Suchergebnisse

The General Data Protection Regulation has come into force in the European Union in May 2018 in order to meet current challenges related to personal data protection and to help harmonise the data protection across the EU. Although the GDPR was expected to benefit companies, being private or public, by offering consistency in data protection activities and liabilities across the EU countries and by enabling more integrated EU wide data protection policies, it poses new challenges to companies. However, if we take a step back and think that this regulation has been in transit for more than 2 years, and that only after the implementation of this regulation has begun the real concern is: are companies ready to make this leap? ; This work has been supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: ...

The European Union aims to fulfill 20% of the primary energy consumption with renewable energy sources, by 2020. Biomass has a great potential for domestic and industrial heating applications and these are amongst the most promising uses for biomass as they combine high efficiency and ease of use. Pellets are a good method for biomass distribution due to its quality standards and energy density which make them attractive to distribution and handling. In addition to the traditional use of sawdust as a raw material, there has been a growing interest in the incorporation of residues from industry processing such as the furniture sector. This paper reports the application of pellets made of residues from the furniture industry as a fuel source in domestic heating applications. Pellets were characterized according to their chemical and physical composition. They were subsequently burned in an automatic boiler rated at 15 kW. A probe in the exhaust chimney was used to continuously analyze the flue gases. In addition, the ashes chemical composition was also analyzed. The results show that these pellets have a good thermal efficiency in domestic boilers, releasing however large emissions of NOx, originated from the high concentration of nitrogen in its chemical composition. The ash analysis confirms the slagging and fouling prediction, and these problems were verified in the grate, chamber combustion and heat exchanger. In conclusion, these pellets can be explored for industrial applications, with better control of its chemical composition. For domestic boilers however, these can cause serious ash problems. ; One of authors (P. T. Ferreira) acknowledges the scholarship (SFRH/BD/73101/2010) sponsored by ...