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In this paper, the environment friendly refrigerant options suitable for automobile air conditioners are reviewed. Initially, the thermophysical, thermodynamic and chemical characteristics of the environment friendly refrigerant options are presented. Then, the reviews of research investigations reported on environment friendly refrigerant options (such as hydrofluorocarbons, hydrofluoroolefins, hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, composite mixed refrigerants and nanorefrigerants) are presented. The limitations and further research needs with environment friendly refrigerant options are identified and listed. The paper concludes that the hydrocarbon refrigerants will dominate the automobile air conditioning sector due to their good thermodynamic, thermophysical and environmental properties. Secondary loop configurations are recommended for the use of hydrocarbon refrigerants to reduce the flammable risk. The carbon dioxide is identified as a good option for electrical vehicles operating at low ambient conditions. The hydrofluoroolefins have short atmospheric life and get decomposed in the atmosphere and form tri-fluoro-acetic acid, which is harmful to the aquatic environment. Hence, hydro-fluoro-olefins are identified as an interim option. The outcome of this review is more helpful to the manufacturers and researchers working in the field of automobile air conditioners.

Made available in DSpace on 2020-12-12T02:39:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2020-08-01 The Late Quaternary extinctions of megafauna (defined as animal species > 44.5 kg) reduced the dispersal of seeds and nutrients, and likely also microbes and parasites. Here we use body-mass based scaling and range maps for extinct and extant mammal species to show that these extinctions led to an almost seven-fold reduction in the movement of gut-transported microbes, such as Escherichia coli (3.3–0.5 km2 d−1). Similarly, the extinctions led to a seven-fold reduction in the mean home ranges of vector-borne pathogens (7.8–1.1 km2). To understand the impact of this, we created an individual-based model where an order of magnitude decrease in home range increased maximum aggregated microbial mutations 4-fold after 20 000 yr. We hypothesize that pathogen speciation and hence endemism increased with isolation, as global dispersal distances decreased through a mechanism similar to the theory of island biogeography. To investigate if such an effect could be found, we analysed where 145 zoonotic diseases have emerged in human populations and found quantitative estimates of reduced dispersal of ectoparasites and fecal pathogens significantly improved our ability to predict the locations of outbreaks (increasing variance explained by 8%). There are limitations to this analysis which we discuss in detail, but if further studies support these results, they broadly suggest that reduced pathogen dispersal following megafauna extinctions may have increased the emergence of zoonotic pathogens moving into human populations. School of Informatics Computing and Cyber Systems Northern Arizona Univ. Dept of Biological and Environmental Sciences Univ. of Gothenburg Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre Dept of Biological Sciences Northern Arizona Univ. Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World (BIOCHANGE) Dept of Biology Aarhus Univ. Section for Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity Dept of Biology Aarhus Univ. Inst. de Biociências Depto de Ecologia Univ. Estadual Paulista (UNESP) Univ. of Miami Dept of Biology Inst. de Biociências Depto de Ecologia Univ. Estadual Paulista (UNESP)

A prominent signal of the Anthropocene is the extinction and population reduction of the megabiota—the largest animals and plants on the planet. However, we lack a predictive framework for the sensitivity of megabiota during times of rapid global change and how they impact the functioning of ecosystems and the biosphere. Here, we extend metabolic scaling theory and use global simulation models to demonstrate that (i) megabiota are more prone to extinction due to human land use, hunting, and climate change; (ii) loss of megabiota has a negative impact on ecosystem metabolism and functioning; and (iii) their reduction has and will continue to significantly decrease biosphere functioning. Global simulations show that continued loss of large animals alone could lead to a 44%, 18% and 92% reduction in terrestrial heterotrophic biomass, metabolism, and fertility respectively. Our findings suggest that policies that emphasize the promotion of large trees and animals will have disproportionate impact on biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and climate mitigation., Human-driven losses of megafauna and megaflora may have disproportionate ecological consequences. Here, the authors combine metabolic scaling theory and global simulation models to show that past and continued reduction of megabiota have and will continue to decrease ecosystem and biosphere functioning.

The general observation that secondary consumers ingest highly digestible food and have simple short guts and small abdominal cavities intuitively results in the assumption that mammalian carnivores carry less digesta in their gut compared to herbivores. Due to logistic constraints, this assumption has not been tested quantitatively so far. In this contribution, we estimated the dry matter gut contents (DMC) for 25 species of the order Carnivora (including two strictly herbivorous ones, the giant and the red panda) using the physical 'Occupancy Principle', based on a literature data collection on dry matter intake (DMI), apparent dry matter digestibility (aD DM) and retention time (RT), and compared the results to an existing collection for herbivores. Scaling exponents with body mass (BM) for both carnivores and herbivores were in the same range with DMI similar to BM0.75; aD DM similar to BM0; RT similar to BM0.11 and DMC similar to BM0.88. The trophic level (carnivore vs herbivore) significantly affected all digestive physiology parameters except for RT. Numerically, the carnivore DMI level reached 77%, the RT 32% and DMC only 29% of the corresponding herbivore values, whereas the herbivore aD DM only reached 82% of that of carnivores. Thus, we quantitatively show that carnivores carry less inert mass or gut content compared to herbivores, which putatively benefits them in predator-prey interactions and might have contributed to the evolution towards unguligradism in herbivores. As expected, the two panda species appeared as outliers in the dataset with low aD DM and RT for a herbivore but extremely high DMI values, resulting in DMC in the lower part of the herbivore range. Whereas the difference in DMI and DMC scaling in herbivores might allow larger herbivores to compensate for lower diet quality by ingesting more, this difference may allow larger carnivores not to go for less digestible prey parts, but mainly to increase meal intervals, i.e. not having to hunt on a daily basis.

The refrigerant R134a is to be phasing out soon in automobile air conditioning applications due to its high global warming potential of 1430. Hence, it is essential to identify a sustainable alternative refrigerant to phase out R134a in automobile air conditioners. This paper presents the experimental thermodynamic performance of R430A (composed of R152a and R600a, in the ratio of 76:24, by mass) as a drop-in substitute to replace R134a in automobile air conditioners. The experiments were carried out in an automobile air conditioner test setup equipped with a variable frequency drive electrical motor. During experimentation, the ambient temperature and ambient relative humidity were maintained at 35 ± 1 °C and 65 ± 5%, respectively. The compressor speed was varied in the range between 1000 and 3000 rpm. The results showed that the coefficient of performance of an automobile air conditioner working with R430A was found to be 12–20% higher with 6–11% reduced compressor power consumption when compared to R134a. The R430A has 2–6 °C higher compressor discharge temperature when compared to R134a. The physical stability of the lubricant used in the compressor was retained while operating with R430A. The maximum exergy destruction occurs in the compressor (0.28 kW for R134a and 0.24 kW for R430A) followed by evaporator (0.16 kW for R134a and 0.14 kW for R430A), condenser (0.14 for R134a and 0.12 kW for R430A) and expansion valve (0.043 kW for R134a and 0.039 kW for R430A) at a compressor speed of 1000 ± 10 rpm. The exergy destruction of the system operating with R430A was found to be 12–28% lower when compared to R134a systems due to its favorable thermo-physical properties. The total equivalent warming impact of R430A was found to be lower when compared to R134a by about 47.3%, 35% and 32.4% for LPG, petrol and diesel vehicles, respectively. The results confirmed that R430A is a good drop-in substitute to replace R134a in existing automobile air conditioning systems.

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used to prune the search space of a low-thrust trajectory transfer from a high-altitude, Earth orbit to a Lagrange point orbit in the Earth-Moon system. Unlike a gradient based approach, this evolutionary PSO algorithm is capable of avoiding undesirable local minima. The PSO method is extended to a “local” version and uses a two dimensional search space that is capable of reducing the computation run-time by an order of magnitude when compared with published work. A technique for choosing appropriate PSO parameters is demonstrated and an example of an optimized trajectory is discussed.