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In the energy conversion of by-products, the production of biogas and biomethane is of great importance. However, the production of waste products requires an efficient process of abatement and cleaning of the biogas produced and consequently an efficient contaminant monitoring system. In this work activated porous carbon fiber (APCF) is used to make adsorption tubes for the simultaneous sampling of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and volatile methyl siloxanes (VMS) in biogas, two classes of contaminating compounds. the results showed that simultaneous sampling and analysis yielded very good results by allowing the identification and quantification of all target compounds and the identification of more than 50 additional volatile compounds., Proceedings of the 30th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 9-12 May 2022, Online, pp. 626-628

Arundo donax (L.) is one of the most important energy crop, but its use in the pyrolysis process have not yet been thoroughly tested. Pyrolysis is a suitable technique to manage residual biomass. One byproduct of the process is the biochar, a carbon-rich residue used in agriculture as soil conditioner. Biomass of Arundo was shredded in order to produce a greater (G) and a smaller (S) particle size distribution (PSD) of the feedstock. Both were gasified in a small scale up-draft reactor at three rates of air flow (0.0007 m3 s-1, 0.001 m3 s-1 and natural draft). Aim of the work was to analyze the effect of different air flow rate and two PSD on the main parameters characterizing the biochar (yield, calorific value, proximate analysis). Results showed that the interaction PSD-air flow has to be set properly to obtain a high-grade biochar. Using a greater PSD, the biochar yield improved (24.3% vs 15.2%) and the LHV was higher than the smaller PSD at 0.0007 m3 s-1, 0.001 m3 s-1. The highest carbon content (90.40%) was obtained with the greater PSD in conditions of natural draft (air almost completely absent). Further studies would be required to identify the upper limit beyond which the process becomes inefficient., Proceedings of the 26th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 14-17 May 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 1137-1141

Gasification of biomass is a widely used technique for renewable energy production from agricultural residues that allows both to reduce the environmental impacts of agroforestry sector and to obtain products such as syngas and biochar. The aim of this work is to assess the energy characteristics of syngas obtained from gasification, with air, of olive tree prunings through a downdraft fixed bed reactor. Results showed that the composition of syngas is strongly influenced by the air flow rate. The hydrogen and carbon monoxide contents reached values of about 16%v/v and more than 13%v/v, respectively. The methane content was less than 3%v/v while nitrogen content was more than 50%v/v as consequence of the use of air as oxidizing agent. The lower heating value of syngas ranged between 3.6 MJ Nm-3 and 4.6 MJ Nm-3. The biochar produced during the gasification process showed a carbon content of about 74%w/w. By results of biomass characterization and of gasification tests, it is possible to state that olive tree prunings are a suitable biomass for gasification in downdraft fixed bed reactor and hence for production of syngas and biochar., Proceedings of the 26th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 14-17 May 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 728-731

Biomass combustion is a process widely used for heat and power generation through use of different types of plants provided with systems for flue gas cleaning in order to ensure a low environmental impact. Emissions from biomass combustion concern different types of compounds, from CO2, CO, SOX, NOX, particulate matter (PM) to persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Obviously, emissions are linked to the biomass characteristics and to the operating parameters of combustion facility. The aim of this work concerns the evaluation of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) produced from combustion tests of elm and poplar. Results showed that PCDD/Fs and PCBs were lower than 1 pg I-TEQ/Nm3 and these value are very low if compared with those referred to combustion of woody biomass in facilities provided with high efficiency systems for flue gas cleaning., Proceedings of the 26th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 14-17 May 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 606-609

Moving grate furnaces have large diffusion as CHP plants due to economical feasibility and the ability to process low grade biomass fuels. Unfortunately, packed beds combustion is an high complexity combustion phenomenon and as result these plants are strongly affected by regulation issues which almost inhibit to successfully transfer results from numerical studies. However there is considerable margin to improve performances on pollutant emissions and efficiency by utilizing advanced regulation strategies. The most advanced control strategies adopt a model-based approach to deal with intrinsic high non linearity and complexity of the physics on packed bed combustion. In this paper data obtained from several experimental campaigns have been evaluated on the purpose to obtain an effective MIMO black box modeling of different furnace processes. Data are collected via a particular closed loop swinging regulation to exploit high frequency modal response of the furnace. The model used for parametric linear MIMO analysis utilize Finite Response Filters scheme applied on direct measured quantities or soft sensed ones. The resulting transfer functions from system identification procedures allow good prediction on local furnace behaviors and these can be utilized for synthesis of advanced controllers.

X S.A.L. Rapporto RT/CNR/IIA/367 del 3 febbraio 2017, Rapporto predisposto nell'ambito dell'accordo sulle reti speciali Accordo di collaborazione per l'avvio delle reti speciali di cui al decreto legislativo 155/2010 tra il Ministero dell'Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare, il Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), l'Agenzia Nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (ENEA) e l'Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), stipulato il 23/12/2010

IX S.A.L. Rapporto RT/CNR/IIA/2676 del 22 settembre 2016, Rapporto predisposto nell'ambito dell'accordo sulle reti speciali Accordo di collaborazione per l'avvio delle reti speciali di cui al decreto legislativo 155/2010 tra il Ministero dell'Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare, il Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), l'Agenzia Nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (ENEA) e l'Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), stipulato il 23/12/2010

The conditions of local Lorentz invariance (LLI) breakdown, obtained during neutron emission from a sonicated cylindrical bar of AISI 304 steel, were reproduced in a system made of a mole of mercury. After 3 min, a part of the liquid transformed into solid state material, in which isotopes were found with both higher and lower atomic mass with respect to the starting material. Changes in the atomic weight without production of gamma radiation and radionuclides are made possible by deformed space-time reactions. © 2015 World Scientific Publishing Company.

In this study, the possibility of using natural zeolites for the purification and the upgrading of biogas to biomethane is proposed. Several kinds of tuff waste from construction industry are available at low price and contain a high fraction of natural zeolites and in this study these materials were tested for the purification and the upgrading of biogas. Results obtained show that, even for small streams, it is possible to reach the specifications required for the distribution grid of natural gas. The adsorption of carbon dioxide was tested at two different flow rates, and at different grain sizes. Results showed a very high upgrading efficiency, even at atmospheric pressure. Reducing the flow rate and the grain size leaded to a very low enhancement of this saturation level, while the efficiency remained the same. Hydrogen sulphide also was efficiently regenerated by heating and by vacuum., Proceedings of the 22nd European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 23-26 June 2014, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 871-875

Motivations. The cytokines family is composed by many proteins that need to bind to specific receptors on the cell surface to perform their biological function. This binding can stimulate both the expression of receptors for cytokines and the production of other cytokines that in turn act on other target cells. On the whole, the totality of the cytokines and of their interactions in and around biological cells is defined with the 'cytokinome" term. Often these molecules are involved in cancer-related chronic inflammation and play a pivotal role in promoting tumorigenesis and metastatic processes. Therefore, we have developed i) CytokineDB that is an annotated database that collects biological information regarding the cytokines family in human and ii) CytReD (Cytokine Receptor Database) that collects biological information regarding the human cytokine receptor families and their related ligands and can be used by researchers as well as physicians and clinicians to identify what cytokines are reported in the literature as significant in a given disease. Methods. Some databases were used to collect gene and protein data regarding the human cytokine family: Pubmed and OMIM for biological activity, ENSEMBL for gene records, SRS retrieval system for searching DNA and protein sequences, PDB for three-dimensional structures, and FoldIndex for the prediction of disorder propensity of the cytokine receptors. Search form of CytokineDB is based on a CGI script written in PERL language. CytReD is developed using a dynamic content management system Drupal version 6.17 and scripting language PHP version 5.3.2. JMOL visualization package is embedded for cytokine receptors three dimensional structure in detailed information page. Results. In CytokineDB the human cytokine family was subdivided in 12 sub-families and the user can click on the image near to the name of each cytokine family and have a short description of the structures of these families. In each subgroup, all the known cytokines were inserted. The user can select a sub-family and choose the protein of which want have information. The output page for each cytokine reports the cell type, where the protein is located, Entrez Gene, the target receptors and cells, the main effects, the description of biological activity, the references, EMBL code, Ensembl protein_coding gene, the number of transcripts, the number and the code of associated peptides, the number and the code of exons, the chromosome location, CCDS, RefSeq DNA, RefSeq peptide, Protein ID, UniProt code, Sequence isoforms, amino acid sequence, PDB code, CATH and SCOP classifications, and structural features. In CytReD the user can search by selecting from four options: cytokine receptor name, ligands, cytokine Family or disease. The result page is divided into description, sequences and accession codes and other biological information along with the references. Description provides information about the biological description, the name of ligands linked to CytokineDB database, the related synonyms, cell type on which the protein is expressed, the role and the diseases in which it is involved linked to PharmaGKB database. The sequences and accession codes section contains the nucleotide sequence, protein sequence and its isoforms. In particular, the accession codes are linked to the other important databases like Uniprot, Protein Databank, Entrez gene. In the biological information section there are information related to chromosome localization, Ensemble protein coding gene, the codes of transcripts, associated peptides, references, CATH and SCOP classifications, and quantitative analysis like number of residues, isoelectric field, number of positively and negatively charged residues, unfoldability index, and mean hydropathicity value(GRAVY). CytokineDB and CytReD are part of a broader project aimed to develop tools and portals able to be useful supports for a reliable predictive medicine.