Climate justice: a new way of looking at environmental issues

Climate change is a concerning topic, as it is impossible to deny its damaging effects on the planet. Different policy responses have been offered regarding climate change adaptation, and these have brought forward issues related to climate justice. As this topic is still not very well known in Brazil, this paper aims to raise awareness on climate justice concepts and related issues. This is a literature review which analyses climate justice theories and their relation with the concept of climate change adaptation in order to offer a new point-of-view on the topic. This paper has come to the conclusion that the concept of climate change has been created due to the increased importance of climate justice. Its origins lie in climate change activism, which seeks to help the most affected communities. That was when the fight for sharing the burden of climate change emerged, giving rise to the concepts of mitigation and climate adaptation. Thus, the most affected populations should receive assistance in the form of climate change impact adaptation, financed by the countries which are responsible for most greenhouse effect gas emissions, in name of climate justice.

Mathematical Simulation of the Thermodynamic Processes Associated with the Vapour-Injected Scroll Compressor

Both the major energetic crisis and the global warming, which influence the worldwide economy and the future of the society, determine the development of energetic and ecological performances of both the refrigeration equipment and air conditioning systems. Thus, there is a worldwide supported effort made in order to decrease the carbon dioxide emissions resulted from the burning of fossil fuels and the other greenhouse effect gas emissions. This article presents a refrigeration system design model using a vapour injection scroll compressor and tube in tube evaporators working with refrigerant R407C. The refrigerant circuit comprises of a main evaporator, a secondary evaporator (for the injection process), scroll compressor, condenser and five expansion valves. Furthermore it uses R407C as refrigerant. The secondary refrigerant for both the main and the secondary evaporator is a 50% concentration solution of propylene-glycol and water. Secondary circuit comprises of a pump, an electric boiler, an expansion vessel and a by-pass circuit made of many stop valves. The condenser is cooled with mains water.

The Influence of an Arrangement of an Array of Semi-Submersible Type FOWTs to Their Hydrodynamic Responses

The progress of the global warming is one of our key issue should be overcome in the 21st century. We should balance the energy consumption and reduction of exhausting greenhouse effect gas. The wind energy is expected as one of the key technology for utilizing renewable energy. It is said that as for the efficiency of the electric generation, it is better the wider wind farm with larger wind mill. But, as the land space for the extensive wind farm is quite limited, it will be a candidate how to use the vast ocean space for human activity. So, the construction of an offshore wind farm is one of the solution now. To extend the wind farm widely in the ocean the floating wind turbine system becomes an essential technology. Under such background, there are many researches on the floating wind turbine in waves and in wind. And hydrodynamic response of them in waves is one of the major topics. Many of the researches on the hydrodynamic response, however, deal with the motion of a single floating wind turbine. This report deals with the hydrodynamic response of a wind farm which is consisted of semi-submersible wind turbines. In addition, the investigation of how does the arrangement of the array impact on the hydrodynamic response including the motion of the nacelle is also reported. In the last the example of the change of the expected efficiency of the generator by change of the array arrangement in each sea area around Japan are shown.

EXPERIMENTS SIMULATION AND DESIGN TO SET TRAFFIC LIGHTS’ OPERATION RULES

In this paper it is used the experimental design to minimize the travel time of motor vehicles, in one of the most important avenues of Celaya City in Guanajuato, Mexico, by means of optimal synchronization of existing traffic lights. In the optimization process three factors are considered: the traffic lights’ cycle times, the synchrony defined as stepped, parallel and actual, and speed limit, each one with 3 evaluation levels. The response variables to consider are: motor vehicles’ travel time, fuel consumption and greenhouse effect gas (CO2) emissions. The different experiments are performed using the simulation model developed in the PTV-VISSIM software, which represents the vehicle traffic system. The obtained results for the different proposed scenarios allow to find proper levels at which the vehicle traffic system must be operated in order to improve mobility, to reduce contamination rates and decrease the fuel consumption for the different motor vehicles that use the avenue.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.4093