August 8, 2016. 07:00h a.m. Radio turned on driving to work. Headlines begin. “Today is Earth Overshoot Day”, I hear. Oh. Bad news. The Earth Overshoot day in 2016 has been brought forward again.
I’m sure you are wondering about some things right now: 1) If I am able to understand the radio at that time in the morning, 2) Earth Overshoot day? What does it mean?
The answer to the first question is yes. I can understand if radio plays the summer song or the speech is about an environmental issue, in both cases my attention is activated immediately. And the answer to the second question is broader and deeper. I need to enlarge on this problem. Let’s see.
Earth Overshoot concept was originally developed by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Earth Overshoot Day is defined as a mark that indicates when humanity has maxed up all the Earth’s resources for the calendar year. Although it is only an estimation, this day is considered the best scientific approach to measure the gap between natural resources generated and destroyed annually, so that, once passed, Earth is operating in overshoot and everything consumed until the end year is supported by resources that planet cannot produce and contaminants that Earth is not able to absorb (www.footprintnetwork.org)..
The simplest example to understand the concept is thinking about Earth´s resources being money in a bank. Overshoot occurs when we withdraw money from the bank faster than to wait for the interest this money generates.
Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network is the organization that analyzes thousands of data points and measures humanity’s demand for supply of natural resources and ecological services every year, that is, it compares income of the Earth (which are achieved by increasing the use of renewable energy, for example) against expenses (which are produced, among others, by massive use of private cars overconsuming fuel) and the result of the equation provides the date when humanity exhausts the nature budget for that year so for the rest months, it will maintain by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating CO2 in the atmosphere, making climatic change worse.
Therefore it’s not a holiday definitively. Earth Overshoot day has moved from the end of October in 1993 to August 13th last year, which means that the deadline was shortened almost a week in 2016. Therefore each year the problem grows worse, if consumption patterns continue apace, it is hard to imagine that the day when we will have spent all the “credit” that exists in this Earth account could come. If we continue to destroy its natural capital and its ability to renew its environmental services, it will be very difficult to avoid it.
In CARTIF, our year already started with environmental purposes and to encourage companies for “funding” to Earth seems to us to be vital because we are in overcapacity nowadays. One of the most interesting ads to do this is the call Spanish CLIMA projects. The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA) launches this call every year and encourages companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with the development of new low carbon activities. It is one of the best funding for those companies that need to receive the last effort to transform their activities towards low carbon technologies, since the MAGRAMA “buys” the CO2 equivalent emissions avoided (expense to Earth eluded), raising the fixed price per tonne each year.
Thus, if you choose to carry out a more environmental process, it will be attractive from the economic point of view and besides, you will contribute to add to the “money box” of the Earth, therefore activities like changing your fossil fuel boilers by other fueled by biomass, transforming your fleet to electric vehicles or using the residual heat of your process, could make an important difference for the future.
Do you dare to bring out the environmental banker in you?
The Abdominal Aorta Aneurysm (AAA) has been recognized as a major health problem in the last decade. The statistics associated with this condition are of great concern and, as recorded in most of the studies found in scientific literature, it is expected that its impact will increase in the next years mainly due to the increase in life expectancy of the population. The rupture of abdominal aortic aneurysms represents a major clinical event because of its high mortality rate.
According to Dr. Felix Nieto comments in his previous post, currently the indicators used to determine the treatment of patients with aneurysms are the maximum transverse diameter and the growth rate that can be considered insufficient; they do not have a physically grounded theoretical basis. Because of this limitation, in recent years research has been basically aimed at improving understanding of the phenomena associated with the emergence and evolution of this disease, in order to determine whether other variables could be predictive of rupture.
One of the major constraints in obtaining accurate results in modeling vascular diseases is the use of a realistic computational domain, which is closer to be possible due to technological advances in equipment for conducting tomography computed axial (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the development of CAD techniques, which has advanced significantly in the detailed extraction, in vivo, of anatomical structures.
CARTIF team is working on automated conversion of 2D set of images obtained by CT in a realistic 3D model that constitutes the geometric domain of integration into the AAA simulation by finite element techniques
The activity related to medical imaging AAA has been the key to one of the issues recently treated in CARTIF, called the study of the influence of geometric parameters on the rate of rupture of AAA, the work is particularly focused on iliac angle.
In the first phase they were carried out fluid dynamics and structural simulations to calculate the Rupture Potential Index (IPR) of several cases of patients affected by AAA
The results show that the values of the iliac angle (α) are related to other geometric parameters such as the eccentricity of AAA, which together can characterize the IPR.
The next step would confirm this trend over a larger database of patients with AAA, being essential as now, the good cooperation with HCUV (University Clinical Hospital of Valladolid).
For the simplicity of obtaining these parameters by the specialist through the TAC, the results of this research could be a very effective tool for the surgeon when making the decision to submit or not the patient to a surgical repair procedure.
More than once, especially in the villages, we have heard a farmer saying a similar phrase: “Wheat is growing a lot due to rains this year, what a pity! Because many weeds will grow and I will have to spread herbicides”. Before this comment it could open a long discussion.
It is known that weeds are a problem, but there are other ways so that they do not encroach crops, without resorting to herbicides. We must not let them grow so that invade crops, but neither eradicate them, because they also have other beneficial effects, such as they help to control pests and favor the presence of pollinators in the field.
So, what happens? Should we leave them or not? Well, there are other solutions such as leaving margins between crops and introduce aromatic plants or fruit trees which prevent the emergence of weeds in these margins, like cereal fields were interspersed with orchards and even fruit trees years ago. It is what is called creating mulches.
What are the covers or mulches vegetal?
The implementation of mulches consists on sowing between the streets or lines any cultivable crop species or let the natural vegetation grow spontaneously. The mulches are used as a strategy for soil management, because they reduce the risk of erosion besides increasing the biodiversity of the natural enemies of the usual crop pests.
Mulches compete with weeds for space, light and nutrients and, therefore, they help to reduce the costs of weed control which is an advantage for the farmer. Other cover crops produce allelopathic substances (biochemical compounds that influence in growth, survival or reproduction of other organisms) which inhibit the growth of certain weeds and, in general, mulches, like hedges, are a reservoir where beneficial organisms can live, which can pass to the crop in search of prey (pests).
Are mulches used a lot?
Mulches are widely used in organic farming. Organic farming, regulated by (EC) Nº 834/2007 Regulation of 28 June 2007, forbids the use of chemical pesticides and synthetic origin fertilizers; therefore, in organic production different management strategies are developed to comply with regulations. One of these techniques is to increase the diversity in and around the crop with different plants which stimulate the diversity of beneficial organisms. The most important diversification technique is the use of mulches between lines of crops.
The mulches issue is highly questionable by both parts, the staunchest supporters and those who never would put into practice. It is clear that by introducing a new crop between the lines of other major crop, for example a vineyard, there will be a competition with the vines, and this can join a production loss, but it can also be very interesting to get a higher quality product due to improvements in soil, or a different microbial flora which can influence the sensory characteristics of the wine produced with those grapes may appear.
Sometimes it takes several decades and we evolved on many issues but in other cases it tends to do things as in the past, as in the case of introducing mulches between lines of crops, although you can always add new techniques as a result of R & D. In CARTIF, we work both in of viticulture and enology fields, where we have made seeding experiences of mulches of aromatic plants between vineyard lines, as in the development of low environmental impact and organic farming techniques.
In previous posts, predictive maintenance was mentioned as one of the main digital enablers of Industry 4.0. Maintenance, linked to the industrial revolution, however, has accompanied us in our evolution as human beings.
Since prehistory, our ancestors have built tools that suffered wear and sometimes broke without prior notice. The solution was simple: to carve a new tool. By creating more elaborate mechanisms (e.g. wooden wheel), the natural alternative to disposal became the reparation by the craftsman. Mechanical looms of the First Industrial Revolution were even more complicated of repairing so specific professions emerged as precursors of current maintenance workers. During this evolution, the wear and breakdown of mechanical parts without prior notice continued as part of everyday factories.
Why this gear has broken? yesterday worked perfectly. Human brain can handle concepts such as linearity of events (seasons, day and night,…) or events that happen more or less at regular intervals. However, these unforeseen drove operators crazy. How can we ensure that gear does not break again? The answer was biologically predictable: “… let’s stop the machine every 2 days (for example) and let’s review gear wear…”
This tradition has resulted in the everyday maintenanceroutine that is applied in industry and in consumer products such as our cars. Our authorized dealer obliges us to make periodic reviews (e.g. each 10,000 km) to check critical elements (brakes, timing belt, …) and change pieces more prone to wear (tires, filters …). This is called preventive maintenance, and is applied in factories and other facilities (e.g. wind turbines) to avoid unexpected breakdowns. However, these faults cannot be eliminated (precisely, they are unforeseen) the only possible reaction is to repair them. This is called corrective maintenance and everyone hates it.
How to stop to all this flood of unexpected breakdowns, repair costs and unnecessary revisions? One of the disciplines with more experience since CARTIF‘s creation is predictive maintenance that seeks to mitigate (it would be unrealistic to assume that we will remove the unexpected) unexpected breakdowns and reduce machines’ periodic reviews. Again, predictive maintenance can be explained as a obvious biological response to the problem of unexpected breakdowns. It is based on the periodic review using characteristic signals of machine’s environment that may anticipate a malfunction. The advantage of this maintenance is that it doesn’t require stopping the machine like with preventive maintenance. For example, an electric motor can have a normal power consumption when it’s correctly operating, but this consumption may increase if some motor’s component suffers from some excessive wear. Thus, a proper monitoring of the consumption can help detecting incipient faults.
Continuing with the electric motor example, what should be the minimum variation of consumption to decide that we must stop the motor and a repair it? Like many decisions in life, you need to apply a criterion of cost/benefit, comparing how much can we lose if we do not repair this motor versus how much money the repair will cost. How to reduce uncertainty in this decision? The answer is a reliable prediction of the fault’s evolution.
This prediction will be influenced by many factors, some of them unknown (like we said it’s something random). However, the two main factors to consider for the prediction are (1) the kind of evolution of the damage (e.g. evolution of damage in a fragile part will be very different from a more or less tough or elastic piece) and (2) workload that the machine will suffer (a fan working 24/7, compared to an elevator motor that starts and stops every time a neighbor presses the button on a floor). A reliable prediction allows the maintenance manager choosing from, together with the forecast of factory workload, the more beneficial option, which in many cases is usually planning maintenance work without affecting production schedule.
Another beneficial effect of predictive maintenance is that a proper analysis of the measured signals provides evidence of what element is failing. This is called fault diagnosis and helps to reduce uncertainty in the more appropriate maintenance action. An example is the vibration measurement that helps distinguishing a fault of an electric motor having an excess of vibration because of an incipient short-circuit or due to a damaged bearing. But that’s the subject of another post.
The Sustainable Public Procurement Initiative (SPPI) is nowadays the key policy instrument to promote sustainable development and move towards a green economy that fosters the development of products and services maximizing social and environmental benefits. EU public procurement directives oblige contracting authorities to base tendering decisions on the most economically advantageous tender (MEAT) principle, focusing on life-cycle costs and environmentally and socially sustainable products. Member States should generally promote the whole life-cycle cost analysis as standard practice in long-term investment.
Transport infrastructure investments have a positive impact on economic growth, creates wealth and jobs, but it has to be done in a way maximises these positive impacts and minimises negative impact on the environment. Specifically, rail transport causes 0.2% of global emissions in EU27. Infrastructure supposes 28% of these emissions, half of them caused during construction. This shows the high environmental impact of these activities.
According to the IODC post “Fighting climate change: the ultimate data challenge”, data are most powerful when they are available as open data and scientists are using data not only to monitor climate change but to help provide solutions, combining data science with climate science.
In line with these ideas an initiative, partially supported by LIFE+ Programme of the European Commission, combines life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques with intelligent data analysis, in order to improve sustainability of railway infrastructure construction processes as a whole, considering environmental, economic and social aspects. The goal is to reduce carbon and water footprints of railway infrastructure construction projects from their earliest stages, i.e. design and planning processes.
On a recent keynote speech, Martina Werner, member of the European Parliament and the ITRE Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, argues that many manufacturers concentrate on competing mainly on the basis of the mere purchase price. A thorough implementation of the procurement directives and particularly the MEAT principle gives suppliers a competitive advantage. Numerous factors now can be taken into account during the procurement procedure. This includes the reliability of the supply chain, services, maintenance costs, environmental factors and criteria of corporate social responsibility.
Based on environmental and social impact of most relevant tasks, an Open Access tool provides selected specific footprint values and environmental & social indicators as open data to the community, promoting the incorporation of environmental criteria on construction projects. This tool is available online, with all the information regarding LCA and Social LCA (SLCA) and it is intended for spreading the word on sustainable development and paving the way for the use of this or similar tools by public bodies or bidders.
The Taoist philosophy defines through the Ying and Yang duality, that has everything that exists in the universe, so that there are always two antagonistic and complementary forces that need each other. You can hardly appreciate the value of the Peace without the existence of wars or health if there were no diseases.
This dual approach is also applicable to technology, imposing conditions that often are opposite, but allow the balance of systems. According to the Thermodynamics, for the production of cold (heat extraction to a source of lower temperature) has to provide external power and dissipate heat to a medium that is hotter than the area you want to cool, so that the heat and cold coexist like the Ying and Yang were addressed.
The conditions of habitability that living beings we have, they require us to maintain a suitable temperature to carry out life processes, in such a way that values at 23 ° C environment, they allow us to be comfortable. However the weather and outdoor conditions present values sometimes far removed from this optimum: from – 40 ° C, which can be in areas close to the Poles, up to 55 ° C which can be summer in areas close to the Equator being essentially the presence or absence of solar radiation which causes these differences.
Technology has developed systems for the transformation of solar energy into heat or electricity, making it applicable to both heating and cooling. The absence of solar radiation produces the need for heating, and therefore it seems unlikely that we can take advantage of the available radiation that will generally be small for heating. However, the need to cold will be generally associated with the presence of sunlight, as if they were also of the Ying and Yang. In fact the air conditioning is one of them technologies star for the World Football Championship of Qatar in which is going to use fields of soccer refrigerated through energy solar (“Wolfgang Kessling: “How to air-condition outdoor spaces”).
The solar cooling offers a set of technologies in which the solar radiation is used to produce coldwater with sorbents systems (absorption or adsorption machines) previously heated with solar panels or from electricity produced with photovoltaic solar energy to power a system based on compressor. As if they were the brothers of “Rich man, poor man”, their temporal evolution has been and is different.
Until makes some 10 years, were the systems of cold solar based in machines sorbent which had of a greater number of applications and developments technological. In those days the photovoltaic face was expensive. However, with the reduction of the cost that has suffered recently this last, the use of photovoltaic to produce cold solar is increasing of way important. On the other hand, there are manufacturers of machines of absorption with systems of triple effect and yields of the 180% willing to present a hard battle for the air conditioning with radiation solar.
In any case regardless of the technology that is winner, I have clear is that, the future of the cold is hot, as hot as the Sun.
