ALBERT

Description: Growths in population, increasing demand for health care services and comfort levels, together with patients on the rise in time spent inside hospitals, assure the upward trend that energy demand will continue in the future. Since the hospital buildings operate 24 hours, 365 days a year for the treatment and restoration of patients, they are approximately 2–3 times more energy-intensive than normal buildings. For this reason, energy efficiency in hospitals is one of the prime objectives for energy policy at regional, national and international levels. This study aims to find how meaningful energy performance, reflecting good energy management and energy conservation measures (ECMs), can be operated for hospital buildings, a category encompassing complex buildings with different systems and large gaps between them. Energy audit allows us to obtain knowledge from the healthcare facility, in order to define and tune data driven analysis rules. The use of benchmarking in the energy audit of healthcare facilities enables immediate comparison between hospitals. Data driven energy analysis also allows ascertaining their expected energy consumption and estimating the possible savings margin by using the building energy flow chart. In the 2015–2017 periods, bench-marking of four public hospitals in Seoul were audited for the energy consumption related to weather conditions, total area, bed numbers, employee numbers, and analyzed for building energy flow by zones, energy sources, systems and equipment. This is a practice-based learning in a hospital project. The results reveal that the average annual energy consumption of a hospital under normal conditions, and energy efficiency factors are divided into energy baselines, energy consumption goals for energy saving and energy usage trends for setting ECMs, respectively. The indicator dependent on the area of inpatients (number of beds) proved to be the most suitable as a reference to quantify the energy consumption of a hospital.

Description: Oxidation of biodiesel (BD) obtained from the decomposition of biomass can damage the fuel injection and engine parts during its use as a fuel. The excess heating of vegetable oils can also cause polymerization of the biodiesel. The extent of BD oxidation depends on its fatty acid composition. In this study, an accelerated oxidation test of BDs at 95 °C was investigated according to ASTM D 2274 by applying a long-term storage test for 16 weeks. The density, viscosity, and total acid number (TAN) of BDs increased because of the accelerated oxidation. Furthermore, the contents of unsaturated fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), C18:2 ME, and C18:3 ME in BDs decreased due to the accelerated oxidation. The 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum of BDs that were obtained from the accelerated high temperature oxidation at 180 °C for 72 h differed from that of fresh BDs. The mass spectrum obtained from the analysis of the model FAME, linoleic acid (C18:2) methyl ester, which was oxidized at high temperature, indicated the formation of dimers and epoxy dimers of linoleic acid (C18:2) methyl ester by a Diels-Alder reaction.

Description: Irisin is a myokine with potential anti-obesity properties that has been suggested to increase energy expenditure in obese patients. However, there is limited clinical information on the biology of irisin in humans, especially in morbidly obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery. We aimed to assess the association of circulating irisin concentrations with weight loss in obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery. This was a pilot, single-centre, longitudinal observational study. We recruited 25 morbidly obese subjects who underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery (RYGBP), and blood samples from 12 patients were taken to measure serum irisin concentrations before, and one and nine months after surgery. Their clinical characteristics were measured for one year. The preoperative serum irisin concentration (mean 1.01 ± 0.23 μg/mL, range 0.73–1.49) changed bidirectionally one month after RYGBP. The mean concentration at nine months was 1.11 ± 0.15 μg/mL (range 0.92–1.35). Eight patients had elevated irisin levels compared with their preoperative values, but four did not. Elevations of irisin levels nine months, but not one month, after surgery, were associated with lower preoperative levels (p = 0.016) and worse weight reduction rates (p = 0.006 for the percentage excess weight loss and p = 0.032 for changes in body mass index). The preoperative serum irisin concentrations were significantly correlated with the percentage of excess weight loss for one year (R2 = 0.612; p = 0.04) in our study. Our results suggest that preoperative circulating irisin concentrations may be at least in part associated with a weight loss effect of bariatric surgery in morbidly obese patients. Further large-scale clinical studies are needed to ratify these findings.

Description: This research aims to contribute to the international desires of greenhouse gas mitigation through a study on the optimization of 100 MW off-gas power plants’ subcritical steam cycle, operating in conjunction with steel plants. The performance and fiscal efficiency of the off-gas power plants are based on data collected from Krakatau Steel plants in Indonesia, simulated and analyzed through thermodynamic simulation model (PEPSE). The three scenarios simulated for comparison are: (1) 100 MW off-gas power plant as-is operation, (2) 100 MW off-gas power plant optimized, and (3) 100 MW cogeneration off-gas power plant. The optimization of the off-gas power plant and use of steam extraction was found to have a 45 M and 26 M USD savings in comparison to the base power plant, assuming a 5.5% discount rate and 400 Million USD capital expenditure. The theoretical findings are of use to academia and industry in providing proof of potential cost-savings of integrating off-gas into existing power generation operations.

Description: Sustainability, Vol. 9, Pages 1537: International Tourism Advertisements on Social Media: Impact of Argument Quality and Source Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su9091537 Authors: Un-Kon Lee To guarantee sustainable international tourism market growth, challenges for international tourism advertisements (ITAs) include how and by whom they are made. Different to traditional ITAs, a new type of ITA has been created by the international tourists themselves; it contains not only pictures but also their own tour stories, and it is distributed via social media (e.g., Youtube.com). However, few studies have investigated the impacts of this type of ITA. I was challenged to empirically validate the impacts on potential tourist reactions of argument quality and the peer tourist source of ITAs. I developed my research model based on Toulmin’s model of argument, institution-based trust, the information adoption model, and consumer reaction literature. I conducted the quasi-experiment using three types of ITAs that vary by argument quality and advertisement source. A total of 387 data were collected and analyzed using ANOVA and the partial least squares (PLS) analysis. The results indicate that argument quality and peer tourist source significantly increase perceived ITA quality, ITA fit-to-task and trusting belief, and decrease perceived risk. Argument quality and peer tourist source could also significantly increase tourist reactions, such as ITA adoption, planned/unplanned visit, and word-of-mouth intention. These findings could make ITAs more persuasive on social media.

Description: Energies, Vol. 10, Pages 1307: Properties of Gasoline Stored in Various Containers Energies doi: 10.3390/en10091307 Authors: Cheol-Hwan Jeon Cheon-Kyu Park Byung-Ki Na Jae-Kon Kim Recently, consumers in rural areas have complained about the reduction of the octane number for gasoline stored in storage containers made of polyethylene (PE) in Korea. In addition, problems have been found in gasoline that has not been used for a long time in dual-fueled cars that use liquefied petroleum gas and gasoline at the same time. The reduction of the octane number has caused problems in the quality of fuels. To understand the fuel quality problems, the fuel properties of gasoline for automobiles were investigated in this study by storing gasoline for a long time in various simplified storage containers (tin-coated steel, PE, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET)) in a laboratory scale. For the four months of the storage period, the storage containers were kept indoors and outdoors to monitor the research octane number (RON), vapor pressure, oxidation stability, and the content of all the components to evaluate the fuel properties. In addition, the surfaces of containers were analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of the PE storage containers that were kept outdoors under extremely harsh conditions. Depending on the storage period, some of the PE storage containers kept indoors and outdoors failed to satisfy the specification of quality standards of the gasoline as the samples with high octane numbers and low boiling points evaporated. In addition, the octane number of the gasoline in PE storage container stored indoors decreased as the content of n-paraffin and olefins having low boiling point components decreased during the storage period. The surface analysis of the PE storage containers kept indoors showed that the gasoline permeated into the surface of the containers. In this study, it has been showed that tin-coated steel material storage containers for gasoline storage are less affected by external influences than PE material storage containers and thus are more advantageous for maintaining stable fuel quality.