The diploma thesis describes and compares various kinds of non-conventional transport, analyzes its differences and its use in the praxis. The main goal is to designate, when is the certain kind of non-conventional transport suitable, if is compared with conventional transport, or with each other. The conclusion describes the analysis of the evolution and the future trend of growth in the field of non-conventional transport.

Timber-frame brick veneer construction originated in countries in which houses were traditionally constructed with loadbearing timber frames which were clad with non-loadbearing weather boarding or similar light-weight materials. Timber-frame house construction is extensively used in countries such as Canada, Scandinavia, Australia and North America. With the Canadian system, buildings of up to three storeys can be erected with loadbearing timber frames. This particular system was also adopted in France - the Igny project~ and in England - the Harlow project. In most of these cases, basements or crawl-spaces underneath the house were incorporated in the design. In these countries there have a trend towards the use of a brick cladding (veneer) for timber-frame structures. This is a comparatively recent introduction in these countries, but it has already been extensively used. This trend is primarily related to the appearance and other advantages (for example durability and ease of maintenance in the case of a face-brick clauding) of a masonry exterior, while largely retaining the low cost benefits of timber-frame construction.

The usage of novel combustion technologies, such as Moderate or Intense Low-oxygen Dilution (MILD) combustion, in the future energy mix provides both a flexible and reliable energy supply, together with low emissions. The implementation though is highly situational and numerical studies can help in the assessment of said technologies. However, the existing uncertainties in numerical modeling of MILD combustion are quite significant, and as detailed kinetics should be considered while modeling MILD combustion, a major part of this uncertainty can be accredited to the kinetics. Combined with the fact that existing detailed mechanisms have been developed and validated against conventional combustion targets, there exists a gap between the performance of existing mechanism and experimental findings. To handle this discrepancy, Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) and Optimization are highly viable techniques for reducing this misfit, and have therefore been applied in this work. The strategy applied consisted of first determining the reactions which showed the largest impact towards the experimental targets, by not only considering the sensitivity, but also the uncertainty of the reactions. By using a so-called impact factor, the most influential reactions could be determined, and only the kinetic parameters with the highest impact factors were considered as uncertain in the optimization studies. The uncertainty range of the kinetic parameters were then determined using the uncertainty bounds of the rate coefficients, by finding the lines which intercepts the extreme points of these maximum and minimum rate coefficient curves. Based on this prior parameter space, the optimal combination of the uncertain parameters were determined using two different approaches. The first one utilized Surrogate Models (SMs) for predicting the behavior of changing the kinetic parameters. This is a highly efficient approach, as the computational effort is reduced drastically for each evaluation, and by comparing the physically viable parameter combinations within the pre-determined parameter space, the optimal point could be determined. However, due to limitations of the amount of uncertain parameters and experimental targets that can be used with SMs, an optimization toolbox was developed which uses a more direct optimization approach. The toolbox, called OptiSMOKE++, utilizes the optimization capabilities of DAKOTA, and the simulation of detailed kinetics in reactive systems by OpenSMOKE++. By using efficient optimization methods, the amount of evaluations needed to find the optimal combination of parameters can be drastically reduced. The tool was developed with a flexibility of choosing experimental targets, uncertain kinetic parameters, objective function and optimization method. To present these features, a series of test cases were used and the performance of OptiSMOKE++ was indeed satisfactory. As a final application, the toolbox OptiSMOKE++ was used for optimizing a kinetic mechanism with respect to a large set of experimental targets in MILD conditions. A large amount of uncertain kinetic parameters were also used in the optimization, and the optimized mechanism showed large improvements with respect to the experimental targets. It was also validated against experimental data consisting of species measurements in MILD conditions, and the optimized mechanism showed similar performance as that of the nominal mechanism. However, as the general trend of the species profiles were captured with the nominal mechanism, this was considered satisfactory. The work of this PhD has shown that the application of optimization to kinetic mechanism, can improve the performance of existing mechanism with respect to MILD combustion. Through the development of an efficient toolbox, a large set of experimental data can be used as targets for the optimization, at the same time as many uncertain kinetic parameters can be used contemporary. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 643134, and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 714605. / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Vaccinium cyanococcus, most commonly known as blueberry, is a fruit native to North America that is known for its unique taste and high antioxidant content. The skin, seed and juice of both organically and conventionally grown blueberry extract were analyzed for antioxidant content using both the Hydrophilic and Lipophilic Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) assays. Results from the Hydrophilic ORAC test showed that conventionally grown blue berries had a higher antioxidant capacity across all samples, while the Lipophilic ORAC assay showed that the antioxidant concentration of organically cultivated blueberry juice was highest, but conventionally grown blueberry seed and skin extract showed higher antioxidant content. The vitamin C content of both conventional and organic blueberries were analyzed using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), where the organic blueberries showed a higher vitamin C concentration. In general, both organic and conventional blueberries are rich in antioxidants, and therefore, possess potential health benefits that require further study.

Column flotation cells have become increasingly popular in the coal industry due to their ability to improve flotation selectivity. The improvement can be largely attributed to the use of froth washing, which minimizes the nonselective entrainment of ultrafine minerals matter into the froth product. Unfortunately, the practice of adding wash water in conventional flotation machines has been largely unsuccessful in industrial trials. In order to better understand the causes of these failures, a detailed in-plant test program was undertaken to evaluate the use of froth washing at an operating coal preparation plant. The tests included detailed circuit audits (solid and liquid mass balances), salt tracer studies, and release analyses. The data collected from these tests have been used to develop criteria that describe when and how froth washing may be successfully applied in industrial flotation circuits. A second series of tests was developed to look at other alternatives to froth washing and their effectiveness. This involved two-staged flotation circuitry. A two-staged approach was developed because the existing flotation cells did not have enough residence time to support froth washing. The process owner wanted to evaluate possible alternatives to column cell flotation. The testing included release analysis testing as well as a detailed series of tests with percent solids control to the secondary flotation unit. / Master of Science

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Liang-Wu Cai / Acoustic scattering by a cylindrical scatterer comprising isotropic acoustic and orthotropic elastic layers is theoretically solved. The orthotropic material is used for the scattering problem because the sound speeds along radial and tangential axes can be different; which is an important property for acoustic cloaking design. A computational system is built for verifying the solutions and conducting simulations. Scattering solutions are obtained based on two theoretical developments. The first one is exact solutions for elastic waves in cylindrically orthotropic elastic media, which are solved using Frobenius method. The second theoretical development is a set of two canonical problems for acoustic-orthotropic-acoustic media. Based on the two theoretical developments, scattering by three specially selected simple multilayer scatterers are analyzed via multiple-scattering approach. Solutions for the three scatterers are then used for solving a “general” multilayer scatterer through a recursive solution procedure. The word “general” means the scatterer can have an arbitrary number of layers and each layer can be either isotropic acoustic or orthotropic elastic. No approximations have been used in the process. The resulting analytically-exact solutions are implemented and verified. As an application example, acoustic scattering by a scatterer with a single orthotropic layer is presented. The effects on the scattering due to changing parameters of the orthotropic layer are studied. Acoustic scattering by a specially designed multilayer scatterer is also numerically simulated. Ratios of the sound speeds of the orthotropic layers along r and θ directions are defined to satisfy the requirement of the Cummer-Schurig cloaking design. The simulations demonstrate that both the formalism and the computational implementation of the scattering solutions are correct.

Yes / The synthesis of ethyl benzoate (EtBZ) via esterification of benzoic acid (BeZ) with ethanol in a reactive distillation is challenging due to complex thermodynamic behaviour of the chemical reaction and the difficulty of keeping the reactants together in the reaction zone (ethanol having the lowest boiling point can separate from the BeZ as the distillation proceeds) causing a significant decrease in the conversion of BeZ in a conventional reactive distillation column (batch or continuous). This might be the reason of not reporting the use of reactive distillation for EtBZ synthesis although the study of BeZ esterification reaction is available in the public literature. Our recently developed Integrated Conventional Batch Distillation (i-CBD) column offers the prospect of revisiting such reactions for the synthesis of EtBZ, which is the focus of this work. Clearly, i-CBD column outperforms the Conventional Batch Distillation (CBD) column in terms of product amount, purity and conversion of BeZ and eliminates the requirement of excess use of ethanol. For example, compared with CBD column, the i-CBD operation can yield EtBZ at a much higher purity (0.925 compared to 0.730) and can convert more benzoic acid (93.57% as opposed to only 74.38%).

The concept ‘human rights’ has become a buzz word to which different people attach different meanings. There are persistent media reports of human rights abuses, especially the right to education. There are seldom reports on human rights observances and responsibilities aligned with the exercise of each right in schools. South Africa joined the democracy of the world when she stepped out of the apartheid regime and adopted a new constitution underpinned by the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. Prior to 1994, human rights were not guaranteed to everyone. With the dawn of the new democracy, learners were confronted with a panoply of human rights, which they must access, and exercise. The right to education is one of these human rights. The right to education has now been awarded the status of a core human right, without which the possibility of the enjoyment and access to other human rights becomes tapered. The realities revealed by the literature are that more learners enrol in primary schools in large numbers, only to drop out later without acquiring functional literacy levels. Most of those who succeed in reaching secondary school level drop out too, with the consequence that very few learners are able to continue to tertiary level. Even though there is a host of scholarship on the topic of learners’ rights in general, the voices of learners with regard to their right to education are relatively silent. Given the above background, this case study seeks to explore, understand and analyse secondary school learners’ knowledge and understanding of human rights, in particular their right to education. The investigation of this topic was twofold. Firstly, I explored learners’ knowledge of the scope of their right to education and secondly, from their responses, I determined their level of understanding. This study was conducted within the interpretive research paradigm. It is of fundamental importance to investigate learners’ understanding of their right to education and the levels of rights reasoning at which they operate, since learners are the real beneficiaries of the right to education and the sustenance of the democracy depends on them. In short, research on learners’ understanding of their right to education is critical to the development of curriculum, structures and procedures that will permit learners to exercise the rights due to them and to ensure that the purpose underlying each particular right is fulfilled. I purposively sampled one rural public secondary school in the Soutpansberg East circuit, Vhembe district in the Limpopo Province. During inductive data analysis, four patternsemerged from within the data: (a) the absolutising of the right to education by some of the learners; (b) not understanding how the right to education is limited within the context of the school; (c) assertion of the right to education and (d) non-assertion of the right to education based on three levels of human rights reasoning. The main findings revealed firstly that although some of learners are au fait with the fact that their right to education, like all other human rights, involves responsibilities and that through the right to education various opportunities may be accessed, they still have limited knowledge regarding their right to education. Secondly, some learners are less conversant with regard to the exercising of their right to education. In addition, although learners exhibited three levels of human rights reasoning, their responses showed mostly levels I and II, and little level III of human rights understanding and reasoning. Lastly there were some isolated cases where learners’ responses revealed their uncertainty as to whether or not they in reality have the right to education. These findings can be ascribed to (a) the authoritarian school system where “you do it our way” (conformity) is emphasised; (b) lack of prior exposure to human rights experiences; (c) grinding poverty; and (d) cultural background. Theoretical and practical recommendations, as well as suggestions for future research were identified. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Published Article / South Africa is constantly loosing contracts for the manufacturing of innovative projects to the East, due to its non-competitive mould-making industry. The paper will report on progress made in a specific focus area in mould-making, namely Hybrid Moulds for injection moulding. Hybrid Moulds refers to a hybrid between Additive Fabrication and conventional methods through the use of amongst others, Direct Metal Laser Sintering techniques, combined with conventional CNC machining (High Speed) techniques. Although the emphasis is on an economically viable process for limited production runs, once the moulds have been developed, it normally is pushed to its limits to realize production quantities. One of the competitive edges is the cutting of lead-times, which obviously impacts on production costs. Another aspect is the ability to manufacture short runs of injection moulded parts in the required engineering material Realising that Laser Sintering of metals is an expensive manufacturing process, a concurrent manufacturing process was developed. Intricate mould details, which normally are time-consuming to manufacture through EDM processes, were grown as inserts, while the less-complex parts of the mould is machined in Aluminium through 3 and 5 Axis High Speed CNC Machining. Using a 3-axis CNC wire cutter, pockets will be created where the more complex Laser Sintered Metal inserts will be fitted. One of the competitive edges is the cutting of lead-times, which obviously impacts on production costs. Another aspect is the ability to manufacture short runs of injection moulded parts in the required engineering material.

Den svenska regeringen har som ett led i uppfyllandet av deras miljömål beslutat att ekologiskt jordbruk ska främjas. Trots detta så har omställningen till ett mer ekologiskt jordbruk i Sverige saktat ner de senaste åren. För att på ett effektivare sätt kunna påverka omställningen i önskad riktning behövs en bättre förståelse för vad som påverkar jordbrukare att välja ekologisk eller konventionell produktion. Tidigare forskning har visat på vikten av både ekonomiska och sociala faktorer. En faktor som tilldelats betydelse är jordbrukarens utbildningsbakgrund där ekologiska jordbrukare i högre utsträckning funnits vara högutbildade jämfört med konventionella. Huruvida detta stämmer i Sverige och på vilket sätt utbildningen påverkar jordbrukares val av jordbruksmetod är dock outforskat. Denna studie har ämnat fylla denna kunskapslucka genom en enkätundersökning av ekologiska och konventionella jordbrukare i Sverige och en resultatanalys med stöd av teorin om innovationsspridning och teorin om planerat beteende. Studien fann inga skillnader i utbildningsbakgrund mellan de konventionella och ekologiska jordbrukarna i undersökningen. Däremot upplevde en minoritet av jordbrukarna att deras utbildning haft betydelse för deras val av jordbruksmetod. Av dessa upplevde fler att utbildningen påverkat avhållande snarare än bejakande till upptag av ekologiskt jordbruk. Orsaker bakom denna påverkan identifierades i huvudsak som negativa attityder till ekologiskt jordbruk samt kunskapsbrister i undervisningen. Sådana avhållande inslag i utbildningen skulle kunna bidra till en ogynnsam utveckling på jordbruksområdet. För att främja välavvägda beslut bland jordbrukare och beslutsfattare föreslås därför vidare forskning kring den faktiska omfattningen på dessa inslag och orsakerna bakom dem. / The Swedish government has decided to support organic agriculture in their effort to fulfill their environmental goals. However, the conversion to a more organic agriculture in Sweden has slowed down the last years. In order to be able to affect the transition in a more efficient way, a better understanding of what influence farmer’s decision to choose either conventional or organic production is needed. Earlier studies have shown the importance of both financial and social factors. One factor that has been given importance is the education background of the farmer where organic farmers in general have been found to be higher educated than conventional farmers. If this is true in Sweden, and in what way education affects the farmers choice of farming method, is however unexplored. This study has been attempting to fill this knowledge gap through a survey of organic and conventional farmers in Sweden and an analysis with support from the diffusion of innovations theory and the theory of planned behavior. The study found no differences in the educational background between the conventional and organic farmers in the survey. However, a minority of the farmers experienced that their education had affected their choice of farming method. Among these, more farmers had experienced this influence as deterrent rather than affirmative on adopting organic farming methods. Reasons behind this influence were mainly identified as negative attitudes towards organic agriculture combined with a lack of knowledge in the education. Such deterrent elements in the education could potentially contribute to an undesired development in the area of agriculture. To support considered decisions among farmers and policy makers, this study therefore suggests future research to investigate the actual scope of such elements and the reasons behind them.