Cost and performance analysis of new wood-fuelled power plant concepts

The objective of the thesis was to analyse several process configurations for the production of electricity from biomass. Process simulation models using AspenPlus aimed at calculating the industrial performance of power plant concepts were built, tested, and used for analysis. The criteria used in analysis were performance and cost. All of the advanced systems appear to have higher efficiencies than the commercial reference, the Rankine cycle. However, advanced systems typically have a higher cost of electricity (COE) than the Rankine power plant. High efficiencies do not reduce fuel costs enough to compensate for the high capital costs of advanced concepts. The successful reduction of capital costs would appear to be the key to the introduction of the new systems. Capital costs account for a considerable, often dominant, part of the cost of electricity in these concepts. All of the systems have higher specific investment costs than the conventional industrial alternative, i.e. the Rankine power plant; Combined beat and power production (CUP) is currently the only industrial area of application in which bio-power costs can be considerably reduced to make them competitive. Based on the results of this work, AsperiPlus is an appropriate simulation platform. How-ever, the usefulness of the models could be improved if a number of unit operations were modelled in greater detail. The dryer, gasifier, fast pyrolysis, gas engine and gas turbine models could be improved.

Entry modes and performance of foreign direct investment in China

How does a firm choose a proper model of foreign direct investment (FDI) for entering a foreign market? Which mode of entry performs better? What are the performance implications of joint venture (JV) ownership structure? These important questions face a multinational enterprise (MNE) that decides to enter a foreign market. However, few studies have been conducted on such issues, and no consistent or conclusive findings are generated, especially with respect to China. It’s composed of five chapters, providing corresponding answers to the questions given above. Specifically, Chapter One is an overall introductory chapter. Chapter Two is about the choice of entry mode of FDI in China. Chapter Three examines the relationship between four main entry modes and performance. Chapter Four explores the performance implications of JV ownership structure. Chapter Five is an overall concluding chapter. These empirical studies are based on the most recent and richest data that has never been explored in previous studies. It contains information on 11,765 foreign-invested enterprises in China in seven manufacturing industries in 2000, 10,757 in 1999, and 10,666 in 1998. The four FDI entry modes examined include wholly-owned enterprises (WOEs), equity joint ventures (EJVs), contractual joint ventures (CJVs), and joint stock companies (JSCs). In Chapter Two, a multinominal logit model is established, and techniques of multiple linear regression analysis are employed in Chapter Three and Four. It was found that MNEs, under the conditions of a good investment environment, large capital commitment and small cultural distance, prefer the WOE strategy. If these conditions are not met, the EJV mode would be of greater use. The relative propensity to pursue the CJV mode increases with a good investment environment, small capital commitment, and small cultural distance. JSCs are not favoured by MNEs when the investment environment improves and when affiliates are located in the coastal areas. MNEs have been found to have a greater preference for an EJV as a mode of entry into the Chinese market in all industries. It is also found that in terms of return on assets (ROA) and asset turnover, WOEs perform the best, followed by EJVs, CJVs, and JSCs. Finally, minority-owned EJVs or JSCs are found to outperform their majority-owned counterparts in terms of ROA and asset turnover.

Organisational slack resources, the definitions and consequences for business flexibility and performance : an empirical investigation

Slack resources are recognised to be those spare capabilities and assets of the organisation that are variable reclaimable for re-deployment. They represent under utilised and hidden spare energies within a company that may be recaptured and employed for a variety of tasks. However their positive contribution to organisational success has been a contentious claim that has provoked the intuitive argument that slack resources are inefficiency and are to be eradicated. The counter argument has been that very efficient organisations are inflexible and therefore incapable of being responsive to an increasingly dynamic environment. Therefore this work compares and contrasts three distinctive industries in a holistic manner and maps the impact of environmental flux on the firm, its subsequent disruptive ripples through the organisation and its absorption by slack resources. Through this process it is demonstrated that slack resources do positively contribute to organisational performance and subsequently the ability of slack to promote sustained competitive advantage is also identified. The major findings of this work are listed. 1. This work has developed and perfected a new research model that aids the investigation of the internal behaviours and consequences of Slack Resources. 2. Supported by argument a new variable of Soft Slack was developed. Its validity was demonstrated in its ability to capture the contribution of intangible assets, such as education, experience, spare management time and further training, to the extant levels of Organisational Hard Slack resources. 3. The validity of Soft Slack was further supported when its contribution to organisational Flexibility was also established. 4. The original argument that Slack Resources enhance organisational Performance has been further developed. It is now evidenced that Slack Resources facilitate Organisational Flexibility and by this process enhances Organisational Performance.

Properties and performance of polymer modified cements and mortars

Polymer modified cements and mortars have become popular for use as patch repair materials. General evidence suggests that these materials offer considerable improvements compared to traditional mortars although the mechanisms for this are not fully understood. This work elucidates the factors which govern some properties and performance of different polymer systems. In view of the wide range of commercial systems available, investigations concentrated on the use of three of the most commonly available groups of polymers. These were: (1) Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR), (2) Acrylics and, (3) Ethylene Vinyl Acetates (EVA). The later two were in the form of both emulsions and redispersible powders. Experiments concentrated on: (1) Rheological behaviour of polymer modified cement pastes; (2) Workability of polymer modified mortars; (3) Influence of curing conditions on the pore size distribution and diffusion of chloride ions; (4) Bond strength of polymer modified cement and mortar patches; and (5) Microscopic examination and semi-quantitative analyses of the bulk and interfacial microstructures. The following main conclusions were reached: (1) The addition of polymer emulsions have a considerable influence on the workability of fresh cement pastes, the extent of this depending on the type of system used. (2) The rheological parameters of fresh polymer modified mortars can be established using a two-point workability test which may be used when comparing the properties of different systems at constant workability. (3) Curing conditions affect the properties of polymer modified systems and a wet/dry curing regime was essential for good adhesion of these materials to mortar substrates. (4) In contrast, the wet/dry curing regime resulted in a curing affected zone at the surface of patch materials. This can result in a much coarser pore structure and enhanced diffusion of e.g. chloride ions. (5) The microstructure of polymer modified systems was very different compared with the unmodified cement/mortar and varied depending on curing conditions.

Characterisation and performance of a Terfenol-D coated femtosecond laser inscribed optical fibre Bragg sensor with a laser ablated microslot for the detection of static magnetic fields

We present a novel device for the characterisation of static magnetic fields through monitoring wavelength shifts of femtosecond inscribed fibre Bragg grating and micromachined slot, coated with Terfenol-D. The device was sensitive to static magnetic fields and can be used as a vectoral sensor for the detection of magnetic fields as low as 0.046 mT with a resolution of ± 0.3mT in transmission and ± 0.7mT in reflection. The use of a femtosecond laser to both inscribe the FBGs and micromachine the slot in a single stage prior to coating the device significantly simplifies the fabrication.

The role of government research establishments : a study of the concept of public patronage for applied research and development

This thesis follows the argument that, to fully understand the current position of national research laboratories in Great Britain one needs to study the historical development of the government research establishment as a specific social institution. A particular model is outlined in which it is argued that institutional characteristics evolve through the continual interplay between internal development and environmental factors within a changing political and economic context, and that the continuous development of an institution depends on its ability to adapt to changes in its operational environment. Within this framework important historical precedents for formal government institutional support for applied research are identified. and the transition from private to public patronage documented. The emergence and consolidation of government research laboratories in Britain is described in detail. The subsequent relative decline of public laboratories is interpreted in terms of the undermining of a traditional role resulting in legitimation crisis. It is concluded that it is no longer feasible to consider the public research laboratory as a coherent institutional form, and that the future of each individual laboratory can only be considered in relation to the institutional needs of its own sphere of operation. Nevertheless the laboratories have been forced into decline in an essentially unplanned way which may have serious consequences for the maintenance of the scientific and technical infrastructures, necessary for material progress in the national context.

Political leadership:character and performance. A comparative analysis of British political leadership, 1997-2010.

Classical and contemporary scholarship on leadership has referred to political performance and the ability of political actors to deploy the self to political purpose. Literature on contemporary British politics (Hennessy, 2001; Marquand, 2008, King, 2009) has highlighted the qualitative shift in political leadership from the mid-1990s towards a focus upon the image, style, celebrity and performance of political leaders, and the shift towards the presidentialisation or semi-presidentialisation of the prime minister (Foley, 2001). However, the literature has lacked a focus upon political performance and a methodology for assessing leadership performance within cultural and institutional contexts. This thesis assesses British political leadership performance from 1997-2010 through the proposal of a framework of political performance to suit comparative purpose. The framework consisting of culture, institutions and performance is used to assess the performance of the case studies (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, and Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the televised Leaders’ Debates of 2010). The application of the framework to the case studies will allow us to a) analyse political performance within given cultural and institutional contexts; b) establish the character traits and other aspects of a politician’s political persona; and c) appraise the role and effects of performance and persona upon the political process.

HRM systems, internal marketing and performance in Indian call centres:full research report ESRC end of award report, RES-000-22-1876

Considering the rapid growth of call centres (CCs) in India, its implications for businesses in the UK and a scarcity of research on human resource management (HRM) related issues in Indian CCs, this research has two main aims. First, to highlight the nature of HRM systems relevant to Indian call centres. Second, to understand the significance of internal marketing (IM) in influencing the frontline employees’ job-related attitudes and performance. Rewards being an important component of IM, the relationships between different types of rewards as part of an IM strategy, attitudes and performance of employees in Indian CCs will also be examined. Further, the research will investigate which type of commitment mediates the link between rewards and performance and why. The data collection will be via two phases. The first phase would involve a series of in-depth interviews with both the managers and employees to understand the functioning of CCs, and development of suitable HRM systems for the Indian context. The second phase would involve data collection through questionnaires distributed to the frontline employees and supervisors to examine the relationships among IM, employee attitudes and performance. Such an investigation is expected to contribute to development of better theory and practice.

Lumped dispersion mapping and performance margins in existing SMF-DCF terrestrial links

We demonstrate that the transmission of 40 Gbits/s return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) signals is robust to lumped dispersion mapping on a typical installed terrestrial single-mode fiber/dispersion compensating fiber (SMF-DCF) link and will withstand, in this case, propagation through over 800 km of SMF with zero in-line group-velocity dispersion compensation while maintaining similar performance to configurations with periodic mapping. We establish that upgrading similar point-to-point links, which have lumped dispersion maps, are compatible with 40 Gbits/s RZ-DPSK and that economic benefits can be realized when implementing lumped dispersion mapping in new 40 Gbits/s RZ-DPSK terrestrial links, while incurring a relatively low performance penalty. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.

Bandwidth management of WiMAX systems and performance modeling

WiMAX has been introduced as a competitive alternative for metropolitan broadband wireless access technologies. It is connection oriented and it can provide very high data rates, large service coverage, and flexible quality of services (QoS). Due to the large number of connections and flexible QoS supported by WiMAX, the uplink access in WiMAX networks is very challenging since the medium access control (MAC) protocol must efficiently manage the bandwidth and related channel allocations. In this paper, we propose and investigate a cost-effective WiMAX bandwidth management scheme, named the WiMAX partial sharing scheme (WPSS), in order to provide good QoS while achieving better bandwidth utilization and network throughput. The proposed bandwidth management scheme is compared with a simple but inefficient scheme, named the WiMAX complete sharing scheme (WCPS). A maximum entropy (ME) based analytical model (MEAM) is proposed for the performance evaluation of the two bandwidth management schemes. The reason for using MEAM for the performance evaluation is that MEAM can efficiently model a large-scale system in which the number of stations or connections is generally very high, while the traditional simulation and analytical (e.g., Markov models) approaches cannot perform well due to the high computation complexity. We model the bandwidth management scheme as a queuing network model (QNM) that consists of interacting multiclass queues for different service classes. Closed form expressions for the state and blocking probability distributions are derived for those schemes. Simulation results verify the MEAM numerical results and show that WPSS can significantly improve the network's performance compared to WCPS.