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Cryogenic energy storage (CES) is a large-scale energy storage technology that stores electricity in the form of liquefied gas at cryogenic temperatures. The CES system has three sub-processes, namely, charging or liquefaction, storage, discharging or power cycle. Because the main energy costs in this system are related to the liquefaction module, we will focus on the analysis of liquefaction processes. The present work aims at performing a comparative study between cycles commonly used for the liquefaction of air...

This paper is in the context of studies on the variability of atmospheric factors that highlight the fluctuations associated with climate changes. The acquisition of data for the concentration of NO, NO2 and NOx was collected from the national air quality monitoring system which includes 158 monitoring stations. the monitored national area was divided into 8 study areas to facilitate the calculations. In this paper we present the significant results for the Southeast of Romania for a period of 5 years - between 20...

This paper presents the spatial and temporal variability of sulfur and carbon oxide concentrations in the South-eastern part of Romania. Climate change is a general threat to the provision of essential individual resources. The acquisition of data for CO and SO2 concentration was collected from the national air quality monitoring system which includes 158 monitoring stations. The acquisition of data for the concentration of CO and SO2 were collected from the national air quality monitoring system which includes 15...

This study aims to observe the spatial distribution of the arthropods biodiversity inhabiting the soil surface of olive groves. For this purpose, a sampling campaign has been carried out in a 15.1 ha plot of this crop. This plot is located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. The study comprised a total of 65 sampling stations for epigean arthropods. Each station consisted of two drop traps, one located under the canopy of the olive tree and the other in the middle of the strip. With the arthropod catch data fro...

The safety of navigation and life in the risk areas adjacent to the coastal area, represent the central objective of the paper and meet the provisions of the European directive "in force." In this context, for defining the geometry of the autonomous modular system used as physical system for marking the fairway, mathematical prediction models were developed. The prediction of phenomena and functional characteristics for autonomous modular system was possible by using a specialized software, where the calculation c...

This paper presents the degree of noise pollution in Braila. Braila is a city located in southeastern Romania. For this purpose, sound level measurements were performed in various important locations in this city. The monitoring took place between November 2019 and June 2020. The measurements were performed using a professional digital acoustic sound level meter that can record sound values between 30dB-130dB. The sound level meter works with two frequency filters: -A- and -C-. -A- filter responds in the same way ...

In recent years, virtual reality developers have managed to create an artificial environment that can simulate reality so that the user has the impression of an almost real physical presence in the virtual world. By overlapping and synchronizing projected images with spatial sounds and even with forces that interact with the user, the user is detached from the real environment and an all-encompassing involvement in the virtual world occurs. Virtual reality is frequently present in aviation, medicine, military trai...

The main objective of the study is the analysis of the effects of the geological substrate and of the geomorphological diversity on the characteristics of the vegetation (the diversity of species, the diameter of the trees). The study area is made up of the Cioclovina karst area and the crystalline area near it, which are located in the Dacian Plateau in the ?ureanu Mountains. Within the study, a series of geomorphological variables were calculated to establish geomorphological heterogeneity, namely: slope, slope ...

Olive pruning mulch modifies the physical, chemical and biological properties of the soil. They are an efficient soil and water conservation system, while simultaneously improving the organic matter content of the soil. In any case, their effect on soil properties is a function of the densities provided. In any agricultural field, there can be significant variations in plant size, which can affect the amount of pruning obtained. In this research, a spatial sampling of pruning amount collected in olive trees (n=59)...

The paper aims to address what types of protection can be applied to galvanic elements and batteries that are used in potentially explosive atmospheres. In order to keep electrical equipment in operation in environments with potentially explosive atmospheres under harsh conditions, including galvanic elements and batteries, a certain type of protection must be applied for safe operation. The types of protection applied to galvanic elements and batteries are made in accordance with EN 60079-0 and in compliance with...

Nutrient-poor, sandy, sterile material from the post-mining sterile dumps such as those in the Maramures region (Romania) presents a challenge for plants. Sterile dumps are considered extreme environments for plants due to their unfavorable physicochemical properties. Phytoremediation has great potential to remove heavy metals from sterile dumps, and Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) seems to be a possible candidate species for this purpose. The potential of Brassica juncea seeds to germinate in a medium contaminat...

The article justifies the need for technological solutions in the use of polymer-composite materials in order to limit the impact of dynamic frictional forces in oil drilling. The relationship between macrostructural surfaces was investigated, in particular increasing the effectiveness of the axial load on the drill bit during drilling directional and horizontal wells. It is established that the polymer coating of drill string elements (BC) based on fluoroplastic brand F-4, with a small thickness of 2 ? 3 mm and t...

The Remote Sensing department from National Institute of R&D for Optoelectronics INOE, Romania, operates a complex research infrastructure and has multidisciplinary expertise spanning from laboratory/in-situ chemical analysis to Earth Observation (EO) techniques and applications. Infrastructure and personnel are mostly supported from projects financed by European Commission through FP7/Horizon 2020 (ended programs) and Horizon Europe (current programme) and other international calls (e.g., European Space Agency). ...

The use of magnetic nanoparticles in biocatalysis, due to their unique properties, such as controlled particle size, large surface area, and ease of separating them and the reaction mixture by applying an external magnetic field, makes it possible to reuse enzymes immobilized on magnetic nanoparticles for catalytic processes. In this work, horseradish root peroxidase was immobilized on Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles. The carrier surface was modified and activated before enzyme immobilization using 3- aminopropyltrie...

Sustainability within a region is achieved by providing a variety of services regarding the tourism products within an area. The Giurgeu basin in order to be able to sustain its values, needs to offer a wide variety of services that attract and increase the overnight stay of tourists. The services needed to be diversified with the beginning of the pandemic season of 2020 - 2022. These services existed before, but during the pandemic period, where the tourism suffered the most, it became evident that the entreprene...

The evaluation of the seismic action generated by blasting, aims to establish the connection between the levels of ground vibration with the parameters of the blasting and the characteristics of the geological environment related to the quarry. In order to assess the seismic effects on site of the mining / civil / industrial objectives within the quarry, the criterion of the oscillation speed of the soil particles was chosen, because it was considered to be the only reproducible parameter for the whole frequency r...

Halobacterium salinarum is an extremely halophilic marine Gram-negative obligate aerobic archaeon. Despite its name, this is not a bacterium, but rather a member of the domain Archaea, which lives in hypersaline lakes. Bacteriorhodopsin (BRh) is the red retinal-containing protein found in the cell membranes of H. salinarum and is considered a light-activated proton pump that transports protons across the plasma membrane. Bacteriorhodopsin photointermediates have been defined in kinetic and spectroscopic terms as B...

Several types of transport integrates transit nodes. Transit nodes are located in built-up areas, inside cities or on the outskirts of cities, urban agglomerations. Transit nodes are an important part of public passenger transport. The article is about transit nodes on the regional railway line between Bratislava and Dunajska Streda. The transit nodes are the railway stations on this line. Intercepting parking lots are part of the transit nodes outside large cities. It is important to compare travel times from sou...

In a common understanding, tailings dumps are represented as categories of engineering constructions where mined underground rocks are stored together with the useful rock represented by underground coal. And the position of tailings dumps, ordinarily, is on the land around the mining operations. For their location, land is chosen that determines the minimum impact on the environment and requires some of the lowest waste disposal costs. Considering that our world is in a continuous ascension, new techniques and me...

Purification of aqueous solutions from radionuclide contamination is an extremely problematic topic, which is the subject of many scientific papers. This scientific topic is very relevant to Ukraine. In particular, the synthetic adsorbents - activated carbon, zeolites, metal oxide-adsorbents TiO2, titanium or zirconium phosphates, ion exchange resins, etc., are often used for the removal of heavy metal cations Pb (II), Cd (II), Ba (II), Hg (II), Sr (II) as well as some anions Cl-, F- from the aquatic environment. ...

The purpose of law 165/2013 is the identification and inventory on topographic maps of all lands owned by the public or private domain of the state and the identification of lands that constitute the available reserve of the local land commission to complete the restitution process in nature or equivalent of the real estate abusively taken over during communism. This paper aims to present the steps in verification, validation, and correction of surface topological errors for works specific to law 165/2013 using Ar...

The population and economy growth in the past years, and subsequently the increased demand for freshwater, led to an increased pressure on water resources. The quality of surface water is affected by anthropogenic factors, such as: domestic sewage, industrial activities, agricultural activities, recreational activities, land use change, urbanization. Therefore, the impact on surface water vulnerability is higher in large urban areas or in urban areas with intense touristic activities. The analysis of water vulnera...

In the past decades, the necessity for detailed earthquake microzonation studies was recognized for Bucharest city first because significant damage occurred here during the last major earthquakes, as well as for other densely populated cities in Romania exposed to major seismic risk due to the intermediate-depth earthquakes occurring in Vrancea zone and local site effects. Numerous studies established different approaches incorporating non-linearity analyses, which generally did not consider groundwater level chan...

In this study, a classical biotrickling filter (based on compost microorganisms) and an upgraded biotrickling filter (based on a mixture of compost microorganisms and microalgae Arthrospira platensis PCC 8005) are evaluated in terms of carbon dioxide production, during their use for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) removal from air. The experiments were performed using acetic acid vapors as model VOC and the biotrickling filter (BTF) performance was observed at different VOC concentrations, gas flowrates and pH v...

The paper presents the results of research on the possibility of calculating the investment potential of a particular area based on its spatial characteristics. The level of spatial unit in this research is local administrative unit (cities or municipalities), while the geographic coverage is entire area of Republic of Croatia. Regarding the method, the results could be applied internationally and are not limited to national borders. Furthermore, when deciding on investing, it is important to know the risk. This r...

The distinction between noise and sound is mainly based on the discomfort of the latter, the noise being perceived as a negative sensation, while sounds are generally perceived as being pleasant. Noise and noise pollution are practically identical terms. Noise pollution is the exposure of humans and / or animals to sounds whose frequencies and intensities are harmful, affecting the auditory system, inducing stress or other instant or long term effects on the physical and mental health. For too recently, it has bee...

The concept of sustainable development involves economic development, social development, ecological development, political development, human development, spiritual and cultural development. All these elements pursue three fundamental objectives: smart growth - developing a knowledge and innovation-based economy, sustainable growth - promoting a more competitive and greener economy, in which resources are used more efficiently and inclusive growth - encouraging or high employment of the workforce, to ensure socia...

Arsenic (As) and antimony (Sb) are elements with similar chemistry and geochemistry, but their environmental risk differ depending on the origin and degree of the pollution. As and Sb are both very toxic, particularly their inorganic substances in the oxidation states of III and V, which also represent the most common As/Sb forms in the environment. In environmental systems, As mostly occurs as the tetrahedrally coordinated, pentavalent arsenate AsO43- (in oxidising environment), and the trivalent arsenite AsO33- ...

Today, drones are already widely used in agriculture and forestry. Drones can help spray plants, take surface measurements, and estimate the damage caused by adverse weather conditions or wild animals. Drones can also be used in caring for the condition of crops. Traditional methods of detecting threats related to plant disease are time-consuming and ineffective. Thanks to the use of drones equipped with appropriate vision systems, it is possible to carry out quick and precise control of the condition of the plant...

Using aerial vehicles without pilot (UAV-unmanned aerial vehicle) or Drone has seen a rapid development, over the last decade, in order to obtain spatial information of the Earth's surface. This scientific paper was realized for the Hydrotechnical Node of Costei, from Timis County and has as purpose the processing of aerial images, obtained from a Phantom4 Pro device, which is capable to capture video at 4K resolution at 30 frames per second and Full HD 1080p at 120 frames per second for a slow motion with a Sony ...

Cyclophosphamide (CP) is a cytostatic drug prescribed at large scale, which proved to induce toxic effect on ecosystems and cannot be removed by conventional wastewater treatment processes. Therefore, there is a need to test advanced degradation processes for its removal from wastewater discharges. CP photocatalytic degradation via UV-VIS irradiation was studied using a Nitrogen -doped TiO2 catalyst. The catalyst was synthesized as thin film deposited on glass substrate under nitrogen atmosphere technique. The inf...

The main role of ventilation systems and especially air conditioning systems is to create indoor conditions and air quality inside the rooms that are independent of external atmospheric influences. The sizing of ventilation systems and especially of air conditioning systems is done, in most cases, by considering the climatic elements as a basis for calculation. The real limit to air quality insurance it consists in maintaining in the air certain concentrations of harmful substances which do not endanger human heal...

The climate change facing humanity requires two major and immediate solutions: the need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the one hand, and on the other hand the need to adapt to the effects of climate change, given that these effects are already visible and unavoidable due to the inertia of the climate system. Romania is vulnerable to a number of natural climate and geological dangers: floods, droughts, extreme temperatures, the western part of the country registering over time some devastating fl...

When studying the mechanical behavior of hydrated binders, it is necessary to prevent hydration contraction tensile failure in order to properly characterize the mechanical properties of the material. This is regulated by standards for cement testing, however for the case of water-cement-bentonite mixtures the influence of standard sand is not thoroughly studied. Since the hydration shrinkage and water suction is different for cement and bentonite, a range of eleven combinations of water-cement-bentonite were used...

Biodiversity can be defined as the diversity of ecosystems, expressed as symbioses, habitats, landscapes, species diversity and genetic diversity within species, i.e. the totality of the gene pool that constitutes nature at the global level. In the current period, but especially in the last half century, there has been a steady loss of biodiversity with major consequences for the living world and severe impacts on human society. Biodiversity is a fundamental basis for human existence and humanity is itself a part ...

Air pollution by particulate matter (PM) in urban environment is an ongoing problem with increasing severity. With the gradual evolution of electromobility and lowemission heat sources, the focus is shifting to non-exhaust PM emissions. Wind induced PM resuspension is one of them. This source is hardly amenable to mitigation measures. It was assumed, that only coarse PM (PM10-2,5) can be lifted from the ground by the wind. By the evaluation of the long-term data series, we can divide the PM10 concentration to its ...

The structural analysis of the civil infrastructure is vital in order to track the evolution of degradation in time, to prevent disasters, but also to document and conserve the sites of cultural heritage. This paper review-s the workflow on the acquisition of point clouds to Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) with those collected by photogrammetric 3D models based on images captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), analyzing the data sets on two diferent type of bridges located in western Romania. The obtained da...

This paper presents an exploratory study that analysis the factors that influence the intention to use smart meters that measure electricity consumption. The authors used the technology acceptance model as a starting point for their research, taking into consideration other eight external variables: social influence, familiarity with smart meter technology, task-technology fit, compatibility, the level of trust in companies that supply electricity, price awareness, energy conservation intentions, and perception of...

The studied structure is situated in the Carpathian Foredeep and past geological and geophysical prospecting have proven the existence of a large anticline formation with reservoir proprieties in the SW area of the structure. The prospecting and development stages for this particular reservoir started decades ago, however, recently there have been an intensification of seismic prospecting in order to asses the possibility for an increased production. A large gravimetric study was done at a regional scale that esta...

One of the discussion issues of karstological studies is the identification of karst denudation intensity; it means the quantitative evaluation of the intensity of this process, which, in turn, allows to predict the karst development. The problem of karst denudation is developed insufficiently today, which can be explained by the complexity of the issue and at the same time, the methods used to assess the intensity of denudation are not yet refined. The intensity of denudation and its general regularities in the Z...

Glaciers are sensitive to climate change. How the fluctuation of the temperature affectsthe behaviour of the glacier and particularly its flow and seismic activity is underinvestigation. In this paper, we present a study of activity of glacier Perunika,Livingston Island, Antarctica using data from seismic station LIVV, GNSS data frompoint measurements on the surface of the glacier and meteorological data. GlacierPerunika is the closest one to the Bulgarian Antarctic Base. Seismic station LIVV, issituated near the ...

The last several decades, the climate change, as one of the most serious environmental issues, has become a widely spread topic not only to individuals, but the whole international community. Weather extremities, such as tropical days, summer heat waves, switching of periods of extreme precipitation with periods of drought causing the decrease of water reserve capacities cannot simply be overlooked. Due to alarming climate situation, especially in urban zones, the adaptive measures are much needed, even necessary....

The present paper is focused on depollution techniques representative for mining and non-ferrous metallurgy, which will assure a radically changed technological concept for a clean, safe and eco-efficient production, leading to sustainable development industry. At the same time, our works propose the implementation in the mining and metallurgical sector of unconventional processes through innovative techniques that lead to processes intensification, reduction of energy consumption, decrease of carbon footprint, by...

The article analyzes the issue of agricultural development of German-speaking colonists who lived in the steppe zone of Ukraine. The article analyzes the general features and main directions of development of this process and the reasons that caused it. The main attention is paid to the process of transformation of colonial agriculture. Until the 1860s, the most important and profitable branch of agriculture of the colonists was cattle breeding. However, due to rising grain prices, the importance of agriculture in...

In this paper we present a case study regarding a desert dust intrusion over Central and Eastern Europe in 5th of April 2021, observed using a multi-wavelength Raman and depolarization LIDAR system operated in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. This type of system meets the requirements of the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network – EARLINET and is suitable to provide reliable data on optical parameters for aerosol characterization. While mineral aerosols are the second largest source of aerosol and are the subject of long r...

In the present work the researches were carried out between 2017-2020, in the Tata Valley watershed, which has an area of 16.15 sq. km and administratively belongs to Dambovita county, Romania and is located between latitudes of 45o9’ N-45o15’ N and longitudes 21o21’ E-25o27’ E. The methodology used for processing the basic data from 2017-2020, was the adaptation of the USLE equation (Universal Soil Loss Equation) to the specific environmental and anthropic conditions in Romania and called ROMSEM - Romanian Soil E...

In addition to the traffic load, the temperature also has a significant effect on the course of stresses in cement concrete slabs. It is the load of temperature changes that is often underestimated. Recently, there have been significant changes in climatic conditions and increasingly frequent extremes (especially high temperatures in the summer months and extreme fluctuations during the day), which affect the behavior of road structures and the basic characteristics affecting the stress of cement concrete pavement...

Waste treatment is considered one of the critical environmental issues. Waste should be understood not only as a source of pollution but as a raw material. Nevertheless, we need well-sorted waste for recovery. Separate collection of municipal waste is an activity in which components of municipal waste are separated. It is based on the conscious activity of citizens, who primarily sort the relevant raw materials. At present, the citizen is obliged to sort waste by law in Slovakia, and the municipality is obliged to...

Combined sewer are among the most important objects of a unified sewerage network and therefore high requirements are placed on these objects, whether from hydraulic, hydrological, hygienic or constructional requirements. Their main function, ie hydraulic, is to divide the inflow at the time of torrential rains into a flow continuing to the WWTP and a flow that is relieved from the OK to the recipient. Another important function of relief chambers is related to pollution. Some chamber designs can successfully capt...

Quarry sites are famous for the different types of materials produced. Many aggregate elements, extracted by different methods in quarry activities, such as blasting operations, are widely used for different applications, such as construction, road paving and monuments. Generally, the process to obtain these materials is very complex. A stationary production facility does not require machinery to be moved or relocated, whereas the quarry process involves machinery such as wheel loaders, trucks and articulated dump...