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For both wine makers and customers, natural cork stoppers are a symbol of quality. More-over, they are essential for maintaining the organoleptic properties of bottled wines throughout their lifespan. This research relied on the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to analyze the relationship between the efficient usage of cork planks and the environmental impact of the cork stopper manufacturing industry. The goals of this research were to analyze and determine the environmental impact of producing 1 kg of natural cork stoppers. The analysis considered cork stoppers of two sizes—24 × 44 mm and 26 × 44 mm—and two manufacturing methods—punching and turning. Our findings indicated that the 24 × 44 mm cork stoppers produced with the punching method had a slightly lower environmental impact (1.36 kg CO2 eq/kg) across the ten analyzed impact categories. Conversely, 26 × 44 mm turned corks had the highest impact on the environment (1.49 kg CO2 eq/kg). Additionally, a comparison of same-sized punched and turned cork stoppers showed that the former had a lower environmental impact. This phenomenon is directly related to plank usage. In conclusion, there is a clear relationship between environmental impact and the efficient usage of raw material. In turn, an efficient usage of raw material depends on both the manufacturing method and stopper size. This research has received funding from the Instituto de Estudios Riojanos 'IER' within the project 'Newcork2Wine'.

Sotol is a Mexican distilled spirit of Mexican produced in Northern Mexico. The estimated annual production of sotol is at around 5200 hL per year. This industry grows at an average rate of five percent per year. The Mexican Sotol Council (MSC) and the Sotol Certificate Council (SCC) are regulatory bodies entities dedicated to monitoring that sotol producers must comply with the Official Mexican Standard NOM-159-SCFI-2004. Currently, those regulatory bodies entities try to improve the sotol production process and good practice guidelines to contribute generate a cleaner production. This paper reports a case study of artisanal sotol production in Chihuahua state in Mexico. Life Cycle Analysis Assessment (LCA) technique was used to compute the sotol is distilled spirit environmental impact performance to identify systems' hotspots and propose improvement interventions. SimaPro software v.9.1® is used for LCA, applying CML-IA baseline V3.05 / EU25 method to evaluate and select environmental impact categories. The system boundary included the stages of harvest, cooking, milling, fermentation, distillation, bottling, and packaging. Findings indicate that each of the stages required for sotol beverage processing significantly affects the marine ecosystem. The milling and bottling stages are the highest environmental impact. A 750 mL bottle of artisan sotol causes 5.92 kg CO2 eq, based on the empirical data. Sotol production houses makers should focus on reducing energy consumption caused by input transportation and equipment for milling.

Natural stoppers are a magnificent closure for the production of aging wines and unique wines, whose application is limited by the availability of raw materials and more specifically of cork sheets of different thickness and quality. The growing demand for quality wine bottle closures leads to the search for alternative stopper production. The two-piece stopper is an alternative since it uses non-usable plates in a conventional way for the production of quality caps. The present study has analyzed the impact of the manufacture of these two-piece stoppers using different methodologies and for different dimensions by developing an LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), concluding that the process phases of the plate, its boiling, and its stabilization, are the phases with the greatest impact. Likewise, it is detected that the impacts in all phases are relatively similar (for one kg of net cork produced), although the volumetric difference between these stoppers represents a significant difference in impacts for each unit produced.

This study incorporates the use phase in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of reinforced concrete structures that are composed of one-way slabs. Sustainable construction is one of the main future objectives of the European Union; therefore, useful and reliable tools will be necessary for its implementation. The usefulness of the LCA for the selection of structural alternatives depends on the data quality. The Environmental Product Declarations collect the production phase of building materials, but it is necessary to incorporate the particularities in the implementation and use phases. This work proposes a stage that considers the use phase in the structural part that does not belong to the building envelope and provides a methodology that reflects the characteristics of each climate zone where it is applied. All of the representative variables to define the structure of a building are combined: column grids, variations in the geometry of one-way slabs, and different materials. A discrete model that incorporates 360 cases is constructed to compare the reliability of the model with a study on real structure projects. The results show the importance of the use phase in residential buildings with respect to the effects generated during the other phases (production, execution and demolition), as well as its high variations, up to 140.4%.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools are often applied to the production stage of structural projects. This study aims to determine the sensitivity of the real environmental impact according to aspects related to decisions made during the execution stage. This stage includes factors that are beyond the control of the planner or designer: control over production (hourly yield, waste management), location of production facilities (transport of components to building location). The present study analyzes and evaluates three variables: distance travelled for component transport, working hours, and materials wasted during the production and construction process. Limit values are established according to six possible scenarios. Based on the results, it can be concluded that hourly yield had a minimal effect on the generated environmental impact. Transport and material waste, on the other hand, are the factors that brought about the greatest variations in environmental impact. For example, the components that are most sensitive to transport can decrease environmental impact by 65.66% or increase it by 18.24% depending on project location. And when considering material wasted during production and construction, the environmental impact varied from −9.77% to 9.78%.

Wine industries commonly use concrete and stainless-steel tanks in fermentation, but the selection of a container depends on factors such as price, installation costs, requirements, maintenance costs, and monitorability. However, nowadays environmental protection trends seek to care for the environment along the entire value chain, consequently, making industries more responsible for managing aspects, such as pollutant emissions, resource consumption, and energy consumption. This paper reports a comparative cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment of the two most common types of containers for wine fermentation, i.e. stainless-steel tanks and concrete tanks. The present study estimates the environmental impact from building, installation, and dismantling of tanks to analyse the environmental impact from alcoholic fermentation and malolactic fermentation. Results indicate that building the tank – either out of concrete or stainless steel – has a high impact on the environment, for instance, in terms of global warming impact per liter of wine 6.03E-02 kg CO2 equivalent from steel tank or 1.31E-02 kg CO2 equivalent from concrete tank (ratio is 4.6). In addition, the building stage in a concrete tank has the highest environmental impact due to the concrete consumption and low recycling rate, while in stainless-steel tank, the fermentation stage is the highest environmental impact mainly due to direct CO2 emissions and because it has a high recycling rate.

We compare four techniques that are commonly used for cleaning and disinfection of oak wine barrels with 225 l of capacity used in the red wine aging process through a life cycle analysis (LCA). The analysed techniques were pressurised water (at 90 °C) plus sulphur dioxide (SO2) wick (7.5 g per barrel), water vapour (at 105 °C) plus sulphur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3) (4 ppm), and carbon dioxide (CO2) (50 kg/h for 180 s). The results showed that the barrel cleaning technique with the lowest impact on all water scarcity indexes and is the carbon dioxide, due mainly to low water usage. However, in the global warming category, carbon dioxide technology is the technique that has the greatest environmental impact with a value of 4.080 kg CO2 per cleaned barrel, due mainly to CO2 and air consumption.

This paper proposes a methodology devoted to finding and selecting the optimal solutions of reinforced concrete structures with one-way slabs with regard to the environmental impact caused by the production and building process. The paper analyses each possible alternative depending on the most important variables, such as the structural thickness, the material of the lightening element, and the disposition of columns. This research is based on information from a representative sample of actual structures built for residential use during the last few years in Spain. This information provides data about variables of the problem, the definition of the geometry and the materials used in the different solutions. Once the structural analysis has been developed, the consumption of materials needed to build the structure is recorded, provided that the technical alternative is viable. Through the life cycle analysis (LCA) of the materials and methods used for the implementation of the different alternatives, a comparison is established using the Eco-Indicator ‘99 method. The results show that the number of columns conditions the obtained impacts, and it is worth noting that the least-used option in real residential buildings has very attractive values in terms of environmental impact. The variations obtained in the different alternatives range up to 75%, showing that it is an important factor to consider because a bad choice can lead to a much higher impact. The proposed methodology favours the selection of the alternatives that have less environmental impact.

Despite its worldwide presence, the characteristics of dairy industry may vary largely from one country to another and also between the different regions of a country. Farmers can form co-operatives or operate individually, while processors may transform very different amounts of milk into a diversity of dairy products. Moreover, the variety of dairy products that can be found in the market, the short-term expiry date of some of them, as well as the strong competition for a saturated market, lead to a complex environment, where the design and operation of the dairy factories require decision support tools for helping the decision makers. In this paper, it is considered the development of a decision support system for improving the survival chances of dairy plants in a competitive worldwide market. This tool is based in the implementation of an optimization process, where the performance evaluation of the feasible decisions is performed by means of simulation. The objective of the decision making covers the complete life cycle of the dairy plant from its design to its operation.

Alcoholic fermentation in wines is a complex process that is difficult to model and may vary according to many different parameters. Temperature is a key parameter throughout the fermentation process that must be controlled to avoid quality problems or even interruptions in fermentation. In industrial facilities, temperature is controlled via low-temperature fluids, according to preestablished settings or the experience of the enologist. In industrial winemaking, information is not always available on the energy involved at each time point of the fermentation or on the amount of energy actually needed to guide the process through the proper conditions. In this study, we sought to establish a method for conducting energy analyses of must fermentation to determine how much energy the process requires and what its cooling needs are. This approach enables decision making with a view to keeping the process within the conditions required and determining how much energy is needed for that purpose. Once these points have been determined, benchmarks can be established to which the actual energy used in the process can be compared to determine its efficiency. Moreover, the information compiled may help enologists in decision making during the fermentation and prevent undesirable developments of the product. Once the fermentation is completed, this information can also help winemakers to analyze the process variables that yielded the wine product, thereby making it easier to reproduce the same variables in order to continuously improve the product.

The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) through its Technical Committee CEN/TC-350 is developing a series of standards for assessing the building sustainability, at both product and building levels. The practical application of the selection (decision making) of structural alternatives made by one-way slabs leads to an intermediate level between the product and the building. Thus the present study addresses this problem of decision making, following the CEN guidelines and incorporating relevant aspects of architectural design into residential construction. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is developed in order to obtain valid information for the decision making process (the LCA was developed applying CML methodology although Ecoindicator99 was used in order to facilitate the comparison of the values); this information (the carbon footprint values) is contrasted with other databases and with the information from the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) of one of the lightening materials (expanded polystyrene), in order to validate the results. Solutions of different column disposition and geometries are evaluated in the three pillars of sustainable construction on residential construction: social, economic and environmental. The quantitative analysis of the variables used in this study enables and facilitates an objective comparison in the design stage by a responsible technician; the application of the proposed methodology reduces the possible solutions to be evaluated by the expert to 12.22% of the options in the case of low values of the column index and to 26.67% for the highest values.

"In the process of red wine aging, the barrel plays a fundamental role both in the contribution of aromas and in the stabilization of the wine and its color. There are, however, different types of barrels, depending on materials, species and origin of the oak, morphology and geometry, and capacity (from 225 liters to larger formats of 300 and 500 liters). The purpose of this work is to perform the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of these barrel formats and compare them with the 225-liter Bordeaux barrel, providing detailed information on these products that can serve as a reference for their use in the calculation of the impact of its application in the wine aging processes. We will consider, for the realization of the present LCA, all the phases of process and manufacture of the barrel that cover from the contribution of materials and their processing until the final storage."

When wood comes into contact with wine, organoleptic properties valued in oenology are generated, which are lost over time and barrels use, so alternative processes are currently used into old barrels as adding wood chips, sticks and staves for keep those properties; however, the environmental and economic impact of the use of these alternatives is not known. This article presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic analysis for those common alternative process used for keep organoleptic properties, but using barrels additives from Quercus alba and Quercus petraea wood. The ISO 14040 standard is employed for the LCA in Simapro® software, making use of the CML-IA baseline V3.04/EU25 methodology and for the economic analysis the production cost is used. The results indicate that aggregating wood chips to recover the organoleptic properties on wine is the alternative that generates less environmental impact and the least expensive, while the highest environmental impact and cost are produced when using wood slaves. On the other hand, additives from Quercus alba wood are less expensive and present low environmental impact in relation to those from Quercus petraea.

La Rioja is the region where the top rated wines from Spain come from and also the origin of one of the most prestigious wines in the world. It is worldwide recognized, not only for the quality of the vine, but also for the many factors involved in the process that are controllable by the farmer, such as fertilizers, irrigation, etc. Likewise, there are other key factors, which cannot be controlled that play, however, a crucial role in the quality of the wine, such as temperature, radiation, humidity, and rainfall. This research is focused on two of these factors: temperature and irradiation. The objective of this paper is to be able to recognize these factors, so as to ensure a proper decision criterion when selecting the best location for new vineyard plantations. To achieve this objective, a mesoscale model MM5 is used, and its performance is assessed and compared using different parameters, from the grid resolution to the physical parameterization of the model. Finally, the study evaluates the impact of the different parameterizations and options for the simulation of meteorological variables particularly relevant when choosing new vineyard sites (rainfall frequency, temperature, and sun exposure).

Artificial intelligence methodologies, as the core of discrete control and decision support systems, have been extensively applied in the industrial production sector. The resulting tools produce excellent results in certain cases; however, the NP-hard nature of many discrete control or decision making problems in the manufacturing area may require unaffordable computational resources, constrained by the limited available time required to obtain a solution. With the purpose of improving the efficiency of a control methodology for discrete systems, based on a simulation-based optimization and the Petri net (PN) model of the real discrete event dynamic system (DEDS), this paper presents a strategy, where a transformation applied to the model allows removing the redundant information to obtain a smaller model containing the same useful information. As a result, faster discrete optimizations can be implemented.This methodology is based on the use of a formalism belonging to the paradigmof thePNfor describingDEDS, the disjunctive colored PN. Furthermore, the metaheuristic of genetic algorithms is applied to the search of the best solutions in the solution space. As an illustration of the methodology proposal, its performance is compared with the classic approach on a case study, obtaining faster the optimal solution.

This paper analyses the correlation between the acoustic emission signals and the main parameters of friction stir welding process based on artificial neural networks (ANNs). The acoustic emission signals inZandYdirections have been acquired by the AE instrument NI USB-9234. Statistical and temporal parameters of discomposed acoustic emission signals using Wavelet Transform have been used as input of the ANN. The outputs of the ANN model include the parameters of tool rotation speed and travel speed, and tool profile, as well as the tensile strength. A multilayer feed-forward neural network has been selected and trained, using Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm for different network architectures. Finally, an analysis of the comparison between the measured and the calculated data is presented. The model obtained can be used to model and develop an automatic control of the parameters of the process and mechanical properties of joint, based on the acoustic emission signals.

The useful lifetime of a residential building is at least 50 years according to Spanish law; the decisions to be made in year zero (in construction terms) must be conditioned by the defined phase of use for the building on the one hand, and on the other hand by cautious estimates about the availability of resources for such use. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that models the impact of any product, process or service from the very beginning up to the end. This paper presents an optimization of the selection of slab alternatives in residential buildings, based on modelling and simulation of the costs and environmental impact (using the LCA with Ecoindicator'99 methodology) of all the alternatives with valid behaviour (according with the national laws).

This paper presents a method of orientation of solar photovoltaic systems through the use of a multicellular photovoltaic sensor. The sensor consists of a set of calibrated photovoltaic solar cells. The cells are arranged in different planes (0 o, 15 o, 30 o, 45 o, 60 o, 75, 90 °) on a support, concave or convex. The solar cells detect the radiation in each of the planes, allowing, on the one hand, to control in real time the optimal orientation of orientable solar photovoltaic systems, both in one or two axes, and on the other hand, to perform a data acquisition of the actual solar radiation over a period of time in each of the orientations, in order to determine effectively simply and empirically what is the ideal orientation for the systems to be installed.

This article compares the results recorded in the connection of three types of DGFACTS (DSTATCOM, DVR, UPQC) to a wind farm in order to resolve the issues of LVRT requirements on wind farms equipped with wind turbines with squirrel-cage induction generators. For illustrative purposes, reference has been made to a standard wind farm in Spain, which has been subject to a fault of the type specified in Operating Procedure 12.3 in the Spanish Grid Code. The aforementioned options provide the wind farms with LVRT capability, in addition to catering for numerous other possibilities that have not been considered within this research.

Throughout this chapter, a methodology of analysis of the environmental impact generated by a wind turbine has been presented, based on previous works of the research group composed of the authors. From the results obtained, an important conclusion is the significant impact generated by the turbine blades and, especially, their non-recycling status. Here is found a need for further research into recycling processes of this type of material (Pickering, 2006; Cunliffe et al., 2003; Marco de et al., 1997; Torres et al., 2000; Williams et al., 2005; Vallee et al., 2004; Perrin et al., 2006), as well as for their practical application in the final dismantling and waste treatment phases of wind turbines. Another material that presents a significant impact within the study is the copper (Lunt et al., 2002; Norgate & Rankin, 2000) present in the nacelle of the turbine, but in this case with the advantage of being a recyclable material (Norgate et al., 2007). In any case, although there are components with a significant environmental impact within the turbine, it has also been verified that these impacts are much smaller than those generated by conventional power plants in operation, with reductions in the impact about 95%, depending on the category. In addition, the energy payback time (time regarding the energy required to produce and implement a turbine) is less than one year, much smaller than the useful lifetime of the system, which is at least 20 years. Moreover, the different uncertainties arising from the options given during the development of the LCA of a wind turbine have been analysed throughout this work. Five different scenarios within the LCA of a multimegawatt wind turbine have been analysed. In addition, the impact that these scenarios may present on the final LCA has also been assessed. From the results can be clearly emphasized the specific case of large corrections in the maintenance phase. Undoubtedly, the choices made at the turbine maintenance stage have an important effect on the results of the LCA. Therefore it is necessary to analyse and define more precisely the average of major corrections that may experience a model of wind turbine along its 20 years of life. Another issue that significantly influences the final results of the LCA study of the multi-megawatt wind generator in question is the considerations made about recycling and reuse of components and materials. A clear example is the impact of materials such as the fibreglass of the blades of the wind turbine when they are not recycled but sent directly to landfill. Finally, seven LCIA methods have also been compared in relation to different impact categories, and significant discrepancies have been found in the results. Furthermore, some of these methods may not consider impact categories that are currently debated, which may be relevant to the LCA study being conducted. On many occasions, a LCA practitioner may simply select a LCIA methodology provided as part of a LCA software tool. In these cases, the impact category, indicator and model selection, and classification have been preselected for the user. This is appealing from the practitioner's point of view since it is faster and less costly. However, it must be noted and

In the last ten years, the increasing power of computers and graphics cards has stimulated developers and users to deepen Virtual Reality (Huang & Lin, 1999; Kreuseler, 2000; Bernhardt et al., 2002). One of its natural applications of interest for the academic and the industrial communities is the Terrain Visualization Systems (TVS) (Lin et al., 1999; Luebke et al., 2003; Ellul & Haklay, 2006). In this field, two-dimensional representations have been completely superseded since three-dimensional (3D) visualization is closer to reality as well as easier to interpret. Furthermore, it allows the user to interact realistically with the environment (Hirtz et al., 1999; Kersting & Döllner, 2002). Nowadays, there exist lots of issues to bear in mind on designing a TVS: various Web3D technologies to represent the Digital Terrain Elevation Models (DTEM), several ways to provide the TVS with sufficient realism, many graphic libraries both private and opensource projects, different applications to enable the user to interact with the system, etc. For example, some recent works can been reviewed about the use of non-proprietary available Web3D technologies (Web3D Consortium, 2006), specifically VRML, X3D and Java3D (Fairbairn & Parsley, 1997; Huang & Lin, 2002; Hay, 2003; Geroimenko & Chen, 2005; Hirtz et al., 2006). The creation of a DTEM can be referred for instance in (Ayeni, 1982; Longley et al., 2001; Fencík et al., 2005). There exist also several databases that can be used as starting point (GTOPO30, 2006; ETOPO2v2, 2006; Gittings, 1996). It is necessary to operate with these databases to extract a grid according to the necessities of realism and fast screen refresh required for this type of application. Furthermore, a correct structure and nomenclature for this grid must be carried out, in order to facilitate and to expedite its management. Another important aspect is the inclusion of texture-mapping in the model to give realism to the visualization (Heckberts, 1986; Guedes et al., 1997; Döllner et al., 2000). The applied textures are the terrain orthophotographs, which are previously treated -to readjust them according to the coordinates of the VRML environment-, partitioned -with the appropriate size for the different elements that constitute the DTEM- or properly structured in order to improve the interactive visualization of massive textured terrain datasets if needed. Regarding the VRML viewers that can be used to represent the DTEM, some well-known samples are DeepViewTM , CASUSPresenterTM , WorldViewTM , BS Contact, Viewpoint Media Player, Emma 3D (Emma3D, 2006; g3DGMV, 2006; Universal 3D Format, 2006). Once 3D navigation system is developed, some interaction tools can be added using VRML Script and Java (Moore et al., 1999). As it can be seen, there are several developments all over the world and very recent semantics in 3D visualization, so it is necessary to make an special effort in generating surveys and standards (Duke et al., 2005). In this chapter, we wish to contribute to clarify the process of development of a TVS in real time by providing a guide through the issues previously commented and illustrating the stages with practical examples. We explain the pros and cons of some of the different currently available options, offering criteria for an appropriate development. We come out of our experience in the Renewable Energy Research Group of La Rioja (Spain) to illustrate this guide. In order to overcome the limitations given by Web3D technologies in general, and VRML in particular, a specific graphic engine developed with open source graphic libraries is shown. Some programs - used to rename the terrain textures according to general VRML structures - and small applets, as interaction tools between the user and the 3D scene, have been implemented in a virtual TVS of La Rioja (one of the 17 autonomous regions in Spain, with a surface of about 5000 Km2). They are used to clarify and exemplify some issues throughout the chapter. The chapter is organized as follows. First, the basic characteristics of a TVS will be briefly commented in Section 2. The Web3D-VRML technologies are introduced in Section 3 where their strong and weak points are shown. Section 4 is devoted to explore the VRML viewers and some tips to create the DTEM and to endow the TVS with interactivity are provided. The development of the graphic engine, and its libraries, which present the 3D geometry of the scene, are discussed in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes the chapter and refers to future work.

RESUMEN: Este articulo propone una metodologia para la prediccion y deteccion de posibles fallos de componentes principales de un aerogenerador, a partir de los datos recogidos por un sistema SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) de monitorizacion incorporado en el mismo. Para ello se aplican tecnicas de inteligencia artificial, como redes neuronales o boosted trees, para el modelado del comportamiento y la seleccion optima de los parametros de entrada. Finalmente, una vez definida la metodologia, se aplica a un caso real de averia en una multiplicadora con datos procedentes de un parque eolico propiedad del Grupo Eolicas Riojanas (GER) ubicado en La Rioja (Espana). La combinacion de un estudio detallado de los parametros optimos para modelizar el comportamiento especifico de la temperatura de la multiplicadora, junto con el desarrollo de un modelo basado en redes neuronales, permite caracterizar de forma eficaz el comportamiento normal de la multiplicadora sin deterioro en su funcionamiento. Ello permite analizar de forma periodica el posible proceso de deterioro de la multiplicadora y actuar sobre ella antes de que se produzca una averia irreparable y que obligue a su sustitucion.

RESUMEN: Este articulo propone una metodologia para la prediccion y deteccion de posibles fallos de componentes principales de un aerogenerador, a partir de los datos recogidos por un sistema SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) de monitorizacion incorporado en el mismo. Para ello se aplican tecnicas de inteligencia artificial, como redes neuronales o boosted trees, para el modelado del comportamiento y la seleccion optima de los parametros de entrada. Finalmente, una vez definida la metodologia, se aplica a un caso real de averia en una multiplicadora con datos procedentes de un parque eolico propiedad del Grupo Eolicas Riojanas (GER) ubicado en La Rioja (Espana). La combinacion de un estudio detallado de los parametros optimos para modelizar el comportamiento especifico de la temperatura de la multiplicadora, junto con el desarrollo de un modelo basado en redes neuronales, permite caracterizar de forma eficaz el comportamiento normal de la multiplicadora sin deterioro en su funcionamiento. Ello permite analizar de forma periodica el posible proceso de deterioro de la multiplicadora y actuar sobre ella antes de que se produzca una averia irreparable y que obligue a su sustitucion. Palabras clave: Aerogenerador; redes neuronales; arboles de decision; mantenimiento; energia eolica