The use of ocean wave energy for electricity production has considerable potential, though it has proven to be difficult. A technology utilizing the heaving (up-and-down) motions of the waves was conceived at Uppsala University in the early 2000´s, and is being further developed for commercial use by Seabased Industry AB. The purpose of this master´s degree project was to increase the knowledge of the environmental performance of Seabased´s wave energy conversion concept and identifying possible areas of improvement. This was done by conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a hypothetical prototype wave power plant. All flows of materials, energy, emissions and waste were calculated for all stages of a wave power plant´s life cycle. The potential environmental impact of these flows was then assessed, using the following impact categories: • Emission of greenhouse gases • Emission of ozone depleting gases • Emission of acidifying gases • Emission of gases that contribute to the forming of ground-level ozone • Emission of substances to water contributing to oxygen depletion (eutrophication) • Energy use (renewable and non-renewable) • Water use The methodology used was that prescribed by the ISO standard for Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) and further defined by the International EPD Programme.The potential environmental impact was calculated per kWh of wave power electricity delivered to the grid. The main result of the study is that the potential environmental impact of a wave power plant mainly stems from the manufacturing phase. In particular, the production of steel parts makes a large contribution to the overall results. Future wave power plant designs are expected to be considerably more material efficient, meaning that there are large possibilities to improve the environmental performance of this technology.

There is no general aging process therefore should health efforts directed at elderly population based on each individual as a unique person with specific needs. When aging becomes a fact not generally decrease the lust and the desire to be active but it is perhaps more about the body's ability to keep up on what the head wants. Therefore the range of activities towards the elderly population requires some adjustment that can partly be achieved by taking some of the older people’s experiences. The purpose of this study was that by the older people’s experiences of organized activities in a social context to illustrate how they perceive their participation. A qualitative approach with narrative theory was used and the study’s empirical results are based on stories from four elderly women. The result highlights the older person’s ability to create meaning in the moment from a life course context. The results are presented in three themes, the physical, social and finite context, that together can be traced to three perspectives on the cultural learning needs of the older person. Activities can thus assume to bring further value and visibility to older peoples need for social and cultural interaction. Prominent in this study is the importance of seeing the older person as a learning individual, which places demands on the society and the development opportunities available to older people’s disposal.

Steam generators in nuclear power plants experienced varying degrees of under-deposit pitting corrosion. A probabilistic model to accurately predict pitting corrosion is necessary for effective life-cycle management of steam generators. This thesis presents an advanced probabilistic model of pitting corrosion characterizing the inherent randomness of the pitting process and measurement uncertainties of the in-service inspection (ISI) data obtained from eddy current (EC) inspections. A Bayesian method is developed for estimating the model parameters. The proposed model is able to estimate the number of actual pits, the actual pit depth as well as the maximum pit depth, which is the main interest of the pitting corrosion model. A MATLAB program of the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique is developed to perform the Bayesian estimations. Simulation experiments are performed to check the behavior of the Bayesian method. Results show that the MCMC algorithm is an effective way to estimate the model parameters. Also, the effectiveness and efficiency of Bayesian modeling are validated. A comprehensive case study is also presented on the in-service inspection data of pitting corrosion in a steam generator unit. The Weibull distribution is found to be an appropriate probability distribution for modeling the actual pit depth in steam generators.

<p>Nanomaterials are being increasingly produced and used across a myriad of applications while their novel properties are still in the midst of being designed and explored. Thus the full implications of introducing these materials into the environment cannot be understood, yet the need to assess potential risks is already upon us. This work discusses a comprehensive view of environmental impact with respect to material flows from across the value chain into all compartments of the environment, whereby interactions and potential hazardous effects become possible. A subset of this broad system is then chosen for evaluation; a model is derived to describe the fate of nanomaterials released to wastewater. </p><p>This analysis considers the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) as a complete mixed reactor aerobic secondary clarifier, and predicts whether nanomaterials will associate with effluent or sludge to project potential concentrations in each. The concentration of nanomaterials reaching a WWTP is estimated based on a linear weighting of total production, and the fate of nanomaterials within the WWTP is based on a characteristic inherent to the material, partition coefficient, and on design parameters of the WWTP, such as retention times and suspended solids concentration. </p><p>Due to the uncertainty inherent to this problem, a probabilistic approach is employed. Monte Carlo simulation is used, sampling from probability distributions assigned to each of the input parameters to calculate a distribution for the predicted concentrations in sludge and effluent. Input parameter distributions are estimated from values reported in the literature where possible. Where data do not yet exist, studies are carried out to enable parameter estimation. In particular, nanomaterial production is investigated to provide a basis to estimate the magnitude of potential exposure. Nanomaterial partitioning behavior is also studied in this work, through laboratory experiments for several types of nano-silver. </p><p>The results presented here illustrate the use of nanomaterial inventory data in predicting environmentally relevant concentrations. Estimates of effluent and sludge concentrations for nano-silver with four different types coatings suggest that these surface treatments affect the removal efficiency; the same nanomaterial with different coatings may have different environmental fates. Effluent concentration estimates for C60 and nano-TiO2 suggest that these nanomaterials could already be present at problematic concentrations at current levels of annual production.</p><p>Estimates of environmentally relevant concentrations may aid in interpretation of nanotoxicology studies. These relative estimates are also useful in that they may help inform future decisions regarding where to dedicate resources for future research. Beyond attempting to estimate environmental concentrations of nanomaterials, this type of streamlined model allows the consideration of scenarios, focusing on what happens as various input parameters change. Production quantity and the fraction of this quantity that is released to wastewater are found to greatly influence the model estimates for wastewater effluent concentrations; in the case of wastewater sludge concentrations, the model is sensitive to those parameters in addition to solids retention time.</p> / Dissertation

For business to develop overseas, product research and development, capital and human resources are important elements, but how to design appropriate to the overseas organization of resources and effective integration, to reach overseas business development objectives can not be ignored.Business growth process is traced and can be a phased, can identify current stage of business In this study, would like to understand the operation of the design for evolution multinational organization. This study is used depth interviews to research; total selected four professional managers of multinational corporations. The research is show as below: 1.The actual operation of the board of multinational enterprises is still very much under the influence of shareholders holding the largest, but the foreign domestic corporate governance is more than good thinking. 2.Business department operates the impact of products and services will be taken to a large contingent suitable model, which patent is an important factor. 3.Evolution of organizational structure will be organized products have different impact on the operation of the specific thinking. 4.To control Organization will be the largest operation of restricted stock. 5.The ability to respond to environmental markets and will be types of overseas subsidiaries due to the impact of ownership concentration. 6.For the current situation of organization and future prospects of satisfaction will be affected by company history and the impact of leadership style.

To pursuit as an entrepreneur is one of options of career, it is also a dream of many people. Not all the ventures are with success eventually, however, it deserves for a trial and learning a lesson. As being one of the founders of C corporation, the researcher will explore the undertaking process of starting an enterprise in this study, and investigate the issues induced by people and their influence during development of enterprise. The motivation of an entrepreneur to start an enterprise can be traced back to background of his childhood of family life, education and work experience. After setting up an enterprise, the employee will join and will get involved in managing of the organization. And the enterprise will become more complicate as a non-linear system. By investigating the key events during the venture, the role of people and problems induced at various stages of life-cycle of organization will be studied and try to find their resolution. By using narrative inquiry, the researcher will narrative himself as life story to re-entry realm of past experience of the venture of starting C corporation. Though, it is painful to recall some memory. However, the past experience is the most valuable and knowledgeable for C corporation to recreate second curve of life-cycle of organization by innovation of entrepreneurship.

It is generally accepted that with the rapid development of Taiwan's economy, the number and size of domestic companies amplified increasingly. Evidences show that over the past decade of domestic market growths and international expending, the company goes stock options to public increasingly. For time beings, industries in Taiwan have been evolved from agricultural into industrial in the structure of SMEs, and family-run business has been staying as a very important role. Numbers of evidences indicate that many listed company lack of internal corporate governance result in corporate governance disputation. In this study, the literature analysis and qualitative analysis of in-depth interview have taken as the main research methods. Continue to realizing the status of family business operating under the corporate governance and for their import model. According to empirical results, the research has the following conclusions: (1) A positive influences on company's operating performance and business strategy when one company lead by a professional managers. (2) A positive influences for matters of business strategy when the financial statements be transparent and open decision-making. (3) A positive evidences show managers possessing professional competence and decision-making capacities lead to the company's operating impact. (4) The higher degree of familiarities on financial indicators and transparency result in the improvement to one company¡¦s performance. (5) Actual benefits revealed when the advocates on corporate governance mechanism policies, the mandatory guidelines and regulations at the preliminary stage.

Conventional water treatment facilities are the norm for producing potable water for U.S. metropolitan areas. Rapidly-growing urban populations, competing demands for water, imperfect water markets, and uncertainty of future water supplies contribute to high interests in alternative sources of potable water for many U.S. municipalities. In situations where multiple supply alternatives exist, properly analyzing which alternative is the most-economically efficient over the course of its useful life requires a sound economic and financial analysis of each alternative using consistent methodology. This thesis discusses such methodology and provides an assessment of the life-cycle costs of conventional water treatment using actual data from an operating surface-water treatment facility located in McAllen, Texas: the McAllen Northwest facility. This facility has a maximum-designed operating capacity of 8.25 million gallons per day (mgd), but due to required shutdown time and other limitations, it is currently operating at 78% of the designed capacity (6.44 mgd). The economic and financial life-cycle costs associated with constructing and operating the McAllen Northwest facility are analyzed using a newly-developed Excel 2 spreadsheet model, CITY H O ECONOMICS . Although specific results are applicable only to the McAllen Northwest facility, the baseline results of $771.67/acre-foot (acft)/ yr {$2.37/1,000 gallons/yr} for this analysis provide insight regarding the life-cycle costs for conventional surface-water treatment. The baseline results are deterministic (i.e., noninclusive of risk/uncertainty about datainput values), but are expanded to include sensitivity analyses with respect to several critical factors including the facility’s useful life, water rights costs, initial construction costs, and annual operations and maintenance, chemical, and energy costs. For example, alternative costs for water rights associated with sourcing water for conventional treatment facilities are considered relative to the assumed baseline cost of $2,300/ac-ft, with results ranging from a low of $653.34/ac-ft/yr (when water rights are $2,000/ac-ft) to a high of $1,061.83/ac-ft/yr (when water rights are $2,600/ac-ft). Furthermore, modifications to key data-input parameters and results are included for a more consistent basis of comparison to enable comparisons across facilities and/or technologies. The modified results, which are considered appropriate to compare to other similarly calculated values, are $667.74/ac-ft/yr {2.05/1,000 gallons/yr}.

Engineering for Sustainable Development (ESD) is an integrated systems approach, which aims at developing a balance between the requirements of the current stakeholders without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs. This is a multi-criteria decision-making process that involves the identification of the most optimal sustainable process, which satisfies economic, ecological and social criteria as well as safety and health requirements. Certain difficulties are encountered when ESD is applied, such as ill-defined criteria, scarcity of information, lack of process-specific data, metrics, and the need to satisfy multiple decision makers. To overcome these difficulties, ESD can be broken down into three major steps, starting with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the process, followed by generation of non-dominating alternatives, and finally selecting the most sustainable process by employing an analytic hierarchical selection process. This methodology starts with the prioritization of the sustainability metrics (health and safety, economic, ecological and social components). The alternatives are then subjected to a pair-wise comparison with respect to each Sustainable Development (SD) indicator and prioritized depending on their performance. The SD indicator priority score and each individual alternative’s performance score together are used to determine the most sustainable alternative. The proposed methodology for ESD is applied for bio-diesel production in this thesis. The results obtained for bio-diesel production using the proposed methodology are similar to the alternatives that are considered to be economically and environmentally favorable by both researchers and commercial manufacturers; hence the proposed methodology can be considered to be accurate. The proposed methodology will also find wide range of application as it is flexible and can be used for the sustainable development of a number of systems similar to the bio-diesel production system; it is also user friendly and can be customized with ease. Due to these benefits, the proposed methodology can be considered to be a useful tool for decision making for sustainable development of chemical processes.

As the global demand for energy rises, there are significant efforts to find alternative energy sources. In the United States (US), these efforts are primarily motivated by a desire to increase energy security and reduce the potential impacts on climate change caused by carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Biofuels are considered a potential partial solution, which are being encouraged through public policy. Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel that is required in increasing amounts over time as part of the Renewable Fuel Standards. Thus, researchers are exploring the environmental impacts of using this biofuel on a large scale. This dissertation research performed an environmental evaluation using the Life Cycle Assessment technique on Bioenergy Sorghum, a crop which was specifically produced as an energy crop, used in a conversion process (MixAlco version 1) that can produce cellulosic ethanol. Results indicate that the conversion process is highly optimized with minimal environmental concerns. Analysis of the crop production, however, demonstrate that further investigation is warranted regarding the depletion of natural resources and emissions from the fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides, due to large scale production of energy crops. A new policy is proposed to support the sustainable, environmentally responsible development of cellulosic ethanol in the US.