Solar irradiance is an indispensable parameter in diverse energy applications. In PV systems, it can help to monitor the evolution of system performance. Consequently, numerous solar irradiance estimators have been proposed in the literature, some depend on the PV model, that is not always fully available, while others introduce an alteration of the PV operating point to the short-circuit or open-circuit point. It is always desirable to operate the PV system at the maximum power point (MPP), hence periodically altering the operating point of the system can deteriorate the performance of the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller. Alternatively, the operation of the PV system at the MPP can be exploited to estimate solar irradiance. In spite of the fact that numerous MPPT algorithms have been proposed in existing literatures, very few have demonstrated their suitability for irradiance estimation. The state-of-the-art reveals that only the conventional MPPT algorithms have been successfully applied to irradiance estimation. However, these conventional schemes still present noticeable shortcomings under fast varying environmental conditions. To address these limitation, this paper put forward a high performance MPPT based irradiance estimator. The proposed estimator is constructed around a simple algebraic equation that relies on the measurement of PV current and voltage only, thus endorsing its high simplicity. Prior to the estimation of solar irradiance, the overall PV system is driven by a high-performance hybrid incremental conductance integral backstepping (H-INC-IBS) MPPT controller. The principal benefits of this controller are high robustness and fast stabilization of the operating point at the MPP, which are optimal requirements of the system. Several experiments have been performed under changing irradiance and temperature conditions as well as experimental conditions. By consistent evaluations and comparisons against the conventional MPPT solar irradiance estimator, this paper aim to emphasize the superiority of the proposed solar irradiance estimator in providing more accurate estimation of solar irradiance.

The winery wastewater (WW) is a consequence of the wine production, generated from the numerous cleaning steps taken from the vintage, grape reception, must fermentation, wine stabilization, filtration and bottling. With this review, it is aimed to evaluate the composition of WW, its environmental consequences and solutions to mitigate its impact. Manny studies showed that the WW has low pH (3-4), high chemical oxygen demand (COD) ranging from 800 to 30000 mg O₂/L, well above the values of the Portuguese Decree Law nº 236/98, for wastewater discharge.

The high COD in combination with the presence of high content in polyphenols makes this type of wastewaters harmful for the environment. The consequences are measured in contamination to the water, soil, vegetation and air. Its low pH can affect the soil pH, color and electrical conductivity, reducing plant nutrients and the population of useful microbes.

For biodegradable fractions, biologic processes (aerobic or anaerobic) can be applied with the advantage of been cheap processes and remove large concentrations of organic carbon. However, biologic processes have difficulty in degradation of non-biodegradable organic matter and polyphenols, as well as the time required. Coagulation-flocculation-decantation (CFD) and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) can be applied as complement to biologic processes with the advantage of faster removal of organic carbon and polyphenols, competitive costs and the sludge and water can be reused for fertilization and irrigation, respecting the principles of circular economy.

This review explores the progress and significance of moveable and retractable textile roofing solutions in withstanding challenging weather conditions. Specially treated fabrics are designed to withstand a variety of climatic challenges, including heavy rainfall, extreme heat, and strong winds. The review focuses on the application of these innovative roofing systems in various environments to enhance comfort and safety for individuals exposed to harsh weather. Additionally, it investigates the use of durable and weather-resistant materials and discusses the technological advancements in the design and manufacturing of these advanced textile products. The research provides valuable insights into the continuous evolution of textile roofing technologies, improving shelter and protection in extreme climates.

In this paper, we investigate a fractional-order predator-prey model incorporating prey harvesting. In a non-delayed model, the functional response of Crowley-Martin has been studied. We first prove the existence, uniqueness, non-negativity, and boundedness of the solutions for the proposed model. Furthermore, analyze the existence of various equilibrium points to examine the locally asymptotically stable properties, and use the suitable Lyapunov function to study the globally asymptotic stability. Finally, some numerical simulations are verified for the analytical results.

Climate change, particularly global warming, is a significant environmental issue that has gained widespread attention in recent decades. It poses a significant threat to life on Earth and requires thorough investigation to understand its impact on different regions of the world. Global Climate Models (GCMs) are one of the primary tools used to study the effects of global warming. However, due to regional diversity and variations in weather patterns, it is necessary to downscale these models to a smaller scale using statistical downscaling methods. This study aimed to complement the model for the future by utilizing Global Climate Model (GCM) data and applying shallow-layered Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and deep-based Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network to extract the historical temperature trend of the city of Calgary. Mutual Information (MI) was employed for screening purposes to ensure the quality of the input variables. The results of the study showed that the LSTM model, which relied on the data screening method using MI, achieved an RMSE of 0.01°C and a DC of 0.93. The ANN model, on the other hand, relied on the data screening method and using MI, yielded an RMSE of 1.2°C and a DC of 0.78. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the LSTM model in extracting the historical temperature trend of the city of Calgary, and the importance of using rigorous statistical methods to ensure the quality of input variables in downscaling models.

The world is facing a water crisis and 80% of the generated wastewater is released without a proper treatment. Therefore, wastewaters are now seen as a valuable resource. In this line, wastewater treatment and reuse are being implemented globally [1]. Unfortunately, not all industries have an efficient wastewater treatment, being in the best cases only able to comply with the legal limits to discharge into municipal wastewater treatment plants or in natural water streams. Water reuse policies demand high treated water quality, ensuring no harm to human health and ecosystems [2]. To foresee a safe water reuse, Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) seem to be one of the most appropriated technologies to achieve the desired water quality. The use of UV light enhances the system overall efficiency, in which light emitting diodes (LEDs) are rising comparing to traditional UV lamps. Nonetheless, by considering the commonly used wired systems, photons are scattered during the air path diminishing the treatment effectiveness.

In this work, a wireless UV-A LEDs (λ = 365 nm) lab-scale reactor (330 mL) powered by a resonant inductive coupling (RLC) system was built maximizing the UV photon absorption, being the energy inside the photoreactor supplied through a magnetic field generated by induction coils placed on the external wall [2, 3]. To this aim, it was firstly evaluated the best working frequency and then it was investigated the photocatalytic degradation of the textile dye, Reactive black 5, under different TiO₂, H₂O₂ and pollutant concentrations and pH values. The best operating parameters were found to be [TiO₂] = 500 mg L^-1 and [H₂O₂] = 100 mg L^-1, with an Electric Energy per Order (E_EO) of 17.6 kWh m^-3 order^-1. The wireless UV-A LEDs system proved to be efficient in the removal of Reactive black 5 with TiO₂ photocatalysis.

References

[1] R. Simhayov, N. Ohana-Levi, M. Shenker, Y. Netzer, Agric. Water Manag., 275 (2023).

[2] L.C. Ferreira, J.R. Fernandes, J.A. Peres, P.B. Tavares, M.S. Lucas, Environ. Res., 200 (2021) 111430108002.

[3] B. Burek, A. Sutor, D.W. Bahnemann, J.Z. Bloh. Catal. Sci. Technol. 7 (2017) 4977-4983.

Acknowledgments: The financial support was provided by OBTain project (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000084) and project INICIO - Setup of research infrastructure for closed circles of water, nutrients and energy in Portuguese agriculture (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-072685), both co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through NORTE 2020.

The power shortage is a common case prevailing in today's power scenario. Load Shedding occurs when the demand power is greater than generation power, then the excessive load is to cut avoid power shortage. Usually, load shedding will make use of complex circuitry and system along with expensive materials. This necessitates the need for a simple and efficient solution that meets all the requirements. The intelligent system is created with the help of microcontrollers achieving Real-time Load shedding. The power limit in the system is obtained from the utility company. The measured value in the system is obtained from the sensor and the value is compared to the power limit. If it is within the limit, no action is taken. When the limit exceeds the calculated value, the power supply is cut off. Graded Load shedding is achieved through the above-mentioned method. Through this graded load-shedding method, the need for changing the existing infrastructure is removed and the existing system is made useful for more amount of time. As this proposed design uses the simplest of the components and technologies, the financial and technical capital that is required to make this is lower as compared to the existing technologies. The proposed design is a global standard design proposing that it could be used in countries using the 250V 50Hz infrastructure or the 125V 60Hz infrastructure, with the appropriate power adapters. The future is dependent on renewable sources of energy. Even the latest developments in the field of renewable energy show that renewable energy sources are intermittent. To cope with this, a system like this becomes necessary.

This paper establishes a comparable study on the influence of adiabatic and non-adiabatic pulse excitations for a double-lambda atomic system in alkali metal vapours with a hyperfine structure. Excitation dynamics provided frequency sweeping and emphasized discrete and continuous phase distributions with different excitation schemes of sigmoidal types. The optical pulses are represented by Gaussian or rectangular. We shall focus on the set-up of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA). The phases of optical fields give similarities to discrete square wave distributions influenced by ramping. We specifically address the population transfer among the hyperfine levels, where the adiabatic condition concerns the density matrix's eigenvalues. During electromagnetically-induced absorption, we found nutation of square wave distributions of the phases for the whole interaction times. Thus, the sensitivity of the double-lambda system to produce large phases are preserved without the need to perform short-cut fields among ground hyperfine levels. The results showed significant control of discrete phase distributions and temporal ramping by sigmoidal membership functions implementation. The relevant equations are the reduced Maxwell equations for the radiation fields, and the density matrix equation in the Liouville space governs the time evolution.

Antibacterial agents produced from plant extracts are seen as a promising application in food packaging. Essential oils extracts, on the other hand, often have drawbacks such as long-term instability, limited bioavailability, and fast burst release. The study's primary goal was to develop poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/graphene oxide (GO) nanocomposites films for use in food packaging utilizing moringa (M) and guava (G) leaf extracts. The characteristics of polymer films were enhanced by adding a small quantity of GO as reinforcing fillers, and then adding phenolic and flavonoids compounds as antibacterial agents. First, GO and plant extracts were dispersed through the use of ultrasonication. Next, all chemicals were introduced in the PVA matrix with the use of a straightforward and eco-friendly solution casting approach. Water was used as the solvent for this process. As a consequence of these findings, PVA/GO/M3% films demonstrated superior tensile strength (73.63 MPa), %elongation at break (641.94%), and modulus (23.84 MPa) in comparison to neat PVA films. For GO was an effective reinforcing filler, while phenolic and flavonoid compounds were, respectively, crystallization agents. They were distributed randomly in the PVA matrix, with no preferred orientation and some agglomeration. Furthermore, the antibacterial activity of the synthetic films loaded with M and G leaf extract was low when tested against Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).

The present work aims to analyze the distribution of radionuclides naturally occurring in the oil shale of the Ama Fatma coastal zone. For this purpose, using gamma-ray spectrometry, we analyzed the activity concentrations of uranium (U), thorium (Th) series, and potassium-40 (K-40) in oil shale samples retrieved from the study area. The concentrations of U-238 were ranged from 45 ±36 to 194±50 Bq.kg^-1 and those of Th-232 fluctuate between 1.48±0.92 and 9.47±1.06 Bq.kg^-1. The measured concentrations for Ra-226, Pb-214 and K-40 oscillate between 33±5 and 138±9 Bq.kg^-1, 18±1 and 68±3 Bq.kg^-1 and between 17±4 and 279±16 Bq.kg^-1 respectively. The obtained values variation appears to be related to the deposit nature and assimilation processes of appropriate radionuclides rather than to the retrieved samples’ related depth. The analysis of the ²³²Th/²³⁸U and ²²⁶Ra / ²³⁸U allowed an understanding of these radionuclides behaviors. The ratios ²²⁶Ra / ²³⁸U ranged from 0.56 to 0.74 with a mean value of 0.70 which indicates the existence of disequilibrium in the investigated oil shale samples. This disequilibrium can be attributed to significant differences in the mobility of these radionuclides.