Energy is one of the building blocks of modern society. The growth of the modern society has been fueled by cheap, abundant energy resources. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world concentrated on fossil fuels to provide energy needed for running factories, transportation, electricity generation, homes and buildings. In parallel to the increase in the consumption of energy, living standards...

Among the technologies being examined to produce renewable fuels, microalgae are viewed by many in the scientific community as having the greatest potential to become economically viable. Algae are capable of producing greater than 50,000 kg/acre/year of biomass [1]. Additionally, most algae naturally accumulate energy-dense oils that can easily be converted into transportation fuels. To reach ...

Burning sulphur-laden transportation fuels results in misty and fuggy air of large cities. The combustion products of sulphur-laden fuels poison the exhaust conversion catalyst and invalidate the catalyst box. As results, the vehicle emission gets worse and worse no matter how advanced the auto technology is. Some sulphur compounds converted to sulphates after combustion and emitted into the at...

This article calls for engaging the public and private sectors of developing and industrialized countries in a global clean cooking fuel initiative (GCCFI) to bring about a worldwide shift to clean fluid fuels for cooking and heating in 10-15 years’ time -with an emphasis on providing clean fuel to the poorest households. This initiative is crucial to implementation of the Millennium Developmen...

Renewable biofuels are needed to displace petroleum-derived transport fuels, which contribute to global warming and are of limited availability. Biodiesel and bioethanol are the two potential renewable fuels that have attracted the most attention. As demonstrated here, biodiesel and bioethanol produced from agricultural crops using existing methods cannot sustainably replace fossil-based transp...

Knowing the types and amounts of fuels at a site is an important prerequisite to evaluating fire risk, predicting fire behavior, and assessing potential fire effects. When these assessments are expanded to larger extents, the spatial configuration of the landscape fuel mosaic must also be considered (Keane et al. 2000: Keane et al. 1998). Spatial patterns of fuels, topography, and wind all inte...

OBJECTIVE To investigate differences in clinical features between tobacco smoke-induced and biomass fuel-induced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). METHODS We retrospectively analyzed 206 patients with COPD caused by exposure to tobacco smoke and 81 cases of COPD caused by exposure to biomass fuels who received treatment in our hospital between 2011 March and 2014 March. Difference...

New chemical kinetic reaction mechanisms are developed for two of the five major components of biodiesel fuel, methyl stearate and methyl oleate. The mechanisms are produced using existing reaction classes and rules for reaction rates, with additional reaction classes to describe other reactions unique to methyl ester species. Mechanism capabilities were examined by computing fuel/air autoignit...

In recent years, the mining industry has achieved an important position in national economy due to its increasing productivity. However, since 2000, there have been signs of a slowdown, resulting from and local conditions industry. It is for these reasons that we concluded this type must be assessed not only economic but also regional sectors, because performance directly affected by value mine...

Nanocrystalline complex oxides have been synthesized by combination of sol–gel auto combustion and ultrasonic irradiation techniques using copper nitrate, zinc nitrate as metallic nitrates and glycine, urea and thiourea as fuels. Sol-gel combustion (combination of the chemical sol–gel process and the combustion process) as a proper synthesized technique is used to synthesize ZnO/CuO nanocomposi...