Conventional energy sources—oil and electricity—dominate the heat supply market. Due to their rising costs and their negative environmental effects on global climate change, it is necessary to develop an alternative heat supply system featuring low cost, high energy efficiency and environment friendliness. At present, it is often challenging to supply heat to detached buildings due to low energy efficiency and high distribution cost. Meanwhile, significant amounts of industrial waste and excess heat are released into the environment without recycling due to the difficulty of matching time and space differences between suppliers and end users. Phase change materials (PCMs), with the advantages of being storable and transportable, offer a solution for delivering that excess heat from industrial plants to detached buildings in sparse, rural areas.   The objective of this thesis is to study PCMs and latent thermal energy storage (LTES) technology, and to develop a mobilized thermal energy storage (M-TES) system that can use industrial waste or excess heat for heat recovery and distribution to areas in need.   Organic PCMs were chosen for study because they are non-toxic and non-corrosive, and they exhibit no phase separation and little sub-cooling when compared to inorganic PCMs. Two major issues including leakage of liquid PCMs and low thermal conductivity. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) was chosen to help analyze the thermal behavior of organic PCMs and PEG-based form-stable composites. To overcome the issue of low thermal conductivity, modified aluminum nitride (AlN) powder was added to the composites. Increased thermal conductivity traded off decreased latent heat. The PEG/EG composite, prepared by mixing the melted PEG into an expanded graphite (EG) matrix showed good thermal performance due to its large enthalpy and high thermal conductivity.   To make a systematic study of the M-TES system, a compact lab-scale system was designed and built. Characteristics of PCM were studied, and the performance of the direct-contact TES container was investigated. A case study using an M-TES system to deliver heat from a combined heat and power (CHP) plant to a small village was conducted. A technical and economic feasibility study was conducted for an integrated heat supply system using the M-TES system. In addition, the options for charging a TES container at a CHP plant were analyzed and compared from the viewpoints of power output, heat output and incomes. / Ångpanneföreningens Forskningsstiftelse (ÅF)

A spectroscopic probe with multiple detecting fibers was used for quantifying absorption and scattering in liquid optical phantoms. The phantoms were mixtures of Intralipid and red and blue food dyes. Intensity calibration for the detecting fibers was undertaken using either a microsphere suspension (absolute calibration) or a uniform detector illumination (relative calibration between detectors). Two different scattering phase functions were used in an inverse Monte Carlo algorithm. Data were evaluated for residual spectra (systematic deviations and magnitude) and accuracy in estimation of scattering and absorption. Spectral fitting was improved by allowing for a 10% intensity relaxation in the optimization algorithm. For a multi-detector setup, non-systematic residual spectrum was only found using the more complex Gegenbauer-kernel phase function. However, the choice of phase function did not influence the accuracy in the estimation of absorption and scattering. Similar estimation accuracy as in the multi-detector setup was also obtained using either two relative calibrated detectors or one absolute calibrated detector at a fiber separation of 0.46 mm. / <p>Funding Agencies|VINNOVA||Perimed AB|2008-00149|ResearchGrow program|2011-03074|European Union||Linkoping University through the Center for Excellence NIMED-CBDP (Center for Biomedical Data Processing)||</p>

We present a novel system capable of capturing high dynamic range (HDR) Light Probes at video speed. Each Light Probe frame is built from an individual full set of exposures, all of which are captured within the frame time. The exposures are processed and assembled into a mantissa-exponent representation image within the camera unit before output, and then streamed to a standard PC. As an example, the system is capable of capturing Light Probe Images with a resolution of 512x512 pixels using a set of 10 exposures covering 15 f-stops at a frame rate of up to 25 final HDR frames per second. The system is built around commercial special-purpose camera hardware with on-chip programmable image processing logic and tightly integrated frame buffer memory, and the algorithm is implemented as custom downloadable microcode software.

No description available.

This paper present a pupil detection/segmentation algorithm for iris images based on Structure Tensor analysis. Eigenvalues of the structure tensor matrix have been observed to be high in pupil boundaries and specular reflections of iris images. We exploit this fact to detect the specular reflections region and the boundary of the pupil in a sequential manner. Experimental results are given using the CASIA-IrisV3-Interval database (249 contributors, 396 different eyes, 2,639 iris images). Results show that our algorithm works specially well in detecting the specular reflections (98.98% success rate) and pupil boundary detection is correctly done in 84.24% of the images.

The implementation of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) services offers great potential to improve the level of safety, efficiency and comfort on our roads. Although cooperative traffic safety applications rely heavily on the support for real-time communication, the Medium Access Control (MAC) mechanism proposed for the upcoming IEEE 802.11p standard, intended for ITS applications, does not offer deterministic real-time support, that is, the access delay to the common radio channel is not upper bounded. To address this problem, we present a framework for a vehicle-to-infrastructure-based (V2I) communication solution extending IEEE 802.11p by introducing a collision-free MAC phase assigning each vehicle an individual priority based on its geographical position, its proximity to potential hazards and the overall road traffic density. Our solution is able to guarantee the timely treatment of safety-critical data, while minimizing the required length of this real-time MAC phase and freeing bandwidth for best-effort services (targeting improved driving comfort and traffic efficiency). Furthermore, we target fast connection setup, associating a passing vehicle to an RSU (Road Side Unit), and proactive handover between widely spaced RSUs. Our real-time MAC concept is evaluated analytically and by simulation based on a realistic task set from a V2I highway merge assistance scenario. / <p>Copyright © 2011 Annette Böhm and Magnus Jonsson. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p>

This paper presents and clarifies the academic and industrial terminology used in the area of product recovery. It is concluded that there exist many different concepts and definitions in academia and industry, several of which are unclearly defined. Given this, a new way to define product recovery is presented through the use of a model. This model is based on actual industrial product recovery cases, existing academic product recovery concepts and definitions and product design theory. The presentation contains a holistic model that can be used for describing and analyzing different product recovery scenarios. In addition, several industry cases are presented as a verification of the model.

The concept of 'sustainable development', introduced for the first time in the report 'Our Common Future' and promoted as a common aim for the entire world, can be defined as 'a development that satisfies the needs of today without compromising the possibility of future generations to fulfill their needs.' Thus far, this concept has been considered as visionary and therefore difficult for companies to implement into concrete plans of action. However, various suggestions have been proposed, such as dematerialization, ecoefficiency and remanufacturing. However, another solution is perhaps more or less a consequence of today's prevalent trend towards a more service-oriented society, and with a focus on the value (satisfaction) that products provide their users through their functionality. The shift from a manufacturing-centered economy towards a service-centered economy have the potential to result in a reduction of the mass consumption of natural resources. Sustainable development is, in a company perspective, not only related directly to environmental issues, as in the definition above, but also in the company's capacity for sustainable market competition. The sharp and rapid increase in global raw material prices, however, is a threat to this; one way to decrease this influence is to reduce the need for raw materials.

This third volume in the International Technology Education Series provides insights into developments in technology education research in terms of methods and techniques. The importance of the book is that it highlights the uniqueness of the area of technology education in terms of content, and learning and teaching processes, and the need to provide methods and techniques to capture this uniqueness when undertaking research. The book comprises research methods and techniques being used by a range of current researchers. Each chapter includes details of the method or technique, but does so in terms of a project where it was used. This provides important contextual material that will help researchers when developing research projects. The book contains research methods and techniques that are new in general as well as ones new to technology education and ones that are variations to existing methods and techniques to make them suitable for use in technology education research. This book should be of interest to research students, teacher educators, researchers and policy-makers who are involved in technology education.

We present the theory for retarded resonance interaction between two identical atoms at arbitrary positions near a metal surface. The dipole-dipole resonance interaction force that binds isotropically excited atom pairs together in free space may turn repulsive close to an ideal (totally reflecting) metal surface. On the other hand, close to an infinitely permeable surface it may turn more attractive. We illustrate numerically how the dipole-dipole resonance interaction between two oxygen atoms near a metal surface may provide a repulsive energy of the same order of magnitude as the ground-state binding energy of an oxygen molecule. As a complement we also present results from density-functional theory. / <p>Funding Agencies|VR|C048510170529001|STEM|34138-1|</p>