Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2020-09"
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- Towards a Blue Economy: the influence of policy strategies in the research and technology orientation of Portuguese organisationsPublication . Sousa, Cristina; Fontes, Margarida; Conceição, Oscarina; Alessandro de NiscoABSTRACT: The “Blue Economy” was strategically identified as a driver of European growth, through the development of new competences and activities that enable a sustainable exploitation of ocean resources. Research and innovation policies oriented to the Blue Economy, at both European and country levels, can be described as attempts at “mission-oriented” policies, which seek to influence the direction of growth towards sustainable transformative change in the ocean area. The objective of this paper is to analyse the directions followed by the research and technological development (RTD) activities conducted by Portuguese firms in order to understand whether the strategies and policies aiming at the development of the Blue Economy are being effective in their endeavour of steering such development in certain directions, thus creating conditions for a sustainable transformation in ocean related areas. The results provide some evidence of the role being performed by RTD promoted by these policies towards a transformative change in ocean related activities. Particularly, they show that they are contributing to: i) the generation of new areas and the revitalisation of existing sectors, through the creation and exploitation of new technological opportunities; and ii) a sustainable use of resources and the mitigation of negative environmental effects created by previous activities. Moreover, the results show intense interaction between different types of organisations. Particularly, they show that new technology intensive firms and industries are working together with existing firms from traditional sectors to exploit the new opportunities and technologies. The evidence suggests processes of cross fertilisation and technological upgrading of traditional activities, through the interaction in the RTD projects funded by clearly targeted public policies.
- Solar Irradiance (Global, Direct and Diffuse) Quality Control Methodologies. Review: Application to Time Series Measured At LES/LNEG, Lisboa, PortugalPublication . Marques, Filipe; Páscoa, Soraia; Carvalho, Maria João; Cardoso, João P.ABSTRACT: Solar irradiance spatial and temporal quantification is essential to the development, implementation, and operation of solar systems, being used throughout a solar project lifecycle. It is crucial to have good quality data measured in meteorological and radiometric ground stations in order to enable the calibration and validation of irradiance models and data series. The Solar Energy laboratory at LNEG operates a meteorological station gathering relevant parameters to characterize the solar irradiation profile for the city of Lisbon in Portugal. This work presents and compares the application of different methodologies used for quality control of solar irradiance measurements. Three methods - the CIE (1994) / Muneer and Fairooz (2002), the QCRad and the IEC - were tested against two synthetic data sets: a clear-sky year and a typical meteorological year randomly and uniformly infused with errors. IEC showed to have limitation regarding the extreme value criteria for beam normal irradiance and CIE for the diffuse horizontal irradiance. The QCRad presented the best performance, with total sensitivity above 80% and maximum specificity. This method was applied to the measured data of LES-LNEG between 2014 and 2018. Most of the detected errors were detected during the coherence test stage, having a higher prevalence between 2015 and mid-2016, highlighting the need to modify the diffuse horizontal irradiance measuring system.
- Tecnologias de conversão de resíduos orgânicos (Âmbito do GT Energia-Resíduos): contribuição do LNEGPublication . Gírio, Francisco; Marques, Susana; Costa, Paula; Pinto, Filomena; Oliveira, Ana Cristina; Moura, Patrícia; C. Duarte, Luís; Silva, Luís; Marques, Isabel PaulaEste documento pretende apresentar 3 tecnologias de conversão de biomassa que, na perspetiva do LNEG, se encontram num grau de maturidade tecnológica elevado e passíveis de serem implementadas a curto/médio prazo pelos operadores de gestão de resíduos, numa perspetiva da valorização da fração biodegradável quer de resíduos urbanos, de efluentes e resíduos da industria agroalimentar, assim como de lamas de ETAR. A valorização de resíduos deverá ter em conta a sua hierarquia, devendo ser dada prioridade a processos que conduzam à valorização orgânica face à valorização energética. Contudo em múltiplas situações tal não é aplicável de uma forma técnica e economicamente viável, sendo a utilização como fonte para produtos de base energética aquela que mostra maior viabilidade do ponto de vista da sua valorização. Em qualquer dos casos, a progressiva redução dos resíduos depositados em aterro constitui uma das prioridades em termos da gestão de resíduos e do cumprimento das metas europeias e nacionais nesta matéria. Assim, salvaguardando as diretrizes na área da gestão de resíduos numa ótica da circularidade da economia e dos recursos, há que ter presente também as ambiciosas metas estabelecidas quer no PNEC2030 quer no RNC2050. Estes objetivos para serem atingidos necessitam também de uma abordagem estratégica no setor dos resíduos, na qual a sua potencial valorização enquanto vetor energético deverá sempre ser tida em conta. A este propósito, importa referir a crescente aposta nacional nos gases renováveis e a necessidade de cumprimento da meta de 3,5% em teor energético estabelecida na Diretiva (UE) 2018/2001 para biocombustíveis avançados no setor dos transportes, meta esta para a qual a utilização de matérias primas residuais na sua produção assume um papel fundamental.
- Competitiveness of Portuguese LithiumPublication . Simoes, Sofia; Amorim, FilipaABSTRACT: Lithium (Li) is a strategic alkali metal given the expectations of a very significant increase in its demand for the production of Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EV), including in Europe (EU), where Germany, France and the United Kingdom announced they will abandon the production of internal combustion engines vehicles by 2040. In 2020, Li was included in the EU's list of critical raw materials. There is an emerging world market for lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) and lithium hydroxide (LiOH), with enormous uncertainty on price evolution, its functioning, main players and the lead time between new investments and effective Li supply. One of the main constraints on the Li world market is the degree of technological development within the Li value chain (extraction, mineral and metallurgical processing, and global demand).
- Economic, social and environmental impacts attained by the use of the effluents generated within a small-scale biorefinery conceptPublication . Lopes, Tiago; Lukasik, Rafal M.ABSTRACT: Biorefineries are emerging as the proper route to defeat climate change and other social, socio-economic and environmental concerns. So far, no residual lignocellulosic biomass-based biorefineries have been yet industrially implemented, mainly due to its economic viability. This article exposes some elements that may help overcome the bottlenecks associated to its social, economic and environmental sustainability: small-scale approaches, biomass valorisation through added-value products and near-zero effluent.