Suchergebnisse

This work addresses the subjects of reducing fossil energy consumption and the interventions to improve energy efficiency in the European agricultural-food sys-tem. Following an overview on both such subjects, the results of European projects TESLA and SCOoPE are also analysed with attention to best practices and technologies available to improve energy efficiency in order to reduce the fossil energy use in agri-food systems of Mediterranean countries. A list of Key Performance Indicators for the fruit and vegetable sector, useful for comparative analyses aimed at selecting best methods of energy management and technologies for improving energy efficiency, is reported. Finally, a brief focus on European policies concerning the solutions adopted by the new European Commission to make the agri-food system more sustainable from an energy and environmental point of view is also discussed.

The inexorable extension of urbanization is consuming huge amounts of soil drastically reducing natural vegetation, replacing it with buildings and low albedo surfaces. The changes due to the different thermal properties of surface materials and the lack of evapotranspiration in urban areas lead to a phenomenon known as "urban heat island effect". By reintroducing the vegetation back into the urban landscape, a partnership between nature and cities should be strengthened to create a new sustainable urban environment. Since the outer surfaces of building offer a great amount of space for vegetation, planting on roofs and walls has become one of the most innovative way to provide several environmental services. Moreover, all the green infrastructures, such as urban gardens or nature areas, that form an important part of cityscapes, could ensure also a thermal isolation and constitute a sustainable energy saving solution for buildings. This work presents a critical review of environmental and potential thermal benefits of green infrastructures in the cities.

The use of a passive dissipation system on a building reduces energy consumption and improves energy efficiency. This technology is important considering that in the EU more than 40% of primary energy consumption for heating and cooling derive by the construction sector. This article reports the effects of a green wall, spaced 60 cm from the building wall, placed on a demonstration building at the ENEA Casaccia Research Center. The values of global solar radiation parameters, wall surface temperature, relative humidity inside and outside the interspace between the green wall and the building were detected. The results show that plant greening on the building reduces heat flux into the building, by reducing air temperature of building wall, especially in summer.

Buildings in Europe consume 40% of total energy consumption and not less than 65% of the total electricity consumption. This work reports the first results of a research developed at the ENEA Casaccia Center, under the Electricity System Research Program (RDS), funded by the Ministry of Economic Development. The experiments were carried out on a demonstration building on which the necessary structures for research activities were built. Among the cultivated vegetable essences, the best results have been obtained with the Parthenocissus varieties, which have reached a leaf coverage of over 3.5 m2 and with the Vitis vinifera varieties with a leaf surface of over 3 m2. From an energy point of view, the data collected, although still preliminary and not definitive, the collected data showed a significant reduction in the surface temperature of the greened facade by over 14°C compared to the non-vegetated areas of the demonstration building. Taking into account the fact that the plant systems are an increasingly important element to improve energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of buildings, further research and experiments are necessary for a more detailed assessment of the biological and agronomic parameters that characterize plant systems when grown on the building to define their influence on the surface temperature of the vegetated facades of buildings and on the energy flows entering the building.

The objective of this study is to provide a good "benchmark" case in juice fruit production plants for comparing their performance in terms of energy consumption and final product "yield". In particular, the industrial step-by-step processes performed for the production of natural fresh orange juice, fruit juices and purees will be dissected, also referring to the operations. By exploiting the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) methodology, we report general energy consumptions due to the main production processes and highlight the most energy-intensive ones, in order to provide a base for the selection of useful and reasonable key performance indicators. Furthermore, we include some sectorial KPIs that have been extracted from the literature.