Energy conservation in the steel industry

The last few years have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the price of energy available to industry in the United Kingdom and worldwide. The steel industry, as a major consumer of energy delivered in U.K. (8% of national total and nearly 25% of industrial total) and whose energy costs currently form some 28% of the total manufacturing cost, is very much aware of the need to conserve energy. Because of the complexities of steelmaking processes it is imperative that a full understanding of each process and its interlinking role in an integrated steelworks is understood. An analysis of energy distribution shows that as much as 70% of heat input is dissipated to the environment in a variety of forms. Of these, waste gases offer the best potential for energy conservation. The study identifies areas for and discusses novel methods of energy conservation in each process. Application of these schemes in BSC works is developed and their economic incentives highlighted. A major part of this thesis describes design, development and testing of a novel ceramic rotary regenerator for heat recovery from high temperature waste gases, where no such system is available. The regenerator is a compact, efficient heat exchanger. Application of such a system to a reheating furnace provides a fuel saving of up to 40%. A mathematical model developed is verified on the pilot plant. The results obtained confirm the success of the concept and material selection and outlines the work needed to develop an industrial unit. Last, but not least, the key position of an energy manager in an energy conservation programme is identified and a new Energy Management Model for the BSC is developed.

The relative strength of affective commitment in securing loyalty in service relationships

While commitment is an important antecedent to customer retention, a broad consensus has yet to emerge on the impacts of constituent dimensions of commitment on loyalty in service relationships. This study explores the impacts of affective and continuance commitment on attitudinal and behavioral loyalty in a service context. Since affective commitment is more positive and governed by free choice, whereas continuance commitment is more the result of perceived economic and psychological benefits of being in a relationship, the results of this study suggest that emotional bonds with customers provide a more enduring source of loyalty as compared to economic incentives and switching costs.

CEO compensation, option incentives and information disclosure

This paper examines the impact of information disclosure on the valuation of CEO options and the incentives created by those options. Prior executive compensation research in the US has made assumptions about key input variables that can affect the calculation of option values and financial incentives. Accordingly, biases may have ensued due to incomplete information disclosure about noncurrent option grants. Using new data on a sample of UK CEOs, we value executive option holdings and incentives for the first time and estimate the levels of distortion created by the less than complete US-style disclosure requirements. We also investigate the levels of distortion in the UK for the minority of companies that choose to reveal only partial information. Our results suggest that there have to date been few economic biases arising from less than complete information disclosure. Furthermore, we demonstrate that researchers using US data, who made reasonable assumptions about the inputs of noncurrent option grants, are unlikely to have made significant errors when calculating CEO financial incentives or option wealth. However, the recent downturn in the US stock market could result in the same assumptions, producing exaggerated incentive estimates in the future.

Cost-based pricing in the NHS internal market : accounting choices and the achievement of economic efficiency

Since 1988, quasi-markets have been introduced into many areas of social policy in the UK, the NHS internal market is one example. Markets operate by price signals. The NHS Internal Market, if it is to operate efficiently, requires purchasers and providers to respond to price signals. The research hypothesis is - cost accounting methods can be developed to enable healthcare contracts to be priced on a cost-basis in a manner which will facilitate the achievement of economic efficiency in the NHS internal market. Surveys of hospitals in 1991 and 1994 established the cost methods adopted in deriving the prices for healthcare contracts in the first year of the market and three years on. An in-depth view of the costing for pricing process was gained through case studies. Hospitals had inadequate cost information on which to price healthcare contracts at the inception of the internal market: prices did not reflect the relative performance of healthcare providers sufficiently closely to enable the market's espoused efficiency aims to be achieved. Price variations were often due to differing costing approaches rather than efficiency. Furthermore, price comparisons were often meaningless because of inadequate definition of the services (products). In April 1993, the NHS Executive issued guidance on costing for contracting to all NHS providers in an attempt to improve the validity of price comparisons between alternative providers. The case studies and the 1994 survey show that although price comparison has improved, considerable problems remain. Consistency is not assured, and the problem of adequate product definition is still to be solved. Moreover, the case studies clearly highlight the mismatch of rigid, full-cost pricing rules with both the financial management considerations at local level and the emerging internal market(s). Incentives exist to cost-shift, and healthcare prices can easily be manipulated. In the search for a new health policy paradigm to replace traditional bureaucratic provision, cost-based pricing cannot be used to ensure a more efficient allocation of healthcare resources.

Innovation, intellectual property and economic growth

What drives innovation? How does it contribute to the growth of firms, industries, and economies? And do intellectual property rights help or hurt innovation and growth? Uniquely combining microeconomics, macroeconomics, and theory with empirical analysis drawn from the United States and Europe, this book introduces graduate students and advanced undergraduates to the complex process of innovation. By addressing all the major dimensions of innovation in a single text, Christine Greenhalgh and Mark Rogers are able to show how outcomes at the microlevel feed through to the macro-outcomes that in turn determine personal incomes and job opportunities. In four sections, this textbook comprehensively addresses the nature of innovation and intellectual property, the microeconomics and macroeconomics of innovation, and economic policy at the firm and macroeconomic levels. Among the topics fully explored are the role of intellectual property in creating incentives to innovate; the social returns of innovation; the creation and destruction of jobs by innovation; whether more or fewer intellectual property rights would give firms better incentives to innovate; and the contentious issues surrounding international treaties on intellectual property.

A techno-economic comparison of power production by biomass fast pyrolysis with gasification and combustion

This paper presents an assessment of the technical and economic performance of thermal processes to generate electricity from a wood chip feedstock by combustion, gasification and fast pyrolysis. The scope of the work begins with the delivery of a wood chip feedstock at a conversion plant and ends with the supply of electricity to the grid, incorporating wood chip preparation, thermal conversion, and electricity generation in dual fuel diesel engines. Net generating capacities of 1–20 MWe are evaluated. The techno-economic assessment is achieved through the development of a suite of models that are combined to give cost and performance data for the integrated system. The models include feed pretreatment, combustion, atmospheric and pressure gasification, fast pyrolysis with pyrolysis liquid storage and transport (an optional step in de-coupled systems) and diesel engine or turbine power generation. The models calculate system efficiencies, capital costs and production costs. An identical methodology is applied in the development of all the models so that all of the results are directly comparable. The electricity production costs have been calculated for 10th plant systems, indicating the costs that are achievable in the medium term after the high initial costs associated with novel technologies have reduced. The costs converge at the larger scale with the mean electricity price paid in the EU by a large consumer, and there is therefore potential for fast pyrolysis and diesel engine systems to sell electricity directly to large consumers or for on-site generation. However, competition will be fierce at all capacities since electricity production costs vary only slightly between the four biomass to electricity systems that are evaluated. Systems de-coupling is one way that the fast pyrolysis and diesel engine system can distinguish itself from the other conversion technologies. Evaluations in this work show that situations requiring several remote generators are much better served by a large fast pyrolysis plant that supplies fuel to de-coupled diesel engines than by constructing an entire close-coupled system at each generating site. Another advantage of de-coupling is that the fast pyrolysis conversion step and the diesel engine generation step can operate independently, with intermediate storage of the fast pyrolysis liquid fuel, increasing overall reliability. Peak load or seasonal power requirements would also benefit from de-coupling since a small fast pyrolysis plant could operate continuously to produce fuel that is stored for use in the engine on demand. Current electricity production costs for a fast pyrolysis and diesel engine system are 0.091/kWh at 1 MWe when learning effects are included. These systems are handicapped by the typical characteristics of a novel technology: high capital cost, high labour, and low reliability. As such the more established combustion and steam cycle produces lower cost electricity under current conditions. The fast pyrolysis and diesel engine system is a low capital cost option but it also suffers from relatively low system efficiency particularly at high capacities. This low efficiency is the result of a low conversion efficiency of feed energy into the pyrolysis liquid, because of the energy in the char by-product. A sensitivity analysis has highlighted the high impact on electricity production costs of the fast pyrolysis liquids yield. The liquids yield should be set realistically during design, and it should be maintained in practice by careful attention to plant operation and feed quality. Another problem is the high power consumption during feedstock grinding. Efficiencies may be enhanced in ablative fast pyrolysis which can tolerate a chipped feedstock. This has yet to be demonstrated at commercial scale. In summary, the fast pyrolysis and diesel engine system has great potential to generate electricity at a profit in the long term, and at a lower cost than any other biomass to electricity system at small scale. This future viability can only be achieved through the construction of early plant that could, in the short term, be more expensive than the combustion alternative. Profitability in the short term can best be achieved by exploiting niches in the market place and specific features of fast pyrolysis. These include: •countries or regions with fiscal incentives for renewable energy such as premium electricity prices or capital grants; •locations with high electricity prices so that electricity can be sold direct to large consumers or generated on-site by companies who wish to reduce their consumption from the grid; •waste disposal opportunities where feedstocks can attract a gate fee rather than incur a cost; •the ability to store fast pyrolysis liquids as a buffer against shutdowns or as a fuel for peak-load generating plant; •de-coupling opportunities where a large, single pyrolysis plant supplies fuel to several small and remote generators; •small-scale combined heat and power opportunities; •sales of the excess char, although a market has yet to be established for this by-product; and •potential co-production of speciality chemicals and fuel for power generation in fast pyrolysis systems.