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Background: Biological invasions pose an increasing risk to nature, social security and the economy, being ranked amongst the top five threats to biodiversity. Managing alien and invasive species is a priority for the European Union, as outlined in the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Alien plant species are acknowledged to impact the economy and biodiversity; thus, analysing the distribution of such species provides valuable inputs for the management and decision-making processes. The database presented in the current study is the first consolidated checklist of alien plant species that are present in Romania, both of European Union concern and of national interest. This database complements a prior published distribution, based only on records from literature, bringing new information regarding the occurrence of alien plants in Romania, as revealed by a nationwide field survey. We consider this database a valuable instrument for managing biological invasions at both national and regional levels, as it can be utilised in further research studies and in drafting management and action plans, assisting stakeholders in making informed decisions and implementing management actions., New Information: We present the results of the first nationwide survey of alien plant species in Romania, conducted between 2019 and 2022, in the framework of a national project coordinated by the Ministry of Environment, Waters and Forests and the University of Bucharest. The present database complements and updates the database published by Sirbu et. al (2022), which included occurrence records published until 2019. The new database includes 98323 occurrence records for 396 alien plant species in 77 families, with most species belonging to the Asteraceae family. One alien plant species in our database, the black locust Robiniapseudoacacia L., had more than 10,000 occurrence records. The distribution database also includes information on newly-reported invasive alien plant species of European Union concern in Romania (i.e. the floating primrose-willow Ludwigiapeploides (Kunth) P.H.Raven) and documents the presence of plants in 44 additional families compared to Sirbu et al. (2022). Each entry includes information on species taxonomy, location, year, person who recorded and identified the alien plant, geographical coordinates and taxon rank., (Paulina Anastasiu, Iulia V Miu, Athanasios A Gavrilidis, Cristina Preda, Laurentiu Rozylowicz, Culita Sirbu, Adrian Oprea, Mihaela Urziceanu, Petronela Camen-Comanescu, Eugenia Nagoda, Daniyar Memedemin, Marius Barbos, Violeta Boruz, Alina Cislariu, Ioan Don, Marius Fagaras, Jozsef Pal Frink, Ioana Mihaela Georgescu, Ovidiu Ioan Haruta, Bogdan-Iuliu Hurdu, Attila Matis, Sretco Milanovici, Sorana Muncaciu, Alina Georgeta Neacsu, Monica Neblea, Alma Lioara Nicolin, Mariana Niculescu, Silvia Oroian, Oliviu Grigore Pop, Daniel I Radutoiu, Mihaela Samarghitan, Ioana Simion, Liliana Cristina Soare, Corina Steiu, Emilia Stoianov, Daniela Strat, Anna Szabo, Paul Marian Szatmari, Corneliu Tanase, Marian D Mirea, Nicolae Manta, Ioana M Sirbu.)

The study presents a new analytical model capable to reveal the thermal behaviour of all the components of the solar ammonia-water absorption system, powered by parabolic trough collectors, serving different types of food storages: refrigeration chamber, refrigerated food storage, freezing chamber and frozen food storage. The heat inputs, that determine the total cooling load, for each food storage spaces consist of: heat gains through walls, heat gains through ventilation (fresh air), heat that must be dissipated from the stored products (technological cooling load required to cool down the products) and heat gains through operation. The influence of the number of solar parabolic trough collectors and of the storage tank size on different parameters of the refrigeration plant are investigated under low and high storage temperatures.•Food cooling with solar absorption refrigeration system.•Hourly based variation of NH 3 -H 2 O solar absorption system performances.•Long term simulation of solar absorption cooling for refrigeration and cooling., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

The study proposes a method for preliminary and estimative sizing of the main components of solar district heating systems, with seasonal thermal storage. The main parameters determined by this method, are the aperture area of the solar thermal collectors and the volume of the seasonal thermal storage. The proposed method is only estimative, but it provides the necessary input data for the investigation ofthe dynamic thermal behavior of such systems. The main advantage of the method is that it requires only very few and accessible input data. Two situations are considered: the first in which available climatic data such as annual global solar radiation on horizontal plane and annual average temperature can be used in calculations, and the second in which such data is not available and should be determined through interpolation. With the proposed interpolation functions the annual global solar radiation on horizontal plane, the annual average temperature and the annual global efficiency of the solar thermal collectors were determined. The errors of the estimations are ranging within the intervals of (-15.6 … +25.8) % for annual global solar radiation on horizontal plane and (-10.8 … 19.1) % for annual global efficiency of the solar thermal collectors. The maximum deviations for the annual average temperature estimations were (-4.23 … +5.37) °C. With this limited accuracy, the proposed interpolation functions can be used for latitudes between (0-70) °, annual global solar radiation on horizontal plane between (704-2337) kWh/m 2 /year and annual average temperatures ranging within the interval of (2-30) °C., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2022 The Author(s).)