A tailored model for the assessment of environmental benefits achievable by light-weighting design solutions in the automotive field is presented. The model is based on the Fuel Reduction Value (FRV) coefficient which expresses the Fuel Consumption (FC) saving involved by a 100 kg vehicle mass reduction. The work is composed by two main sections: simulation and environmental modelling. Simulati...

I. Abstract Mechanical fuels treatments are being widely used in fire prone ecosystems where fuel loading poses a hazard, yet little research examining fuel dynamics, fire behavior, and ecological effects exists, especially in the southeastern US. In order to broaden our understanding of these treatments, effects of mechanical mastication ("mowing") were examined in a common pine ecosystem of t...

The work on the quality improvement of fuel oil using acid treatment was carried out. The improvement of the fuel oil was done using sulphuric acid to remove contaminants. Sulphuric acid at different concentrations were mixed with the oil and kept at 45°C for four hours in the agitator vessel to allow reaction to take place. Acidic sludge was then drained off from the agitator and the oil was n...

Renewable energy is an increasing need in our society. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) represent a new method for treating wastewater and simultaneously producing electricity. In the present study, we demonstrated the feasibility of bioelectricity generation from brewery wastewater treatment using a mediator less MFC at different pH. We also demonstrated that addition of readily utilizable substrat...

Landfill leachate emerges as a promising feedstock for microbial fuel cells (MFCs). In the present investigation, direct airbreathing cathode-based MFCs are fabricated to investigate the potential of landfill leachate. Three MFCs that have different cathode areas are fabricated and investigated for 17 days under open circuit conditions. The maximum open circuit voltage (OCV) is observed to be a...

The purpose of this study is to determine the optimum intake valve closing time of a large diesel engine having lower fuel consumption and lower NOx emission. The performance simulation has been conducted for this purpose, and a phenomenological combustion model is verified by experimental data of heat release rate and NOx emission in order to enhance the prediction quality of the performance s...

We present an industrial case study in automotive control of significant complexity: the new common rail fuel injection system for Diesel engines, currently under production by Magneti Marelli Powertrain. In this system, a flow–rate valve, introduced before the High Pressure (HP) pump, regulates the fuel flow that supplies the common rail according to the engine operating point. The standard ap...

Most bacteria known to be electrochemically active have been harvested in the anodic compartments of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and are able to use electrodes as electron acceptors. The reverse phenomenon, i.e. using solid electrodes as electron donors, is not so widely studied. To our knowledge, most of the electrochemically active bacteria are Gram-negative. The present study implements a tr...

Experimentation about alternative fuels started mostly after the oil crisis of 1980’s to 1990’s after the World War II. In order to reduce the use of petroleum product which are limited in nature, the idea of alternative fuels was developed. In this paper an attempt has been made to investigate the engine performance in a four stroke single cylinder water cooled diesel engine using pure diesel ...

In Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs), a mass transfer impact might be larger than expected because it not only effects the mass transfer losses (substrate flux [1, 2] and removal of waste [2]), but also effects the activation losses (mediator [3-5]) and the ohmic losses (proton transfer [6]). However, the convection/diffusion of the reactant transport from the bulk (reactant transport), which can be ...