The article discusses issues related to improving the energy efficiency of heat supply systems. It draws attention to the need to take action not only for large objects and systems, but also for individual buildings and their boiler plants. Heat supply system monitoring allows for the diagnosis of the weakest elements and making decisions leading to the improvement of energy efficiency. In the case of the boiler room where the research was carried out, the results of such monitoring convinced to equip boilers with an additional automatic control system, with an algorithm limiting the number of burner switching cycles and shutdowns. Limiting the number of switching on the burners, as in the case of other combustion and electric devices, has a significant impact on the energy efficiency of the entire system. In addition, it also increases the durability of the devices, and thus reduces costs of servicing and repairs. The simplest control algorithms, often used in controllers installed in the boiler units, do not provide optimization in this respect. The external device used has allowed the number of burners on and off cycles to be limited while maintaining the quality of the heat supply to the heating installation and the heat treatment system.

The material also presents other ways to improve the energy efficiency of the heat supply system in existing multi-family buildings.

In the process of determining the content of impurities, including fossil fuels, crude oil, coke, pitch, plastics, glass, slag, rust, metals, and rock dust, in charcoal and wood briquettes via microscopic examination, the question of the use of ashes from the combustion of grill fuels (taking the scale of the new national sport into account, commonly referred to as „weekend grilling”) was raised. Another reason for addressing this issue was the question regarding the use of organic additives to acidified soil (mineral) fertilizers submitted by one of the clients of the bituminous coal and reservoir rocks analysis laboratory. In addition, the manufacturer of gardening soil has also expressed an interest in an unconventional deacidifying agent; the introduction of a new product with a unique ingredient is considered as a chance to stand out from the competition. A review of the literature shows that attempts to use ashes obtained from the biomass combustion in power boilers have been made. However, due to the biomass composition and additives and pollutants used in biomass for energy purposes, the production of such mixtures has been dropped. Based on the data from numerous samples of grill fuel, which meet the requirements regarding the content of impurities set out in the PN-EN 1860-2 standard, the question of the possible use of ash obtained from charcoal and wood briquette grilling as a component for use in the production of acidified soil (mineral) fertilizers was discussed. The article will present the amount of material obtained based on the statistical sales of barbecue fuels based on the experimentally calculated ash mass resulting from the combustion of 1 kg of starting material. In addition, a logistic proposal for obtaining ash from individual grill users will be developed. On the day of the submission of the present work, the results of the chemical analysis of charcoal and wood briquettes subjected to the gasification process have not yet been obtained. However, based on the microscopic analysis, it can be concluded that the content of impurities in the examined samples is highly unlikely to prevent the use of the mentioned ashes in agriculture.

The concept of endogenous development assumes the use of specifi c resources of the region, difficult to copy, to its development, and even to gain a competitive advantage in a wider dimension. This concept has been used in the provisions of the Regional Innovation Strategy of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship for 2014-2020 for smart specialization (RIS3), especially in relation to leading smart specialization the quality of life, in the areas of: production and processing of ecological, regional and traditional food; renewable energy and distributed energy; agrotourism and ecotourism. It was targeted at the development of the entire region, not only the leading urban centers. The special role of the food economy lies in the need to guarantee food security and food sovereignty in the region. This issue is of strategic importance.

The direct impetus for international cooperation on creating international legislation to regulate the legal status of sea and ocean bottoms lying outside of national jurisdiction was the presentation made at the First UN Committee by the Maltese Ambassador, A. Pardo. In 1967, he called for the establishment of new legal measures for these regions and for them to be recognized as ucommon human heritage. On December 17, 1970, the General Assembly of the UN voted in favor (108 ayes and 14 abstentions) of the declaration of principles regarding sea and ocean bottoms and undergrounds that are outside of national jurisdiction. On December 10, 1982, the UN Convention, which restrictively regulates the exploration and exploitation of deep-sea bottoms, was ratified with a majority of votes from developing nations. On July 28, 1994, the General Assemble of the UN voted in favor of a resolution regarding agreement for the implementation of part XI of the UN Convention on marine law of December 10, 1982 (known as the New York Accord).

On 23 April 2014 the 2002 Protocol to the Athens Convention relating to the Carriage of Passengers and their Luggage by the Sea (PAL 2002) entered into force. The purpose of the Protocol is to improve legal standing of the passenger. The author discusses legislative options as to the future shape of Articles 181 and 182 of the Maritime Code if PAL 2002 is to be ratified by Poland. The first option is to make the 2002 Athens Convention control domestic carriage of passengers, which currently remains outside of the scope of Regulation (EC) No 329/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the liability of carriers of passengers by sea in the event of accidents, and to exclude compulsory insurance or other financial security within limits prescribed by the Convention. The second option is to apply the Convention liability mechanism to carriage by Class C, Class D and Class B vessels.

The article discusses possibilities and usefulness of application of the cost approach for mineral deposits valuation. Author focuses on the ones related to exploration for and documentation of hypothetical deposits, looking in their case for possible areas of application of the approach in consideration. Analyses covers the three most commonly used valuation methods: Appraised Value Method (AVM), Multiple of Exploration Expenditure Method and Killburn's Method, indicating their strengths, deficiencies and dangers of potential misuse. In conclusion author indicates areas of potential application of the cost approach where it's proper application may deliver credible and useful results.

In this paper, an algorithm will be presented that enables solving the two-phase inverse Stefan problem, where the additional information consists of temperature measurements in selected points of the solid phase. The problem consists in the reconstruction of the function describing the heat transfer coefficient, so that the temperature in the given points of the solid phase would differ as little as possible from the predefined values. The featured examples of calculations show a very good approximation of the exact solution and stability of the algorithm.

The paper presents four 1-dimensional models of thermal resistance of walls in a heat exchanger with rectangular minichannels. The first model is the simplest one, with a single wall separating two fluids. The second model of the so called equivalent wall takes into account total volume of intermediate walls between layers of minichannels and of side walls of minichannels. The next two more complicated models take separately into account thermal resistance of these walls. In these two models side walls are treated as fins. The results of models comparison are presented. It is shown that thermal resistance may be neglected for metal walls but it should be taken into account for the walls made of plastics. For the case of non-neglected wall thermal resistance the optimum wall thickness was derived. Minichannel heat exchangers made of plastic are larger than those built of metal, but are significantly cheaper. It makes possible to use of such exchangers in inexpensive microscale ORC installations.

Nanotechnology is a manipulation of nature that has emerged through the use of basic sciences, material science and engineering at the nano-scale. The interaction between biological environment and nanoparticles-nanoparticles or nanoparticles-organic materials is not yet well-understood. The toxic effects of nanoparticles on plants were investigated and it was proved that they caused morphological and physiological changes in plants. This study aimed to determine the effects of TiO -TiO₂Ag nanoparticles, and co-application of EDDS-TiO₂Ag nanoparticles alone, co-application of ZnO nanoparticles- Ag nanoparticles on seed germination, seedling vigor, radicle and plumule elongation of two different wheat species. In the experimental stage, ten seeds were placed in petri-dishes with a double layer of fi lter paper which was used as an inert material. Then 5 mL of TiO₂Ag, ZnO+TiO₂Ag, and EDDS+TiO₂Ag suspensions were added to every petri dish. Results showed that the maximum SVI was determined at the concentration of 50 mg∙L^-1 TiO₂ Ag+EDDS for bread wheat and the minimum SVI was observed at 100 mg∙L^-1 TiO₂Ag nanoparticles concentration for durum wheat. The effect of both nanoparticles-nanoparticles interaction and the other chemicals-nanoparticles interaction on the ecosystems should be evaluated.

The aim of this work was to determine the influence of various variants of bioleaching on effectivity of releasing chosen critical metals: rhodium, cadmium, indium, niobium and chromium from ashes which are a byproduct of municipal waste and sewage sludge thermal processing. The research was conducted in 3 variants that considered different process factors such as temperature (24ºC and 37ºC), mixing intensity and aeration. After 5 days of the process the analyses were made of metals content, sulfate concentration, pH, general number of bacteria number, index of sulfur oxidizing bacteria. The best results of bioleaching were achieved by running the process at the temperature of 24ºC with aeration. The efficiency of rhodium and cadmium release from the byproduct of municipal waste thermal processing was above 90%. The efficiency of indium and chromium release reached 50–60%. Only niobium leached better in mixing conditions. The byproduct of sewage sludge thermal processing was far less susceptible to bioleaching. The highest effectivity (on a level of 50%) was reached for indium in temperature of 24°C with aeration. The efficiency of bioleaching depended on waste’s physiochemical properties and type of metal which will be released. Aeration with compressed air had a positive influence on the increase of sulfur oxidizing bacteria what corresponded with almost double increase of sulfate concentration in leaching culture. Such conditions had a positive influence on the increase of the efficiency of bioleaching process. Heightening the temperature to 37°C and slowly mixing did not impact bioleaching in a positive way.

Jak pogłębić swoją relację z przyrodą podczas następnego spaceru do lasu, a także o tym, czym jest ekohipokryzja, opowiada prof. Dariusz J. Gwiazdowicz.

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is a multiple antenna technology used extensively in wireless communication systems. With the ever increasing demand in high data rates, MIMO system is the necessity of wireless communication. In MIMO wireless communication system, where the multiple antennas are placed on base station and mobile station, the major problem is the constant power of base station, which has to be allocated to data streams optimally. This problem is referred as a power allocation problem. In this research, singular value decomposition (SVD) is used to decouple the MIMO system in the presence of channel state information (CSI) at the base station and forms parallel channels between base station and mobile station. This practice parallel channel ensures the simultaneous transmission of parallel data streams between base station and mobile station. Along with this, water filling algorithm is used in this research to allocate power to each data stream optimally. Further the relationship between the channel capacity of MIMO wireless system and the number of antennas at the base station and the mobile station is derived mathematically. The performance comparison of channel capacity for MIMO systems, both in the presence and absence of CSI is done. Finally, the effect of channel correlation because of antennas at the base stations and the mobile stations in the MIMO systems is also measured.

In this work, the authors proposed a modification of the working space one-strand tundish adapted for slab casting process. Numerical simulations of liquid steel flow in the considered flow reactor were performed. The tundish is equipped with a dam with a multi-hole filter. Two variants of the filter hole arrangement were tested and their effect on the liquid steel flow hydrodynamic structure in the tundish was examined. The computer calculations results were verified by performing experiments on the water model. The result of numerical and physical simulations an RTD (Residence Time Distribution) type F curve was generated, which define the transition zone between the cast steel grades during the sequential casting process. The results of the researches showed that the modification of a dam with a multi-hole filter affects on the formation of the liquid steel flow hydrodynamic structure and the transition zone. Furthermore, examinations of the liquid steel refining ability in the considered tundish were carried out. The influence of the filter holes arrangement on the non-metallic inclusions flotation process to the slag phase and liquid steel filtration processes was checked. Numerical simulations were performed in the Ansys-Fluent computer program.