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Article In many countries, biogas plants are mainly fed by livestock slurry and dedicated crops, including maize, which still represents one of the main energy crops utilized. Many concerns are now arising on environmental impact due to the high water consumption, chemical fertilizer and pesticide requirements and on adverse effect of maize as energy crop on the price of food and feed commodities. For these reasons two perennial crops, in particular miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus) and giant reed (Arundo donax L.), were cultivated at very low input and evaluated for their bio-methane yield at different harvest times and ensilage suitability, in a north-eastern area of Italy. Moreover, considering the agronomic use of the obtained digestate as fertilizer, this has been characterized by the content of heavy metals. Both multi-annual crops have proved highly productive in biomass especially with a harvest time in autumn, at which a satisfactory completion of the silage process without additives was observed. Conversely, bio-methane yield per hectare were not satisfactory with respect to the reference crops such as maize. The low BMP attained showed the main bottleneck of the methanisation of ensiled giant-reed and miscanthus, which is represented by fiber composition with high degree of lignification. The simulation use of digestate obtained as fertilizer in vulnerable areas, could lead to slightly exceed the levels allowed by the legislation of some European countries with regard of heavy metals as Cu, Zn and Cd.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica, Florianópolis, 2017. No início do século XXI foi criado um novo padrão para o desenvolvimento de satélites, visando uma redução drástica no custo de lançamento e controle de missões espaciais. Esse padrão resultou em uma proliferação de novos satélites sendo lançados por universidades, e também pela iniciativa privada. Esse novo tipo de missão está fora do escopo das tradicionais agências espaciais estatais, que normalmente não disponibilizam suas estações de rastreio para o acompanhamento e controle desse tipo de satélite. O desenvolvimento e a operação de estações de solo que atendam os requisitos das missões de satélites universitários é um tópico de pesquisa atual, e é o tema principal dessa dissertação de mestrado. Para realizar a gerência de uma estação de solo, se faz necessária a utilização de diversos componentes de hardware e de software. No caso do suporte a múltiplas missões, com objetivos distintos, esta complexidade é ainda maior. Essa dissertação de mestrado propõe uma modificação na arquitetura de software tradicionalmente utilizada no desenvolvimento de estações de solo, visando à redução da complexidade de implantação e operação e, consequentemente, os índices de falha. O trabalho desenvolvido visa também a realização de futuras modificações e extensão de funcionalidades da estação de solo de forma simplificada. A estratégia foi proposta para utilização nas missões FloripaSat e Serpens II da UFSC. Porém, devido ao atraso no lançamento de ambos satélites, a estratégia foi utilizada na melhoria do sistema de controle da missão do CubeSat Robusta-1B em andamento na França. A aplicação do sistema na missão Robusta-1B demonstra a flexibilidade para adaptação à missões com requisitos diferentes. Abstract : A new standard for developing satellites has been proposed in the beginning of the XXI century, aiming a significant decrease in the costs for launching and operating space missions. This standard resulted in a proliferation of satellites missions by universities and also by the private sector. This new type of mission is not in the context of traditional governmental space agencies, which usually do not make their ground stations available for tracking and operating this type of satellite. The development and operation of ground stations that comply with the requirement of university satellite missions is a contemporary research topic, and it is the main focus of this master thesis. To perform the management of a ground station, it is necessary the use of several hardware and software components. The amount of hardware/software components increases in ground station used to manage multiple missions, i.e., communications with several satellites simultaneously. When it is required to have the ground stations working in a collaborative and networked manner, this complexity is even higher. This work proposes a modification in the software architecture traditionally used in the development of ground stations, aiming a reduction in their deployment and operation complexity and, consequently, failure rates. The work aims also to shorten future modifications and functionality updates in ground stations. The focus of the development is to unify all the software components needed to successfully manage the satellite operation (since data collection, passing through mission operation to data analysis) in a single platform, with easier installation and maintenence overhead. The strategy was proposed originally to be used in UFSC's FloripaSat and Serpens II missions. However, as a result of both satellites' launching delay, the strategy was applied in the improvement of Robusta-1B mission control system, which is an on-going French Cubesat mission. The application of the system in the Robusta-1B mission demonstrates its flexibility to be adapted to missions with different requirements.

There are high expectations of Jatropha curcas L. as a new crop for biofuel production in the tropics and sub-tropical areas, as evidenced by the forecast expansion of its cultivation in various areas, especially in Asia. The definitive confirmation of the crop as realistic and suitable feedstock for biodiesel will come about when it is able to exploit the vast marginal areas present in many countries, demonstrating the economic sustainability of the whole Jatropha biodiesel chain. Increasing seed yield and oil content remain the main goals, but a valorization of the extruded seed cake, as animal feed, currently prevented by the presence of phorbol esters (PE) toxins, could contribute to a significant improvement in the economic sustainability of the crop. At present, the only reliable process is the seed cake detoxification by washing treatments with solvents and by biotransformation, but these treatments are expensive, not environmentally friendly and difficult to apply in developing countries. In the near future, the solution may come from non-toxic J. curcas accessions, which can be used in breeding programmes to recombine non-toxic traits into elite toxic varieties. In general, a plant free of PE would be more acceptable, opening additional market opportunities for the farmers. Strategies for breeding improved non-toxic varieties could be accelerated by DNA-based molecular marker technology, utilizing the simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers associated with toxicity. The whole genome of plant was recently sequenced and this important acquisition is expected to accelerate the process of molecular breeding in J. curcas .