Contribution of hospital effluents to the load of pharmaceuticals in urban wastewaters: Identification of ecologically relevant pharmaceuticals

The impact of effluent wastewaters from four different hospitals: a university (1456 beds), a general (350 beds), a pediatric (110 beds) and a maternity hospital (96 beds), which are conveyed to the same wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), was evaluated in the receiving urban wastewaters. The occurrence of 78 pharmaceuticals belonging to several therapeutic classes was assessed in hospital effluents and WWTP wastewaters (influent and effluent) as well as the contribution of each hospital in WWTP influent in terms of pharmaceutical load. Results indicate that pharmaceuticals are widespread pollutants in both hospital and urban wastewaters. The contribution of hospitals to the input of pharmaceuticals in urban wastewaters widely varies, according to their dimension. The estimated total mass loadings were 306 g d− 1 for the university hospital, 155 g d− 1 for the general one, 14 g d− 1 for the pediatric hospital and 1.5 g d− 1 for the maternity hospital, showing that the biggest hospitals have a greater contribution to the total mass load of pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, analysis of individual contributions of each therapeutic group showed that NSAIDs, analgesics and antibiotics are among the groups with the highest inputs. Removal efficiency can go from over 90% for pharmaceuticals like acetaminophen and ibuprofen to not removal for β-blockers and salbutamol. Total mass load of pharmaceuticals into receiving surface waters was estimated between 5 and 14 g/d/1000 inhabitants. Finally, the environmental risk posed by pharmaceuticals detected in hospital and WWTP effluents was assessed by means of hazard quotients toward different trophic levels (algae, daphnids and fish). Several pharmaceuticals present in the different matrices were identified as potentially hazardous to aquatic organisms, showing that especial attention should be paid to antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole, azithromycin and clarithromycin, since their hazard quotients in WWTP effluent revealed that they could pose an ecotoxicological risk to algae.

Estudo de uma central hidroeléctrica com base em turbina hidráulica reversível

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Adapting remote labs to learning scenarios: case studies using VISIR and RemotElectLab

Remote laboratories are an emergent technological and pedagogical tool at all education levels, and their widespread use is an important part of their own improvement and evolution. This paper describes several issues encountered on laboratorial classes, on higher education courses, when using remote laboratories based on PXI systems, either using the VISIR system or an alternate in-house solution. Three main issues are presented and explained, all reported by teachers, that gave support to students' use of remote laboratories. The first issue deals with the need to allow students to select the actual place where an ammeter is to be inserted on electric circuits, even incorrectly, therefore emulating real-world difficulties. The second one deals with problems with timing when several measurements are required at short intervals, as in the discharge cycle of a capacitor. In addition, the last issue deals with the use of a multimeter in dc mode when reading ac values, a use that collides with the lab settings. All scenarios are presented and discussed, including the solution found for each case. The conclusion derived from the described work is that the remote laboratories area is an expanding field, where practical use leads to improvement and evolution of the available solutions, requiring a strict cooperation and information-sharing between all actors, i.e., developers, teachers, and students.

Using remote labs to serve different teacher's needs a case study with VISIR and RemotElectLab

Remote Laboratories are an emergent technological and pedagogical tool at all education levels, and their widespread use is an important part of their own improvement and evolution. This paper describes several issues encountered on laboratorial classes, on higher education courses, when using remote laboratories based on PXI systems, either using the VISIR system or an alternate in-house solution. Three main issues are presented and explained, all reported by teachers that gave support to students use of remote laboratories. The first issue deals with the need to allow students to select the actual place where an ammeter is to be inserted on electric circuits, even incorrectly, therefore emulating real world difficulties. The second one deals with problems with timing when several measurements are required at short intervals, as in the discharge cycle of a capacitor. And the last issue deals with the use of a multimeter in DC mode when reading AC values, a use that collides with the lab settings. All scenarios are presented and discussed including the solution found for each case. The conclusion derived from the described work is that the remote laboratories area is an expanding field, where practical use leads to improvement and evolution of the available solutions, requiring a strict cooperation and information sharing between all actors, i.e. developers, teachers and students.

Dynamic load management in a smart home to participate in demand response events

In future power systems, in the smart grid and microgrids operation paradigms, consumers can be seen as an energy resource with decentralized and autonomous decisions in the energy management. It is expected that each consumer will manage not only the loads, but also small generation units, heating systems, storage systems, and electric vehicles. Each consumer can participate in different demand response events promoted by system operators or aggregation entities. This paper proposes an innovative method to manage the appliances on a house during a demand response event. The main contribution of this work is to include time constraints in resources management, and the context evaluation in order to ensure the required comfort levels. The dynamic resources management methodology allows a better resources’ management in a demand response event, mainly the ones of long duration, by changing the priorities of loads during the event. A case study with two scenarios is presented considering a demand response with 30 min duration, and another with 240 min (4 h). In both simulations, the demand response event proposes the power consumption reduction during the event. A total of 18 loads are used, including real and virtual ones, controlled by the presented house management system.

A case study undertaken recycling & reuse of glass fiber reinforced thermoset polumer wastes of composite materials industry

Glass fibre-reinforced plastics (GFRP) have been considered inherently difficult to recycle due to both: crosslinked nature of thermoset resins, which cannot be remoulded, and complex composition of the composite itself. Presently, most of the GFRP waste is landfilled leading to negative environmental impacts and supplementary added costs. With an increasing awareness of environmental matters and the subsequent desire to save resources, recycling would convert an expensive waste disposal into a profitable reusable material. In this study, efforts were made in order to recycle grinded GFRP waste, proceeding from pultrusion production scrap, into new and sustainable composite materials. For this purpose, GFRP waste recyclates, were incorporated into polyester based mortars as fine aggregate and filler replacements at different load contents and particle size distributions. Potential recycling solution was assessed by mechanical behaviour of resultant GFRP waste modified polymer mortars. Results revealed that GFRP waste filled polymer mortars present improved flexural and compressive behaviour over unmodified polyester based mortars, thus indicating the feasibility of the GFRP industrial waste reuse into concrete-polymer composite materials.

Doenças Raras e Medicamentos Órfãos em Portugal: Impacto Económico dos Medicamentos Órfãos na Região da Beira Interior

Medicamentos órfãos destinam-se ao diagnóstico, prevenção ou tratamento de doenças muito graves ou que causem risco de vida, que são raras e não afetam mais do que 5 em cada 10.000 pessoas na União Europeia. Estes medicamentos são apelidados de órfãos, já que em condições normais de mercado, não existe interesse para as empresas farmacêuticas desenvolver tais medicamentos, devido ao baixo retorno financeiro causado pela raridade. O objetivo deste trabalho consiste em avaliar a utilização de medicamentos órfãos em Portugal e analisar o impacto económico destes medicamentos na região da Beira Interior. Os dados recolhidos permitiram avaliar retrospetivamente o consumo de medicamentos no período de janeiro a dezembro de 2013 em Portugal e em particular nos hospitais: Centro Hospitalar Cova da Beira, Unidade Local de Saúde da Guarda e Unidade Local de Saúde de Castelo Branco. A informação dos dados refere-se ao consumo dos Hospitais e Instituições do Serviço Nacional de Saúde, reportada mensalmente ao INFARMED (Autoridade Nacional do Medicamento e Produtos de Saúde, I.P.). Foram identificados 48 medicamentos órfãos com Autorização de Introdução no Mercado na Europa, 47 são medicamentos com Autorização de Introdução no Mercado português, sendo a Mercaptopurina o único medicamento órfão que necessita de Autorização de Utilização Especial. O Tafamidis foi o medicamento que envolveu maior custo económico a nível nacional no tratamento destas doenças. O valor total de consumo no Centro Hospitalar Cova da Beira é de 11% em relação ao consumo total de medicamentos nesta unidade. As doenças Lisossomais são o grupo mais representativo, do qual faz parte a doença de Pompe. No entanto, a doença com uma prevalência mais elevada é a Hipertensão Arterial Pulmonar. Esta e as doenças oncológicas são as doenças comuns nas três unidades hospitalares. Na Unidade Local de Saúde da Guarda a doença com maior consumo de medicamentos órfãos é a Hipertensão Arterial Pulmonar e na Unidade Local de Saúde de Castelo Branco são as doenças oncológicas. O valor acumulado de medicamentos órfãos na região da Beira Interior no ano de 2013 representa1% do valor global de consumo destes medicamentos em Portugal. A representatividade de consumo destes medicamentos em Portugal em relação ao consumo total de medicamentos em meio hospitalar é de cerca de 7,7%.Em conclusão, o consumo de medicamentos órfãos é bastante elevado em relação aos restantes medicamentos, tanto na Beira Interior como no resto do país, apesar disso é bastante importante que continuem a existir medidas no sentido de incentivar os fabricantes e melhorar o acesso a estes medicamentos.

Otimização Energética do Sistema de Refrigeração da máquina de impregnar ZELL

Esta dissertação teve como objetivo fundamental a otimização energética do sistema de refrigeração da máquina de impregnar tela ZELL e, como objetivo adicional, a avaliação da qualidade da água do circuito, justificada pela acentuada degradação dos rolos devido à corrosão provocada pela recirculação da água de arrefecimento. Inicialmente fez-se o levantamento de informações do processo produtivo para caracterizar o funcionamento do sistema de refrigeração, tendo-se selecionado duas telas de poliéster designadas neste estudo por P1 e P2 e, também, uma tela de nylon designada por N. Foram efetuados ensaios, um para cada tela, para a atual temperatura de setpoint da água à saída da torre de arrefecimento (30ºC). Realizou-se outro ensaio para a tela N mas com uma temperatura de setpoint de 37ºC, ao qual se chamou N37. Deste modo, determinou-se as potências térmicas removidas pela água de refrigeração e as potências térmicas perdidas por radiação e por convecção, tendo-se verificado que na generalidade dos rolos as referências P1 e P2 apresentam valores mais elevados. Em termos percentuais, a potência térmica removida pela água de refrigeração nos grupos tratores 1 e 3 e no conjunto de rolos de R1 a R29 corresponde a 48%, 10% e 70%, respetivamente. Com a avaliação às necessidades de arrefecimento da máquina ZELL, confirmou-se que os caudais atuais de refrigeração dos rolos garantem condições, mais que suficientes, de funcionamento dos rolamentos. Assim sendo, fez-se uma análise no sentido da diminuição do caudal total que passou de 10,25 L/s para 7,65 L/s. Considerando esta redução, determinou-se o caudal de ar húmido a ser introduzido na torre de arrefecimento. O valor determinado foi de 4,6 m3ar húmido/s, o que corresponde a uma redução de cerca de 32% em relação ao caudal atual que é de 6,8 m3ar húmido/s. Com os resultados das análises efetuadas à água do circuito de refrigeração, concluiu-se que a água de reposição e a água de recirculação possuem má qualidade para uso na generalidade dos sistemas de refrigeração, principalmente devido aos elevados valores de concentração de ferro e condutividade elétrica, responsáveis pela intensificação da corrosão no interior dos rolos.

A Data Mining Framework for Electric Load Profiling

This paper consists in the characterization of medium voltage (MV) electric power consumers based on a data clustering approach. It is intended to identify typical load profiles by selecting the best partition of a power consumption database among a pool of data partitions produced by several clustering algorithms. The best partition is selected using several cluster validity indices. These methods are intended to be used in a smart grid environment to extract useful knowledge about customers’ behavior. The data-mining-based methodology presented throughout the paper consists in several steps, namely the pre-processing data phase, clustering algorithms application and the evaluation of the quality of the partitions. To validate our approach, a case study with a real database of 1.022 MV consumers was used.

Contextual Intelligent Load Management Considering Real-Time Pricing in a Smart Grid Environment

The use of demand response programs enables the adequate use of resources of small and medium players, bringing high benefits to the smart grid, and increasing its efficiency. One of the difficulties to proceed with this paradigm is the lack of intelligence in the management of small and medium size players. In order to make demand response programs a feasible solution, it is essential that small and medium players have an efficient energy management and a fair optimization mechanism to decrease the consumption without heavy loss of comfort, making it acceptable for the users. This paper addresses the application of real-time pricing in a house that uses an intelligent optimization module involving artificial neural networks.

Short-term Load Forecasting Based on Load Profiling

Load forecasting has gradually becoming a major field of research in electricity industry. Therefore, Load forecasting is extremely important for the electric sector under deregulated environment as it provides a useful support to the power system management. Accurate power load forecasting models are required to the operation and planning of a utility company, and they have received increasing attention from researches of this field study. Many mathematical methods have been developed for load forecasting. This work aims to develop and implement a load forecasting method for short-term load forecasting (STLF), based on Holt-Winters exponential smoothing and an artificial neural network (ANN). One of the main contributions of this paper is the application of Holt-Winters exponential smoothing approach to the forecasting problem and, as an evaluation of the past forecasting work, data mining techniques are also applied to short-term Load forecasting. Both ANN and Holt-Winters exponential smoothing approaches are compared and evaluated.

The state of environmental performance evaluation in the public sector: the case of the Portuguese defence sector

Journal of Cleaner Production, nº 17, p. 36-52

Determining the Adjustment Baseline Parameters to Define an Accurate Customer Baseline Load

Demand response is an energy resource that has gained increasing importance in the context of competitive electricity markets and of smart grids. New business models and methods designed to integrate demand response in electricity markets and of smart grids have been published, reporting the need of additional work in this field. In order to adequately remunerate the participation of the consumers in demand response programs, improved consumers’ performance evaluation methods are needed. The methodology proposed in the present paper determines the characterization of the baseline approach that better fits the consumer historic consumption, in order to determine the expected consumption in absent of participation in a demand response event and then determine the actual consumption reduction. The defined baseline can then be used to better determine the remuneration of the consumer. The paper includes a case study with real data to illustrate the application of the proposed methodology.

Load Control Timescales Simulation in a Multi-Agent Smart Grid Platform

Environmental concerns and the shortage in the fossil fuel reserves have been potentiating the growth and globalization of distributed generation. Another resource that has been increasing its importance is the demand response, which is used to change consumers’ consumption profile, helping to reduce peak demand. Aiming to support small players’ participation in demand response events, the Curtailment Service Provider emerged. This player works as an aggregator for demand response events. The control of small and medium players which act in smart grid and micro grid environments is enhanced with a multi-agent system with artificial intelligence techniques – the MASGriP (Multi-Agent Smart Grid Platform). Using strategic behaviours in each player, this system simulates the profile of real players by using software agents. This paper shows the importance of modeling these behaviours for studying this type of scenarios. A case study with three examples shows the differences between each player and the best behaviour in order to achieve the higher profit in each situation.

Load Profiling Tool to Support Smart Grid Operation Scenarios

This paper presents the characterization of high voltage (HV) electric power consumers based on a data clustering approach. The typical load profiles (TLP) are obtained selecting the best partition of a power consumption database among a pool of data partitions produced by several clustering algorithms. The choice of the best partition is supported using several cluster validity indices. The proposed data-mining (DM) based methodology, that includes all steps presented in the process of knowledge discovery in databases (KDD), presents an automatic data treatment application in order to preprocess the initial database in an automatic way, allowing time saving and better accuracy during this phase. These methods are intended to be used in a smart grid environment to extract useful knowledge about customers’ consumption behavior. To validate our approach, a case study with a real database of 185 HV consumers was used.