement made at COP21, which encourages countries to mitigate GHG emissions from agricultural sources. In light of this, the present study provides improved enteric CH4 emission estimates for cattle in Nandi County, Western Kenya, representing a common livestock production system found in East Africa. Using the data from measurements of liveweight and liveweight change, milk production and locomotion collected from 1143 cattle in 127 households across 36 villages over three major agro-ecological zones covering a full year, we estimated total metabolic energy requirements. From this and assessments of digestibility from seasonally available feeds, we estimated feed intake and used this to calculate daily CH4 production by season, and, subsequently, created new EFs. Mean EFs were 50.6, 45.5, 28.5, 33.2 and 29.0 kg CH4/head.year for females (&amp;gt;2 years), males (&amp;gt;2 years), heifers (1–2 years), young males (1–2 years) and calves (4 emissions in some African livestock systems.

A numerical parametric study on the efficiency of prestressed geogrid reinforced soil

Prestressing geosynthetics offers a rapid and safe method of improving the poor ground conditions. This paper aims to find out the effect of prestressing the geogrid layer on load bearing and settlement performance. This study also takes into account the impact of the size, depth of placement and the adjacency of footing, for unreinforced (UR), geogrid reinforced (GR) and prestressed geogrid reinforced (PGR) soil on the load-bearing and the settlement characteristics by using the finite element program Plaxis 3D. Based on numerical simulation, it appears that PGR soil can enhance the bearing pressure of the UR soil by almost 500% and reduced the settlement by nearly 88 % by reducing the energy consumption. The footing placed at higher depths for PGR soil gives better performance as compared to GR soil. Moreover, placing two adjacent square footing increases the interference zone of PGR soil by 67% as compared to UR soil. This method can be instrumental in reducing the total input energy requirement to achieve a certain settlement during placement of shallow foundation for various important structures while being economic simultaneously.

Life‐Cycle Assessment of Recycling Postconsumer High‐Density Polyethylene and Polyethylene Terephthalate

This study aims to quantify the overall environmental performances of mechanical recycling of the postconsumer high‐density polyethylene (HDPE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in Jordan. The life‐cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to assess the potential environmental impacts of recycling postconsumer PET and HDPE. It quantifies the total energy requirements, energy sources, atmospheric pollutants, waterborne pollutants, and solid waste resulting from the production of recycled PET and HDPE resin from the postconsumer plastic. System expansion and cut‐off recycling allocation methods are applied. The analysis has been carried out according to the LCA standard, series UNI EN ISO 14040‐14044:2006. A standard unit of output (functional unit) is defined as “one ton of PET flake” and “one ton of HDPE pellet.” The results of the production of virgin resin are compared with the “cut‐off” and “system expansion” recycling results. Depending on the allocation methods applied, a nonrenewable energy saving of 40–85% and greenhouse gas emission saving of 25–75% can be achieved. Based on two allocation methods, PET and HDPE recycling offers important environmental benefits over single‐use virgin PET and HDPE. LCA offers a powerful tool for assisting companies and policy‐makers in the waste plastic industry. Furthermore, the “system expansion” recycling method is not easy to apply because it requires detailed data outside of the life cycle of the investigated product.

Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions in Ironmaking and Development of a Novel Flash Technology

The issues of energy consumption and CO2 emissions of major ironmaking processes, including several new technologies, are assessed. These two issues are interconnected in that the production and use of fuels to generate energy add to the total amount of CO2 emissions and the efforts to sequester or convert CO2 require energy. The amounts of emissions and energy consumption in alternate ironmaking processes are compared with those for the blast furnace, currently the dominant ironmaking process. Although more than 90% of iron production is currently through the blast furnace, intense efforts are devoted to developing alternative technologies. Recent developments in alternate ironmaking processes, which are largely driven by the needs to decrease CO2 emissions and energy consumption, are discussed in this article. This discussion will include the description of the recently developed novel flash ironmaking technology. This technology bypasses the cokemaking and pelletization/sintering steps, which are pollution prone and energy intensive, by using iron ore concentrate. This transformational technology renders large energy saving and decreased CO2 emissions compared with the blast furnace process. Economic analysis indicated that this new technology, when operated using natural gas, would be economically feasible. As a related topic, we will also discuss different methods for computing process energy and total energy requirements in ironmaking.

Kinetic study and performance evaluation of an integrated two-phase fixed-film baffled bioreactor for bioenergy recovery from wastewater and bio-wasted sludge

The present study evaluated the performance of an integrated two-phase fixed-film baffled bioreactor for wastewater treatment with regard to its energy consumption and production. The total potential of the bioenergy recovery of the bioreactor was evaluated not only from the anaerobic wastewater treatment but also from the produced bio-wasted sludge of both phases. Statistical correlations between bio-methane production and kinetic coefficients were uncovered. Methane yields between 0.15 and 0.30 L CH4.g sCODremoved−1 were obtained during anaerobic wastewater treatment. The maximum energy recoveries from the digestion of bio-wasted sludge (sloughed biofilm) equaled 0.28 and 0.3 L CH4. g TS−1 for aerobic and anaerobic units, respectively. The Grau model was appropriate for predicting the performance of the bioreactor and the potential of bio-methane production. It was demonstrated that substrate utilization rate (Rsu) and Grau coefficient (KG) can be applied to predict the rate of methane production. Regarding the volume of treated wastewater, the energy production was in the range of 2.8–12 kWh.m−3. Moreover, the overall energy consumption of wastewater treatment was in the range of 0.32–0.79 kWh/kg sCODremoved, while the total energy production was 3.7–5.1 kWh/kg sCODremoved. Therefore, the designed bioreactor was energy positive with net energy production of 3.39–4.5 kWh/kg sCODremoved−1. The total energy requirement for both wastewater treatment and bio-wasted sludge digestion was 7–15.5% of the total energy production, and, therefore, the bioreactor is a sustainable energy process. The contribution of anaerobic wastewater treatment and anaerobic digestion of bio-wasted sludge of aerobic and anaerobic units for energy recovery as bio-methane was 53, 26, and 21%, respectively. As the bioreactor achieved more than 95% of sCOD removal and have a high bioenergy production, and since kinetic coefficients demonstrated the considerably high performance of the bioreactor, it can be of interest as an appropriate treatment process.

Techno-economic analysis of low moisture anhydrous ammonia (LMAA) pretreatment for butanol production from oil palm frond

Cellulosic butanol production has been of interest because of the attractive properties of butanol as a fuel and its ability in environmental preservation. Biological pathway for butanol production is currently a subject of development efforts from various processing aspects. One crucial stage is the pretreatment process, which has considerably affected the production cost of butanol. There are some concerns regarding the overall effectiveness of the process, including high total energy and liquid requirement, and production of inhibitory compounds from the pretreatment process. Low-moisture anhydrous ammonia (LMAA) pretreatment, which requires less water, work at atmospheric conditions, and gives milder pretreatment intensity, was developed to solve these problems. In this study, the techno-economic analysis (TEA) of butanol production from oil palm fronds (OPF) was conducted. The simulation employed LMAA pretreatment, followed by ABE fermentation and downstream processing. The lowest butanol production cost was $ 2.11/L, which was recorded from 95.34 × 106 L butanol/y plant capacity. Detail analysis of each cost component revealed that operating costs contributing nearly 63% of the production cost with 24% and 17% contribution from utility and material costs, respectively. Optimization of process parameters estimated the potential of production cost reduction to lower than $ 1.65/L by an increase in the enzyme hydrolysis yield. The study aimed to provide data towards utilization effort of OPF, especially for butanol production.

Impact of Plant Nutrients on Prediction of Wheat Crop Yield from Pond Ash Amended Field by Artificial Neural Networks

In India presently, 145 existing Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) contribute about 70% of the total energy requirement and produce approximately 184 million metric tons of fly ash per year, which is projected to exceed 440 million metric tons per annum by 2030. This quantity of fly ash generated poses significant environmental problems, besides occupying large areas of land for its dumping, requiring appropriate measures for its safe disposal and gainful utilization on sustainable basis. Based on the field demonstration work carried out on the bulk utilization of pond ash in agriculture and forestry sectors under different agro-climatic conditions and soil types for the last two decades, it has been well established that pond ash has significant potential for utilization as liming agent, soil conditioner, source of plant nutrients and also for boosting the growth and yield of a variety of crops. Some field scale studies carried out especially in the waste/alkaline lands of State Agriculture Research Farm and farmers’ fields are discussed in the present paper for the development of artificial neural network (ANN) for the correlation of crop yields and plant nutrients. As such, the influence of major plant nutrients viz. N, P, K, Ca, Mg and S on the yield of wheat crops cultivated in different soil types and agro-climatic conditions is discussed. Furthermore, an attempt has also been made to develop a three-layer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) model. Satisfactorily enough, it has been found that the predictions of the developed ANN model are in quite good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the experimental results.

Technical and economic evaluation of the use of CNG as potential public transport fuel in Nigeria

The need to develop alternative automobile fuel other than petrol and diesel in Nigeria is based on the rising cost, environmental pollution, and perennial scarcity of petrol, diesel, etc. Technical analysis of the introduction of compressed natural gas vehicles as a means of public transportation in Nigeria is conducted in this work. Port Harcourt – Onitsha expressway, a major interstate route in Nigeria is used as a case for analysis. 400 compressed natural gas vehicles are estimated to ply the route daily, which makes the total energy requirement per day to be 3856 gasoline gallon equivalent/day. It is recommended from the refueling stations design that five refueling stations with an average dispensing rate of 800 gasoline gallon equivalent/day are installed along the route to take care of the total requirement of 3856 gasoline gallon equivalent/day. Compressor duty analyses are conducted using Hysys, a process simulation software to determine the energy required by the compressors to boost the pressure of the gas from 14.70 psia at the sales point to 3600 psia which is the outlet pressure of the stations. From the analyses using economic indicators, the project is also found to be economically viable. It has a very high net present value of $2.27 million, short pay-out of 4.24 years, internal rate of return of 14.42% and profit per dollar investment after seven years of 0.72. The entire results indicate that adopting compressed natural gas vehicles for public transportation in at least the major interstate routes in Nigeria, will help to reduce the transportation problems encountered in Nigeria due to the pressure on gasoline and diesel.

Exploration of individual variability to better predict the nutrient requirements of gestating sows1.

Sows often receive the same feed during gestation even though their nutrient requirements vary during gestation and among sows. The objective of this study was to report the variability in nutrient requirement among sows and during gestation, in order to develop a precision feeding approach. A data set of 2,511 gestations reporting sow characteristics at insemination and their farrowing performance was used as an input for a Python model, adapted from InraPorc, predicting nutrient requirement during gestation. Total metabolizable energy (ME) requirement increased with increasing litter size, gestation weeks, and parity (30.6, 33.6, and 35.5 MJ/d for parity 1, 2, and 3 and beyond, respectively, P < 0.01). Standardized ileal digestible lysine (SID Lys) requirement per kg of diet increased from weeks 1 to 6 of gestation, remained stable from weeks 7 to 10, and increased again from week 11 until the end of gestation (P < 0.01). Average Lys requirement increased with increasing litter size (SID Lys: 3.00, 3.27, 3.50 g/kg for small, medium and large litters, P < 0.01) and decreased when parity increased (SID Lys: 3.61, 3.17, 2.84 g/kg for parity 1, 2, and 3++, P < 0.01). Standardized total tract digestible phosphorus (STTD-P) and total calcium (Total-Ca) requirements markedly increased after week 9, with litter size, and decreased when parity increased (STTD-P: 1.36 vs. 1.31 g/kg for parity 1 and parity 3 and beyond; Total-Ca: 4.28 vs. 4.10 g/kg for parity 1 and parity 3 and beyond, P < 0.01). Based on empirical cumulative distribution functions, a 4-diets strategy, varying in SID Lys and STTD-P content according to parity and gestation period (P1 from weeks 0 to 11, P2 from weeks 12 to 17), may be put forward to meet the requirements of 90% of the sows (2 diets for multiparous sows: P1: 2.8 g SID Lys/kg and 1.1 g STTD-P/kg; P2: 4.5 g SID Lys/kg and 2.3 g STTD-P/kg; and 2 diets for primiparous sows: P1: 3.4 g SID Lys/kg and 1.1g STTD-P/kg; P2: 5.0 g SID Lys/kg, 2.2 g STTD-P/kg). Better considering the high variability of sow requirement should thus make it possible to optimize their performance whilst reducing feeding cost and excretion. Feeding sows closer to their requirement may initially be achieved by grouping and feeding sows according to gestation week and parity, and ultimately by feeding sows individually using a smart feeder allowing the mixing of different feeds differing in their nutrient content.

Renewable Energy Substitution in Lieu of Fossil Fuel Based Energy For India

Rapid globalization and industrialization is witnessed across the globe. This has led to a rapid increase in energy demand. In India, it is found that energy consumption is growing exponentially. A sustainable energy model that helps in optimizing the energy consumption is the need of the hour. The model should help policymakers to put proactive plans in place. A two-step process has been carried out. A demand prediction model is proposed to forecast the fossil based energy demand for India upto 2040-41. 92 econometric models have been were developed and the best fit was found. The requirement was found to be coal and lignite = 32203.42 pJ oil = 20396.92 PJ, natural gas = 3460.77 pJ and electricity = 9887.71 pJ. The total energy requirement in 2040-41 will be 65948 pJ in 2040-41. Using constraints such as energy return on investment, acceptability, reliability and CO2 emissions a multi-objective optimization model that maximizes efficiency and minimizes cost is developed. Renewable energy substitution scenarios are developed. Solar energy is expected to dominate and polices have to designed to ensure that the naturally available solar energy is being utilized to a larger extent. Smart grid technology is at its nascent stage of development in India. Research and development has to be done to enhance the use of smart grid so that decentralized energy generation from renewable energy can be increased.