Total exergy costs of selected metals: the OTR and DTR paths.
\r\n\tThis necessitated a need to understand control theoretical concepts and system analysis in a discrete time domain, which gave rise to the area of discrete time control systems. This has helped control engineers and designers to theoretically ascertain the possibilities and limitations of a control system design implemented in a digital framework, whereas continuous time designs suffer from the essential mismatch in the nature of the underlying independent time variable in theoretical studies and practical implementation. Also, many practical systems are inherently discrete time in nature, sensors and transducers sample data only at fixed time intervals, and computers calculate the control input only in some finite time.
\r\n\tTraditionally, fundamental concepts of discrete time control systems are derived from the continuous time counterpart upon time discretization of the latter and subsequent formal analysis. This gave rise to discrete time counterparts of system models and controllers in z-domain as well as in state space form. However, discrete time control system design and analysis matured as a discipline in itself with the advent of optimal and adaptive techniques solely based on discrete time approach. Robust nonlinear discrete time controllers were also developed utilizing the ideas of sliding modes, model predictive control, etc.
\r\n\tThe techniques for parameter estimation and system identification are largely dominated by discrete time methods. Well-established Kalman filter and extended Kalman filters are developed in discrete time. Many discrete time stochastic filters are utilized in control systems to reduce the impact of noise and disturbance during practical implementation.
\r\n\tDespite the developments in discrete time control designs and their usefulness in control system implementation, there are a few challenges like discretization effect on systems stability, communication loss, etc. which are also areas of serious research. With all its usefulness and limitations, discrete time control systems have found vast areas of application from process control and automation, robotics, network control systems and internet of things, control of networks and multi-agent systems, etc.
\r\n\tThis book intends to provide the reader with an overview of detailed control system design methodologies in discrete time which are well-established in literature. Emerging areas of interest in discrete time systems catering to new and existing challenges are also welcomed.
Mining, smelting, and refining processes have important environmental impacts: they deplete natural resources, minerals and fossil fuels that cannot be replaced; they use land that affects landscapes and their ecosystems; they discharge wastes into air, waters, and soil; and they can influence in the depletion of renewable natural resources such as biota or ground waters. These activities have accompanied the development of man from the early stages of civilization. To such an extent that the stages of civilization have been named by the prominent resource that supported the era: bronze, iron, coal, and oil Ages. When nature was abundant, the side effects were not taken into account. However, the intense technological development of the twentieth century has forced society to realize them.
In this ambition, environmental economists have developed methods to evaluate the economic effect that has the use of natural resources to support our economic activities. They convert physical assets and impacts on ecosystems into monetary accounts, which are added or subtracted from the aggregated accounts, and finally, from the gross domestic product (GDP). The advantage of using monetary units is that it allows comparing among other environmental assets and aggregating them to look for their contribution of the wealth of a country.
However, as an agreement among economists is difficult to attain, and it is of paramount importance to yearly account for the human appropriation and use of nature, the United Nations proposed to develop a System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA). It consists of a satellite account system for reflecting the environmental deterioration proposed to adjust the System of National Accounts (SNAs). This is an optimum reference framework to follow in the description of economic valuation methods.1 In fact it is an important tool to manage appropriate resources and thus ensure sustainable consumption and production as advocated by the UN Sustainable Development Goal Number 12.
This chapter explains the capabilities and drawbacks of the system of environmental and economic accounts. Subsequently, we describe an alternative approach for assessing abiotic resource depletion through the second law of thermodynamics. Finally, a proposal for accounting depletion based on the organized structure of the SEEA is provided.
“The System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA) is the United Nations statistical framework that provides internationally agreed concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules and standard tables for producing internationally comparable statistics on the environment, and its relationship with the economy. The SEEA framework follows a similar accounting structure as the ‘System of National Accounts’ (SNAs) and uses concepts, definitions, and classifications consistent with the SNA in order to facilitate the integration of environmental and economic statistics.”2 The international community agreed to elevate the SEEA-2003 from a manual of best practices to an international statistical standard on par with the System of National Accounts. For attaining this objective, an iterative revision process was initiated by the United Nations Statistical Committee, relying on a broad global experts’ consultation. The revised SEEA is organized into three main parts: the Central Framework, Experimental Ecosystem Accounts, and Extensions and Applications. The Central Framework, consisting of the internationally agreed standard concepts, definitions, classifications, tables, and accounts was completed in 2013.
In particular, the Central Framework of SEEA intends to be a universal single measurement system information on water, energy, minerals, timber, soil, land, ecosystems, pollution and waste, production, and consumption of all interactions that society makes with nature. It recommends presenting the yearly accounts for these interactions in an organized manner parallel to the System of National Accounts. The basis consists of defining and systematically accounting the concept of “environmental assets,” which are defined as “the naturally occurring living and non-living components of the Earth, together comprising the biophysical environment that may provide benefits to humanity.” These assets are presented in both physical and monetary data. The Central Framework claims that it facilitates comprehension of data by scientists and economists and brings a bridge between them.
Universally organized statistics is perhaps the main value of the SEEA, and economists have developed well established procedures to rely on them. To start with, the economists define flows and stocks.
Natural inputs are physical flows moving from the environment to production processes. They are mineral, energy or timber resources, also renewable energy resources and finally inputs from soil, water, and air resources. At the same time we produce products, we produce wastes. These are flows discarded, discharged or emitted in the production processes, and absorbed by the environment in the form of solid, liquid or gaseous materials and energy.
Stocks, in physical terms, refer to the total quantity of individual environmental assets at a given point in time. “These assets are defined by their material content without specific reference to their constituent elements.” This is a major drawback since tons of a given metal do not tell about its wealth. Its mineral composition, ore grade, accompanying minerals or burden for instance can be very variable.
The physical units of these flows and stocks vary with their type and are measured according to the System of International units, mass, length, volume, joules, etc.
The way the physical flow is accounted follows the structure of monetary and use supply tables that are used to show transactions in products between different economic entities like industries, households, government, and the rest of the world. The structure of the physical supply and use tables (PSUT) adds another entity: the environment. This is made by adding columns and rows that consider the flows going into and leaving from it. In addition, the tables show separate accounts for materials flows, water and energy sub-systems.
Energy and water flows are accounted in physical units in a cradle-to-grave way. The physical flow accounts for materials are a complex subject for SEEA; this is because of its diversity as compared to energy and water flows. The SEEA uses the mass basis for each type of material.
Insofar as materials can react and mix with other materials to produce new materials, the trace of physical flows may be very complex in its cradle-to-grave description. In some cases, it is possible to track flows of elements such as mercury because of their hazardous nature.
To provide an aggregate overview in tons, the economy-wide material flow accounts (EW-MFA) are used. These accounts describe the materials input-output of an economy including the environment and the rest of the world as subsystems.
Converting these units into money allows, in theory, comparison among different assets. The preferred approach of SEEA to the valuation of assets is the use of market values. “Strictly, market prices are defined as amounts of money that willing buyers pay to acquire something from willing sellers.”
However, valuating assets at market prices have an important problem since there are “few markets that buy and sell the assets in their natural state and hence determining an asset’s economic value can be difficult.” Therefore, the central framework recommends using the net present value (NPV) approach for estimating market prices for non-marketed assets. This approach also named as the discounted value of future returns approach, “uses projections of the future rate of extraction of the asset together with projections of its price to generate a time series of expected returns.”
Mineral and energy resources are non-renewable resources whose extraction leads to depletion, and subsequently, the end of the industrial activity. Therefore, their asset accounts must organize the information about stocks, flows of extraction, depletion, and discoveries, as well as of monetary estimates of the value added, operating surplus of the extracting companies, and depletion adjusted value-added measures. This is briefly described here.
Known deposits of mineral and energy resources are classified by SEEA according to the United Nations Framework Classification for Fossil Energy and Mineral Reserves and Resources 2009 (UNFC-2009)3. The UNFC-2009 classifies deposits with triple dimension criteria: economic and social viability (E), field project status and feasibility (F), and geological knowledge (G). The first criterion (E) establishes the commercial viability of the project. The second criterion (F) indicates where the technical extraction project is on the road from exploration to market. The third criterion (G) designates the level of certainty in the geological knowledge and potential recoverability of the quantities. Each criterion is further numbered as high (1), moderate (2), and low (3) or very low (4).
Besides of that, known deposits are categorized into three classes: class A for commercial projects with recoverable Resources, i.e., the case of E1 deposits and projects F1; class B for potentially commercial projects with recoverable resources when deposits fall in the category E1 or E2 and projects in F2; and class C for non-commercial, and other known deposits. In these three classes, the geological knowledge may be G1, G2, or G3.
The SNA limits its scope to commercially exploited deposits, whereas SEEA opens the scope for having a broader picture on the availability of the stock of these resources.
Notwithstanding this, these criteria consider the mining wealth in an economically simplified and present-day view. It misses the fact that geology is more complex than what statistics reflect. Consequently, there is no internationally agreed detailed classification for mineral and energy resources suitable for statistical purposes. For instance, there are many types of minerals and combinations of them with specific geological structures. In addition, the exploitation may result in recovering burden, tailings, and residues that were previously discarded as a function of market demand, for instance.
Thus SEEA simply proposes a compilation of the physical asset accounts for mineral and energy resources by type of resource including estimates of the opening and closing stock and changes in the stock over the accounting period. The type of measuring units indicates the roughness of the accounting system. They are measured in tons, cubic meters, or barrels. There is neither homogeneity in units nor specificity in the type of mineral. In fact, “it is noted that a total for each class of deposit across different resource types cannot be meaningfully estimated due to the use of different physical units for different resources. For certain sub-sets of resources, for example, energy resources, an aggregate across certain resource types may be possible using a common unit such as joules or other energy units.”
As explained previously, all mining activities, either for extraction of mineral or energy resources impact on environment. Their effects are on air, waters and soils in form of pollution and degradation of environmental reservoirs. They also affect the landscapes, the ecosystems, and the local human settlements. The SEEA tries to organize these costs into a framework that allows valuating and yearly trace these impacts. In theory, the revenues caused by mining should overcome the temporal or permanent loss of environment. The only way to know that is by monitoring and accounting all these impacts in an organized and standardized way. This is the highest contribution of SEEA. Unfortunately, the loss of (i) landscapes, (ii) ecosystems supporting particular biotas, or (iii) local communities, might not be captured by these impassive accounting systems. Another problem is the lack of single and universal measuring units.
The structure of the monetary asset accounts largely parallels the structure of the physical asset accounts. “The valuation of the stocks uses of NPV approach at the level of each individual resource type, and ideally for specific deposits of the resource, and then summed over the range of different resources in order to obtain a total value of mineral and energy resources.”
The application of NPV approach requires specific considerations in the estimation of the resource rent. First, the resource rent should be limited to the extraction process itself excluding the refinement and processing of the extracted resource. Accordingly, the extraction process includes the typical mining activities like mineral exploration, evaluation, mining, and beneficiation. Commonly, the mineral deposit contains several types of resources. For example, an oil well containing gas or, nickel sulfide deposits often found with copper ores, where cobalt is also obtained as a by-product. In that case, the resource rent should be allocated by commodity.
An important problem in valuation is the frequent fluctuation of the market price of mineral commodities while operating costs are quite foreseeable. Consequently, the resource rent may be composed of a quite volatile time series. Mineral exploration and evaluation costs are treated as a form of gross fixed capital formation. Moreover, decommissioning costs reduce the resource rent earned by the extractor over the operating life of the extraction site.
The physical extraction rate is usually constant along the life of the resource if there are no reappraisals. However, as resources approach depletion, there will be a decline in the ore grades and the environmental and energy costs associated with extraction will increase, thus avoiding extraction of yearly constant quantities. Even the central framework of SEEA warns that there is no reason why the extraction rate should necessarily be constant. In practical terms an important physical fact is ignored: the extinction of the mine is not constant along the extraction period but follows the law of diminishing returns.
We find two main objections to the SEEA. First, dividing nature into assets does not reflect all interactions among natural systems themselves. For instance, converting a forest into a stock of timber does not reflect other benefits coming from it, like floods protection, clean air, being a life-supporting system, or even its recreational purposes. Numbers will never reflect causality and may provoke greed for rapid exploitation of natural resources. For the SEEA central framework, the whole is exactly the sum of its parts. It resigns holism in favor of reductionism.
Second, SEEA and SNA are firmly based on market price methods. Even if money has the power of easy comparisons among different issues, it reflects social values rather than objective values. They vary with time and from nation to nation. Money reflects the purchasing power of man in society. We pay people, not nature, and if nature claims nothing for its services, the monetary accounting system will only reflect present man´s interests. The implicit paradigm behind is: if we could extract and use all present environmental capital and convert it into money, it would be better than having physical assets not yet exploited. This is an absurd reductionism, and only the impossibility of having enough money to extract and convert nature into money inhibits that insanity. On the other hand, if everything is converted into money, the value of money itself would depreciate. Therefore, those that have retained their resources would become the wealthiest. The willingness to pay weakens with abundance and strengthens with scarcity. Yet the lack for a better numéraire excuses the use of money.
In fact, an important problem in SEEA is that it uses physical accounts without homogeneity in units or specificity in the type of mineral/material. This makes very confusing the trace of physical flows throughout its life cycle since materials react, mix, and decompose. Converting these units into exergy values would facilitate materials trace analyses through Sankey diagrams.
That said, the SEEA constitutes an impressive initiative for putting numbers to the man-nature interactions in a rational and global way. Universally organized statistics is perhaps the main value of the SEEA, and economists have developed well established procedures to rely on them.
In what follows, we present an alternate method for assessing natural non-renewable resources from a thermodynamic perspective.
We have seen in the previous section that SEEA accounts for physical flows in a cradle-to-grave perspective. However, in the cradle-to-grave path, there is information that these accountancy systems will never supply: depletion. Neither the economic nor physical accounting systems are efficient enough to assess the depletion of natural resources.
Something lacks in a global view: the mineral endowment and the non-renewable resources of the Earth are constantly decreasing. Each time non-renewable resourcesare extracted and not replaced we lose them irreversibly. And the only thing we can measure is its yearly decrease, not its lost value. There is no way of appraising what valuable things mankind is losing forever. Scarcity and the effort needed to replace non-renewable resources is absent in conventional accounting methodologies. Indicators for Materials recycling, substitution and consumption decrease also lack in the credit list. It could be argued that having an indicator of scarcity per chemical element could be enough to solve the problem. However, the myriad of inorganic products we can extract from mine Earth and the huge amount of chemical products that these materials can be converted into, makes impossible to have a decent accounting of the material cycles of all chemical elements.
In our view, there is a lack of theory rather than a lack of indicators. Partial or total cradle-to-grave assessments are the half part of the cycle. We name them “over the rainbow” (OTR) accounting methodologies. They lack the other side: the grave-to-cradle assessment. In the same way that imaginary numbers can hardly be explained in the real space, some phenomena like depletion may be better explained in the “down the rainbow” (DTR) approach [1].
The planet works in cycles driven by solar energy: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and water have their cycles but, to our knowledge, there are no postulated cycles for metals and chemical elements in general. Those elements related with life have short closing cycle times even if they have reset times measured in geological scale times. However, such elements that do not form part of biological life will hardly be reset. They are constituents of our exosomatic organs, and they are in danger of being scarce for future organs because of dispersion. In practical terms, both types of chemical elements must have their own cycle. And the human being must allocate a major effort to close and accelerate their closure. Sustainable development requires the closing of all chemical elements in the planet either for endo or for exo-somatic organs. Their closing cycle velocity, and the effort required must be a function of how intense is their use with respect to their physical scarcity. If man alters the cycles, closing them corresponds to man.
By extracting the ore from a mine, the exergy (i.e. physical utility) of the ore increases, even though we spent a lot of exergy (i.e. useful energy) to remove it. From the standpoint of future generations having the raw material in a store instead of having it in a mine would be a good inheritance. All environmental costs would be a matter of the past. This is something similar to leaving for the future the pyramids or the cathedrals. Clearly, if we use this raw material and then recycle it, we would be using it temporarily.
The problem arises with dispersion. What is dispersed and, of course, the increase in demand needs to be replaced with more extraction. That increases the size of the cycle to be closed, and the energy debit increases over and down the rainbow. The over the rainbow part is a real consumption, and the down the rainbow is a debt we acquire with future generations. Anything that reduces the new extraction is positive: substitution, miniaturization, recycling, the efficient use of materials, and indeed the extraction efficiency.
Dispersion of raw materials has not been sufficiently considered in economic analyses. It has been ignored as a materials availability loss, but rather it is seen as a pollution problem. As it happens with heat in energy balances, it is obtained by difference. The dispersion is thus accounted by material balance: what is extracted minus what is recycled is equal to what is dispersed. But in reality there is no universal care in having a systematic accounting of the cycles of elements.
Dispersion is the key for understanding the phenomenon of raw materials. The raw material backpack has two components: one is the overall impact of its extraction and the other, the acquired debt for avoiding dispersion. Each particular raw material has an environmental cost for dispersal. Under this light, substitution of a raw material for another would make sense if both parts of the backpack decrease. These assessments must be essentially physical. It is important to highlight that while the OTR side can be restored directly by nature in timespans of several generations - provided that our wastes should not exceed the assimilative capacity of the biosphere; the DTR side needs geological eras to naturally closing the cycle for each particular element. Restoring the planetary mines as they were before civilization would only be possible with the internal heat of Earth through volcanism. It is something beyond imagination. The “easiest” mineral resources to restore would be fossil fuels. However, fossil fuels have a formation time of the order of million years. Giampietro and Pimentel [2] gave a value for fossil energy productivity of the Earth as low as 0.016 MJ/m2/day or 1000 kcal/0.7 m2/year.
Ecological economists have learned that entropy is closely related to economics [3, 4]. It tells us about the direction to which economical fluxes (as part of the natural environment) go. However, entropy is a very difficult property to understand, and it is often used and “misused” in a metaphorical manner. In this way, we can find statements such as “mines of low entropy become mines of high entropy.” However, the latter assert even if correct, does not provide much information. How can we overcome this deficiency? The answer is with exergy. Through this property, we are able to convert metaphors into real numbers. A good management of our finite concentrated mineral deposits needs to be based on reliable, objective and strong information sources, and removed away from market subjectivities.
This has been the motivation for the development of the Exergoecology approach [5, 6]. The fundamental instrument of the latter is the calculation of exergy replacement costs as a way for evaluating the “effort” that nature put into play for concentrating substances from a completely dispersed state to the concentrated conditions of the minerals found in the deposits. As the ore grade tends to zero, the exergy required to extract a mineral from the mine tends to infinity. Thanks to the fact that nature provides us with mines, the exergy needed to produce minerals is infinitely lower than if we would need to obtain them from the “bare rock.” However, as extraction continues, the state of the deposits approaches to the bare rock, and future generations will have to deal with very low-grade ores, needing increasing amounts of energy for their exploitation [7]. Therefore, if we add an additional asset in the accountancy of minerals, namely the replacement costs in a “down the rainbow” view, we will consider the scarcity factor. This way, depleting high-grade ores is penalized since the exergy required to replace them with current technology would be very large. It should be noticed, that this point of view goes in the opposite direction of current practices: the larger the ore grade, the more cost-effective is its exploitation since production costs are much lower. However, this criterion enhances the depletion of high-grade ores since the future scarcity is ignored. Both aspects, replacement costs and conventional processing costs give a broader and more equilibrated vision of “sustainability” in the mining sector and closes the cycle of materials, covering the OTR and DTR paths.
Note also that these two indicators do not need speculations about the remaining mineral capital on Earth. No matter how much mineral remains to be exploited and the level of depletion, what we can assess is the “avoided” cost humanity had for exploiting the mine instead of doing it in the bare rock. These indicators also provide the exhaustion and the speed of exhaustion of all minerals we are extracting today in the planet. It is done in fully additive energy units instead of money units. Besides of that, the exergy replacement cost can easily be converted into money units since the price of each actual operation is available. That said, converting the replacement exergy into money units is senseless since the reversible processes to convert the bare rock into the mineral as in the mine are purely theoretical.
Exergy measures the quality of systems with respect to a reference. When the system under analysis reaches the conditions of the reference, then it loses completely its distinction, i.e., its exergy [8, 9]. Therefore, the more separated the system from the reference, the more exergy it has. In the case of a mineral deposit, the more concentrated the mine, the more “quality” it has. Therefore, which should be the reference for the assessment of the mineral capital? In the end, when a mine has been completely depleted, its concentration would have theoretically reached that of the average crust. Hence, it is clear that our reference should be an Earth, where all minerals have been depleted, and all fossil fuels have been burnt. That model of Earth, that we named the “Crepuscular Planet” or “Thanatia” (from the Greek Thanatos, death), was developed by the authors and is extensively described in [10, 11]. Basically, it consists of a degraded atmosphere, hydrosphere, and continental crust. The atmosphere of Thanatia is obtained assuming that all conventional fossil fuels are burnt and all CO2 is released. As a result, it has a CO2 concentration of 683 ppm and a mean surface temperature of 17°C. The degraded hydrosphere was assumed to have the current chemical composition of seawater at 17°C (poles and glaciers melted). And for the upper continental crust, we proposed a model of bare rock defined by the composition and concentration of 324 substances in which 292 are minerals, and the remaining are mainly diadochic elements included in the crystal structure of other minerals.
As explained in [11], Thanatia should not be mixed up with the reference environment (RE), such as the one proposed by Szargut [12] for the calculation of chemical substances. In fact, both concepts constitute a reference for calculating exergies, but there are determinant differences. The assumption of assuming one substance per chemical element, which is common for all global RE, radically invalidates the use of the RE as a substitute of the model of crepuscular planet. We need a model of dispersed Earth where all commonly found substances appear.
The former only provides the chemical composition of the environment. The concentration factor is very important for assessing the mineral capital on Earth since as we explained before, the exergy of a mineral deposit increases exponentially with its ore grade. The greater the difference between the concentration of the mineral in the mine and in the dispersed crust, the more exergy (the greater value) will have the deposit. Hence, not only the composition of the “dead environment” is required, but also the concentration at which the substances are found in it.
That said it should be stated that conventional REs are still needed and constitute a tool for calculating chemical exergies. In fact, Thanatia has chemical exergy with respect to a defined RE. And as Szargut\'s approach is the most internationally recognized, we have adopted it with some improvements.
Exergy measures the minimum (reversible) work required to extract and concentrate the materials from a RE to the conditions found in nature. The approach named Exergoecology [13]. allows to assess natural resources taking advantage of both thermodynamics and thermoeconomics principles. When minerals are extracted from Earth through the separation of it from the ore by means of different process like mining, beneficiation, roasting, smelting, refining, etc., the exergy associated to the mineral increases but this process requires the consumption of fuel, and other materials, whose exergy is destroyed after use.
The concentration exergy bc, represents the minimum amount of energy associated with the concentration of a substance from an ideal mixture of two components and is given by the following expression:
where R is the universal gas constant (8.314 kJ/kmol K), T0 is the temperature of the reference environment (298.15 K), and xi is the concentration of the substance i. The exergy accounting of mineral resources implies to know the ore grade, which is the average mineral concentration in a mine xm as well as the average concentration in the Earth’s crust (in Thanatia) xc. The value of x in Eq. (1) is replaced by xc or xm to obtain their respective exergies, whilst the difference between them represents the minimum energy (exergy) required to form the mineral from the concentration in the Earth’s crust to the concentration in the mineral deposits.
This approach includes the irreversibility factor through the so-called exergy cost, which is defined as the total exergy required concentrating the mineral resources from the Thanatia with prevailing technologies.
The concentration of a mineral from the ore grade of the deposit to its commercial grade implies energy consumption completely different to that of concentrating the mineral from the dispersed state of Thanatia to the mine. The exergy cost of concentrating a mineral would require kc times the minimum concentration exergy (Eq. (2)).
where kc is a constant called unit exergy cost and is the ratio between the real energy required for the real process to concentrate the mineral from the ore grade xm to the refining grade xr and the minimum thermodynamic exergy required to accomplish the same process (Eq. (3)).
Since the energy required for mining is a function of the ore grade of the mine and the technology used, so it is the unit exergy cost. Then, the exergy cost of concentrating a mineral from the Earth’s crust is named exergy replacement cost. Note that fossil fuels are different from non-energy minerals in that once burnt, they cannot be replaced because they have been converted mainly into CO2 and water. The exergy of fossil fuels is commonly accounted for through their High Heating Value (HHV). Pollutant abatement costs in exergy terms can be substracted from the HHV to account for the clean fossil capital on Earth [14].
Table 1 show results from [16] when the methodology is applied to several commodities. It has been assumed a world average ore grade for each metal shown. As can be seen, the exergy replacement costs are not insignificant and have at least the same order of magnitude than conventional mining and metallurgical costs. This way, we can give numbers to the whole cycle of materials: the over the rainbow path, through conventional mining and metallurgical costs, and the down the rainbow path, through the exergy replacement costs.
Values in GJ/ton of metal if not specified | DTR path Exergy replacement costs, GJ/ton | OTR path Mining and metallurgical costs, GJ/ton |
---|---|---|
Aluminium-Bauxite (Gibbsite) | 627 | 54 |
Antimony (Stibnite) | 474 | 13 |
Arsenic (Arsenopyrite) | 400 | 28 |
Barite | 38 | 1 |
Beryllium (Beryl) | 253 | 457 |
Bismuth (Bismuthinite) | 489 | 56 |
Cadmium (Greenockite) | 5898 | 542 |
Cerium (Monazite) | 97 | 523 |
Chromium (Chromite) | 5 | 36 |
Cobalt (Linnaeite) | 10,872 | 138 |
Copper (Chalcopyrite) | 292 | 57 |
Fluorite | 183 | 1 |
Gadolinium-Monazite | 478 | 3607 |
Gallium (in Bauxite) | 144,828 | 610,000 |
Germanium (in Zinc) | 23,749 | 498 |
Gold | 553,250 | 110,057 |
Graphite | 20 | 1 |
Gypsum | 15 | 0 |
Hafnium | 21,814 | 11,183 |
Indium (in Zinc) | 360,598 | 3320 |
Iron ore (Hematite) | 18 | 14 |
Lanthanum-Monazite | 39 | 297 |
Lead (Galena) | 37 | 4 |
Lime | 3 | 6 |
Lithium (Spodumene) | 546 | 433 |
Magnesite (from ocean) | 136 | 447 |
Manganese (Pyrolusite) | 16 | 58 |
Mercury (Cinnabar) | 28,298 | 409 |
Molybdenum (Molybdenite) | 908 | 148 |
Neodymium-Monazite | 78 | 592 |
Nickel (sulphides) Pentlandite | 761 | 115 |
Nickel (laterites) Garnierite | 167 | 414 |
Niobium (ferrocolumbite) | 4422 | 360 |
Palladium | 8,983,377 | 583,333 |
Phosphate rock (Apatite) | 0.35 | 5 |
PGM (average value for all PGM) | 2,695,013 | 175,000 |
Platinum | 4,491,688 | 291,667 |
Potassium (Sylvite) | 665 | 2 |
Praseodymium-Monazite | 577 | 296 |
REE (Bastnaesite) | 348 | 384 |
Rhenium | 102,931 | 156 |
Silicon (Quartz) | 1 | 77 |
Silver (Argentite) | 7371 | 1566 |
Sodium (Halite) | 17 | 41 |
Strontium | 4.2 | 72 |
Tantalum (Tantalite) | 482,828 | 3091 |
Tellurium-Tetradymite | 2,235,699 | 589,405 |
Tin (Cassiterite) | 426 | 27 |
Titanium (Ilmenite) | 5 | 135 |
Titanium (Rutile) | 9 | 258 |
Uranium (Uraninite) | 901 | 189 |
Vanadium | 1055 | 517 |
Wolfram (Scheelite) | 7429 | 594 |
Yttrium-Monazite | 159 | 1198 |
Zinc (Sphalerite) | 1627 | 56 |
Zirconium (Zircon) | 654 | 1372 |
Total exergy costs of selected metals: the OTR and DTR paths.
Updated from Valero and Valero (2015); [15].
Physical measures fall within science, and a few of them transcend and become socially relevant. To cross this boundary, both the object of measurement and the units must have a set of consistent properties that facilitate understandability, universality, and measurement capability of social evolution.
In this context, the object of measurement is our global depletion of mineral resources at the planetary level. And we postulate exergy as its measurement unit. For doing that we need a theory supporting how this can be accomplished. The fundamentals of such a theory are:
There can be postulated an imaginary degraded Earth planet in which the crust, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere reached a maximum level of dissipation of all its materials compatible with the Sun´s energy and the internal heat of the Earth. We name this planet Thanatia and is a crepuscular Earth where no mines exist and thus all materials are dispersed and have the composition of bare rocks commonly found in the crust; the hydrosphere contains no poles and is nearly composed by standard salt water; and the atmosphere reached the state predicted by long-term climate change models, with a high concentration of greenhouse gases coming from the complete combustion of fossil fuels. Thanatia is by no means in an equilibrium state, but in a conceivable geological steady state that can be characterized by a reasonable short set of physicochemical parameters. Thanatia is postulated as the ultimate state of the present evolutionary man-induced degradation path of the Earth.
Exergy measures the minimum work needed to convert a thermodynamic state of a system characterized by a constant mass of constituent chemical elements into any other state of that system. Therefore, any state of the planet between the present one and Thanatia can be measured with the knowledge of the physicochemical parameters characterizing the two states. This general definition allows calculating the exergy distance between any two states of any specific mine, no matter what its chemical composition is likely to be. The same occurs when the mineral is converted into a raw material, smelted, refined, manufactured, transported, used, recycled, disposed of in a landfill, and/or dispersed.
Once any two states of the system are characterized, it is possible to calculate the current exergy cost we need to invest with prevailing technologies to reach a final state from an initial one. As our technology is far from being reversible, exergy cost and minimum exergy differ in many cases in several orders of magnitude. History tells us that mining and chemical technologies have changed rather slowly over decades and hence, the exergy costs can be assumed to be constant over a not too short period of time (for some cases over decades). Exergy may be a better indicator for pure scientific purposes. In turn, exergy cost is prone for social interpretations because even if it depends on the state of technology, it is closer to societal perception of value. Both indicators are equally valid on a thermodynamic basis.
We postulate that each chemical element must have its own cycle either naturally powered by direct or indirect Sun´s energy, or geologically powered. Man-made technology can accelerate or decelerate these cycles. Thus metallic elements can be viewed to be somewhere in the geosphere or in the technosphere. One element in mine has not initiated its cycle. Once it is mined, the cycle starts. The more mineral is mined, the larger its cycle. And the shorter the residence time in the technosphere is, the greater it\'s dissipation. Recovering what was dispersed would require significant amounts of exergy and ingenuity that makes in many cases almost impossible closing the cycle. However, humanity will need to recover more and more elements from bare rock because of its profligate use of previously mined ones. Many rare earths and scarce elements are already obtained from nearly bare rocks. Technology exists accordingly.
Under this light, we propose measuring depletion of a given mineral as the exergy cost needed to close the cycle between the compositions of the constituents in the Thanatia´s dispersed state, and the mineral in the mine at its present state. In addition, its exergy is also a complementary measure of this depletion. We named these parameters exergy replacement cost and replacement exergy, respectively. The overall process from mining to dispersion and dissipation is the well known cradle-to-grave process. This is the part everybody sees, that is why we name it as the “over the rainbow” part. However, there is an imaginary part, “down the rainbow” or grave-to-cradle approach, which can aptly explain and measure how much depletion is going on with all man activities. We have seen that all the attempts to measuring depletion “over the rainbow,” either in monetary or in physical terms, collide with the impossibility to put an objective value to physical scarcity. The depletion of the mineral capital on Earth must be measured on a grave-to-cradle basis.
With exergy replacement cost we cannot measure the progress to sustainability but the progress to depletion, ultimate to Thanatia. It can be like a watch measure to death. We can decelerate death, but we cannot avoid it. Nevertheless, it can be a good policy guide since it can quantify the annual depletion of the mineral capital and explain crystal clear, what are the needed measures to stop it or at least to slow it. The only question is to prove that the indicator undertakes the requirements for a good one.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [17, 18] proposed a set of criteria for having a good environmental indicator: policy relevance, analytical soundness, and measurability.
Concerning policy relevance, a good indicator must be: (a) easy to interpret, (b) show trends over time, (c) be responsive to changes in underlying conditions, and (d) have a threshold or reference value against, which conditions can be measured.
Exergy as the available energy is easy to interpret since it is what laypeople call energy. As a matter of fact, we pay exergy not energy. The exergy replacement cost and the exergy cost indicators can show either aggregated or disaggregated trends over time just being responsive to any kind of variation in amounts of extraction, improvements in processes efficiency, substitution, recycling, and whatever changes in the element cycle. Finally, Thanatia as a threshold is the best provider of reference values to which evolutions on depletion can be measured. Therefore, our indicators are policy relevant according to OECD.
Concerning analytical soundness, indicators should be well supported in technical and scientific terms. It is obvious that exergy indicators are well based on the second law of thermodynamics.
Concerning measurability, indicators should be: (a) calculated from data that are readily available or available at reasonable cost, (b) data should be documented and of known quality, and (c) data and indicators should be updated at regular intervals.
The data for calculating exergy replacement costs must come from data provided from the physical SEEA tables. Assets providing amounts of extracted material, composition, ore grades, amounts of processed, smelted, refined chemicals, amounts of recycled material with its composition, etc., available in the PSU tables are what exergy costs need for their calculations. The data obtained for exergy replacement costs will be as reliable as the data provided by SEE accounts. And the calculations required are easily available with adequate computer programs. International agreements could be reached in order to update both data and indicators as well as improve interpretations and act accordingly. As exergy is an additive property, it has the capability of integrating and aggregating a large variety of causes of variation including how substitution, recycling, and nanotechnologies positively improve our global management of the mineral capital. Conversely, each country, company or mine could use the exergy replacement cost to account for the attained depletion level. And this cost can easily be converted into money units just by multiplying it by some previously agreed energy price. Money accounts are useful at the micro level from companies to countries, but at a global scale and throughout time, exergy accounts may give a clearer picture far removed from economic vagaries.
Finally, the proposed indicators are complementary with others, especially with cradle-to-grave indicators that close the cycles of elements. All together could provide an overall measure of “unsustainability” and its yearly variation, which could be used as a policy lever.
The depletion of a mineral should not be anymore the difference between its world price and its economic cost of production as economists propose. On the contrary, it should be assessed as the loss of reserves quantified through its replacement cost with prevailing technologies, from the bare rock to the ore grade conditions of the mine. This depletion indicator can be used for all fossil fuels, and minerals no matter their chemical composition and concentration. Fossil fuels must be replaced with renewable energy sources and need to be accounted for such progress. In the same way, stopping depletion of metals will largely come from techniques such as designing for recyclability, reducing the number of alloys used, avoiding the design of monstrous hybrids, designing for disassembly, symbiosing industrial complexes, increasing the efficiency of smelters to avoid metal losses in slags, increasing the throughput of scrap, etc., (see [19, 20]). All these techniques decrease depletion and must be accounted for too.
The idea of replacement, restoration, remediation or repair exergy could easily be extended to indicate the depletion of many other non-renewable resources of biogeological origin like the loss of forests, landscapes, fertile soil, subsoil waters, fisheries, climate change, etc. The amount of work needed to restore what was degraded should be accounted for, even if it will hardly be restored. It is like a debit account for future generations. Each time we learn how to accomplish replacements or recycling or how to live with less, is like slowing the time machine toward Thanatia.
If “prevailing technologies” are a reflection of embodied knowledge, we will see to what extent they decrease our debt with future generations. Nevertheless, it is not clear that any new technology that directly or indirectly improves efficiency in production processes decrease our debt. The rebound effect goes always in the opposite direction; the more efficient we are the more consumption is promoted (see, for instance, [21]).
Valuing our technological improvements is as important as conservation of resources. Conservation is something else than repair, restoration, or replacement. It requires a change in our lifestyle through education. Education is an indispensable tool for technological innovation and conservation. And it is not clear yet, which of both are more important at any historical moment in man´s life on the planet. Conservation and technological improvement can be accounted for with the proposed theory. Consequently, the second law of thermodynamics ought to be placed at the core of economists’ literacy.
If replacement can be calculated and registered for almost any action of man on the planet, we need an international framework to provide concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules and standard tables for all countries. The System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA) of the United Nations may well provide such statistical framework. As explained previously, the System of National Accounts (SNA) is an established system for producing internationally comparable economic statistics, which imposes the organization and standardization of domestic accounts. It is widely accepted and established worldwide. Bureaus of statistical office (BSO) for data recovering and economic accounting exist in almost any country. Companies and countries report economic and physical data following the established accounting procedure, and BSOs integrate them. It is a huge infrastructure. From households to companies and to countries, these accounts are presented in money values. SEEA follows the accounting structure of the SNA thus facilitating the integration of environmental statistics with economic accounts. Thus, each national BSO needs to take the responsibility for the environmental data recovery and environmental-economic accounting too. However, these offices are mainly composed by economic statisticians, which are used to convert their assets into money values. When describing the physical tables needed for SEEA, we have seen that the information recovered is rather poor since tons of materials are not sensitive enough for qualifying most of the physical phenomena. Therefore, at the countries level, both monetary accounts and physical accounts are concurrently needed. Monetization runs well from households to companies. At the countries level the money yardstick is proved insufficient for economic-environmental accounts, and at the aggregated global level accounts, money losses weight in favor of physical accounts. To see the planet´s evolution, monetary accounting is not only insufficient but inappropriate. The aggregation level of accounting determines the numéraire to be used in the accounts.
We propose “replacement” as the keyword for re-producing the planetary global accounts, from households to the whole planet in a comprehensive way. Using the exergy cost measured in international. units as a numéraire. The cost of replacement of non-renewable resources and the cost of restoring deteriorated renewable resources may be used just to account how much effort we should need to close the natural and man-made cycles. Some efforts will be done as we pay our debt, but many others will remain as a debt to future generations. Future generations will need to know this. As the former Deputy Secretary-General of OECD, Ásgeirsdóttir [22] said “the luxuries of one generation are often the needs of the next,” and “We need to achieve more sustainable consumption and production patterns, to increasingly decouple environmental pressure from economic growth, to ensure sustainable management of natural resources, and to work together in partnership to reduce poverty.” This is in effect, achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 12. For achieving it, SEEA must be the starting point and its framework. SEEA would need a step forward to convert them into a SETEA. A major intellectual effort needs to be done from the concepts stated here. At the end, the real overall accounting unit will be the residence time of the human species on the planet.
This chapter has been financed by the TRIDENTE project from the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Science.
Previous industrial revolutions have given birth to various breakthroughs in the rail industry ranging from the development of trains powered by diesel to electric. In recent times, the advent of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and robust digital solutions have produced advance technology for manufacturing. As shown in Figure 1, this innovative advances in manufacturing relates to automation and robotics [1, 2], Additive Manufacturing (AM) including subsets like 3D printing, Rapid Prototyping, Direct Digital Manufacturing [3, 4], Cyber-physical systems (CPS) [5], Physical Internet (PI) and Internet of Things (IoT) in the logistics and transportation area [6, 7] as well as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality, big data analytics and digital solutions in the informatics field [8, 9]. Many industries are now embracing the fourth industrial revolution known as Industry 4.0 amidst dynamic production challenges and increasing market forces. For instance, artificial intelligence (AI) find applications in process planning and optimization, robotic development, decision making, system control as well as pattern recognition involving automatic incident detection, image processing for traffic data collection and for identifying cracks in rail structures [10, 11]. In the same vein, artificial intelligence can also be explored in rail car manufacturing for nonlinear prediction relating to traffic demand, the deterioration of rail infrastructure as a function of traffic, construction, and environmental factors. In addition, the quest for smart, high volume and intelligence systems is a major driver that propels manufacturers’ into the development of new production technologies, which incorporates the concept of the FIR.
\nElements of the fourth industrial revolution relating to manufacturing.
The aim of these technological advances in the manufacturing sector is to increase productivity, promote automation and control and enhance good product quality and conformity to standards. This will increase equipment reliability and availability thereby making the supply chain, assembly and production lines smarter. These have also brought about a tremendous growth and innovation potential for global value chain setups. These manufacturing technologies are enhancing high rates of production at an effective unit cost. One of the advantages of high volume production is that costs are expected to reduce as the volume of production increases.
\nThis work focuses on the application of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) characterised by emerging robotic solutions with smart monitoring system and the exploration of additive manufacturing for rapid prototyping during assembly operations in the rail car industry. The use of monitoring systems will help in diagnosing and tracking the technical conditions during the assembly operation of the rail car using the online mode (in real time) in order to obtain the system and measurement performance [12, 13, 14]. The rail car manufacturers are increasingly testing the potential of additive manufacturing (AM) to break creative barriers within the three major trends driving the industry namely; product innovation, high-volume direct manufacturing and fuel efficiency with increased performance [15, 16]. The complexity and intersecting technologies driving the fourth industrial revolution and the breadth of their impact necessitates the development of innovative approaches to implement and diffuse the current and emerging technologies for rail car development. The concept of mass production involves the development of tools and automated equipment for the production of interchangeable parts and products in order to strike the right balance among cost, quality and quantity.
\nThe merit of mass production systems include the development of large products to a high degree of surface finish and precision, significant reduction in the cost of labour due to the automated nature of the assembly line and resultant reduction in the overall production cost. The effective production control and monitoring can increase process improvement with good information flow with data acquisition and management systems. This fast rate of production will enable prompt scheduling, realistic forecast and product distribution with overall increase in profitability. Although, the initial set up of mass production lines is energy and cost intensive but the initial cost are often offset as the business breaks even over time due to profit from high volume production. The major drawbacks of the mass production systems include; the replacement of personnel with automated systems and the fact that the system is relatively inflexible to production changes, which are integral part of the production processes.
\nThe fourth industrial revolution provides solutions for many complex problems in the rail industry. If adequately deployed, it has the potential to revolutionise the assembly and operation of rail car systems, leading to transformation in the development, operation and maintenance. This will deliver benefits to the rail industry and users as well as the wider economy, including innovative approach, increased capacity, improved performance and enhanced safety for passengers and workers. This means that while the rail industry will be able to save cost considerably at increased efficiency and delivery, the operational activities and maintenance will be more reliable and effective. The developed framework for rail car development with the inclusion of supply chain activities is presented in Figure 2.
\nThe framework for rail car development and supply chain activities.
The part manufacturer uses innovative material based solutions for parts development while the component manufacturers develops the parts into components which is supplied to the sub assembly manufacturer. The sub assembly manufacturer integrates different components into a sub assembly unit and develops a feasible framework for prototyping. The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) does the final assembly of various sub-systems into a system while the Information Communication technology unit (ICT) and logistics facilitates the supply chain relationships in order to keep the stakeholders abreast of advances in technology, demand and supply as well as planning and production. Some of the materials employed for the rail car manufacturing as well as the component parts developed into subassembly and final assembly are listed as follows:
Materials: Aluminium, fabrics, stainless steel, steel, rubber, plastic, glass, carbon fibre etc.
Component parts: Compressor, brake parts, blower, cable, controls, indicators, rectifiers, inverters, carbon fibre etc. gears, sensors, printed circuit boards, bolsters, runners, bars etc.
Sub assembly: Mechanical: Wheelset, suspension system, bogie, brake, engine, body side, underframe, roof, body shell etc.
Electrical/electronic: Communication, security, power, integrated software etc.
System: Rail car, rolling stock, rail track, control unit
In order to maximise the benefits of the advanced manufacturing technologies, the perceived industrial key players can develop the theory driving the elements of the new industrial revolution into practical knowledge as stated in the following subsections.
\nWelding is one of the methods usually employed for joining the components parts during rail car development. It is a complex manufacturing process, which requires the combination of a number of different factors such as material metallurgy, process parameters, welding sequence, power source, energy, speed, filler materials as well as the material combination and thickness for the design of an efficient process. Hence, an optimised welding process will bring about the development of reliable weld joints and shorter welding cycles via efficient process development. The welding operation is usually employed for the assembly operations in the underframe, body side, side panel, bogie frame and roof among others. The underframe, which is the part of the body shell, has parts, which includes the bars, runners, bolsters etc. The upper and lower brackets are usually welded on to the underframe through arc welding while the friction stir welding (FSW), resistance spot welding (RSW), metal inert gas (MIG) or laser arc welding (LAW) are usually employed for joining the body side. The body sides are made from high strength stainless steel or light aluminium materials that are welded on a frame. The body shells are first welded before the fitting operations and the windows are either cut out of the body side panels or the sides assembled in sections through the pre-installed window frames. Furthermore, the side panel are welded on to the frame of the body side. The welding process is also employed in the joining of the roof with specialised contour-shaped jigs, which holds the roof for welding operations, and ceiling installations. The bogie frame is also fabricated via welding operation before the assembly of the suspension systems. Different welding methods are employed for all the aforementioned processes depending on the design and performance requirements.
\nA robot is a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move materials, parts, tools, or specialised devices, to variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks [17]. Robotic solutions for the assembly, maintenance and repair applications in the rail car and transit coaches is essential for performing activities such as welding, grinding, cleaning, and painting due to increasing complexities, repetitive, and high volume production requirement. Other advantages of the use of robots for assembly operations include; automation via less human involvement, increased precision and productivity, consistent weld penetration resulting in better quality and surface finish, safety, improved product quality, reduction in assembly interruptions, flexibility and reduced labour costs. This work proposes a dual arm, 12-axis welding robot with advance sensors, camera and algorithm as well as intelligent control system. It also has robotic manipulator with an end-effector for gripping, positioning and welding of various component parts during rail car manufacturing. The smart sensors, which are the basic building blocks of the Internet of Things (IoT), are incorporated for data collection to enhance the process condition and real time monitoring, diagnosis and efficient communication. A large amount of data gathered through the smart sensors and IoT for are often suitable for the analysis and development of predictive algorithm. The automation of the welding process via effective communication and intelligent coordination will improve the overall efficiency and safety of the assembly process. This will decrease the failure rate, interruptions, and enhance the reliability of manufacturing and maintenance activities. The dual arm is to allow multiple task to be carried out in order to reduce the assembly time with increase in the production rate while the sensors and intelligent control system are to monitor and provide necessary feedbacks relating to weld imperfections and quality. This will lead to significant reduction in the welding cycle time with higher deposition rate and consistent weld penetration. Since the overall production cost is partly a function of the welding cycle time and the production rates, the use of the dual arm-welding robot will bring about significant reduction in the overall production cost. Another advantage is that there will be significant reduction in the welding error and expensive rework due to less human involvement, leading to the production of assembly that meets design and customer’s requirements. In addition, the choice of automated dual arm robot will sufficient address the issue of monotonous repetitive task as well as other safety and ergonomic issues relating to assembly operations in complex geometries as opposed to manual assembly lines. Depending on the type of assembly operations to be performed, the essential factors to be considered for the robotic configurations and selection include the degree of freedom, space geometry, motion characteristics as well as drive and feedback mechanism. In addition, with the process parameters specified and programmed in real time, the robot simply emulate the manual welding process by following a specified or desired trajectory to track the seam geometry and perform the welding operation. This is followed by the post weld assessment with the use of sensors and 3D cameras for the assessment of the weld integrity. The deployment of robotic solutions however is not without challenges. The use of robots for welding requires proper configuration and joint design with consistent gap conditions as variations may lead to time wasting and expensive rework. In addition, robotic welding sometimes is limited by workspace constraints and the need for sensors and intelligent systems for effective monitoring and control. In addition, robots cannot independently make corrective decisions because they are programmed.
\nFigure 3 shows the flowchart for the robotic assisted welding.
\nThe flowchart for the robotic assisted welding.
The design considerations for the robotic arm include the size of the component parts or sub assembly, welding method, welding cycle time, process parameters and repeatability. The robot is designed to move the welding torch along the weld path given the direction of motion and speed as programmed. To control the orientation of the end of the arm, the yaw, pitch and roll axes are added to the other X, Y, and Z axes to make 6 axes for each of the arm.
\nThe specification of the designed dual arm robot is presented in Table 1.
\nS/N | \nParameter | \nValue | \n
---|---|---|
1. | \nReach height | \n3 m (Max.) | \n
2. | \nRepeatability | \n0.0001 m (Max.) | \n
3. | \nVelocity | \n6 m/s (Max.) | \n
4. | \nWeight | \n400 kg | \n
5. | \nPayload | \n500 kg | \n
6. | \nDegree of freedom (DoF) | \n12 | \n
The specification of the designed dual arm robot.
For high volume production, the robot can be programmed with set of codes and instructions for the complete welding process and operation following the determination of the weld location, creation of robotic path and setting the process parameters and torch angle. The controller sends signals to the drivers and motors via computer programmes for the execution of the welding operation while the manipulator positions the component parts so that it could be easily accessed and worked upon by the robot. The CAD of the dual arm-welding robot and its exploded are shown in Figures 4 and 5 respectively.
\nThe CAD of the dual arm robot.
The exploded view.
For increased flexibility and productivity in a mass production setting, the robot is designed such that it can be mounted on a column in order to carry out welding operations of complex geometries. In such instance, the work piece is clamped and kept stationary while the robot approaches it for welding operation. This will eliminate the idle as well as loading and unloading time. In order to ensure an efficient performance of the robot, the motion of the robot was simulated using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy interference system (ANFIS) modelling which comprises of a fuzzy system whose parameters are fine-tuned using the neuro adaptive learning (NAL) method. The essence of the modelling and simulation is to determine the kinematic motion of the robotic arm. The understanding of the kinematics will ensure the determination of the motion of robot, angles of the joint and arrangement of location of the tip of the arm at the desired position (Figure 6).
\nKinematic motion of the robotic arm.
The predicted angles of joint for the robot are shown in Figure 7. The angle determines the rotation of the robot in the predetermined directions. Figure 7 indicates that the robot can rotate in both the clockwise and the clockwise directions with various angles corresponding to \n
Deduced and predicted angles of joint.
Most welding robots function semiautonomously. In order to function optimally most especially during assembly operations such as welding, there is need for the development of specialised jigs and fixtures for easy and accurate location, position and clamping of the component work piece. The production of components in mass depends upon the interchangeability that facilitates easy assembly. Mass production methods require fast and relatively simple method of work positioning for accurate operations. Specialised jigs are devices often employed to hold, support, guide and locate a work piece during manufacturing operations. For components or sub-assemblies produced in mass, the use of jigs saves machining time by eliminating the task of marking out, repetitive check or work set up, measuring and other set up before machining. With the automatic location of work piece, the assembly operation is carried out with high degree of precision and accuracy. The development of specialised but flexible jigs facilitates mass production with the simultaneous operation of different tools in a single set up thereby reducing the handling time. Hence, the use of assembly robot with specialised jigs will also reduce the overall labour and consequent fatigue as the handling operation and time is simplified and minimised. To a large extent, it saves labour cost and the overall cost of machining. The only limitation is that inaccurate location and clamping by the fixturing elements may cause variations in the dimensions of the work piece resulting in weld imperfections or distortions. However, this challenge can be solved with the use of advance sensor and intelligent systems for weld monitoring and control. The assembly of the rail car body requires the use of jigs to ensure rigid clamping and right position of the work piece during the assembly operations. The jigs are designed for specific purpose after the design of the rail car body and its specifications. Conventional jigs are not flexible enough to permit changes of work piece during machining operations. The rigidity of the conventional fixtures often reduces the volume of production, accuracy of surface finish while also increasing production time and cost. Jigs are reconfigured to provide an effective mix of flexible and dedicated equipment which is expandable and whose functionality and productivity can readily be changed when needed [18, 19]. Hence, the design of jigs for assembly operation takes into account the cost, time, safety, flexibility, degree of interchangeability, efficiency, surface finish among other factors. This will permit machining of complex geometries to the desired surface finish. For instance, during welding operations, the expansion of work piece and locator due to heat call for more clearance between the locator and the work piece to facilitate easy unloading. Following the supply of the part lists, which are the standardised elements to be held by a jig during the assembly operation, the sorting of the parts into their respective families, is made based on their differences and similarities. Different part families requires different jig orientation hence the need to sort the parts out into their respective families as parts of the same family can be held with the same jig. For instance, the upper and lower brackets of the rail car consists of hundreds of parts that need to be sorted out into part families, followed by the development of specialised jigs for each family before they are welded on to the underframe through arc welding.
\nThe cost analysis of the robotic welding considers the following; the total welding time, weld size, arc on time, deposition rate of the weld and the labour cost.
\nThe total welding time is the sum of the total arc time and the non-arc time as expressed by Eq. 1. While the arc time is the time spent by the robot during the welding operation, the non-arc time is the time spent on other activities such as set up (loading and unloading), inspection, changing wire, shielding gas or contact tips etc.
\n\n\n
The operating factor (\n
The additive manufacturing has opened up new design possibilities that would help meet the challenges relating to manufacturing processes. Manufacturing processes have shown a rapid development in this present day of industrialisation. As such, keeping up with the demands of sustainability, ever changing market dynamics, and environmental pressure, existing processes and practices are being improved and new technologies are being introduced resulting in an enormously expansion to the size and scale of industrial production [20]. Owing to the movement of mass production to developing countries, a rapid attention is paid to low volume innovative production of customised and sustainable products with high added value being observed with evolving manufacturing technologies to stabilise the economies of other domicile producing countries. In the same manner, competing with the ever-changing supply dynamics as a result of globalisation, manufacturing industries sought after new fabrication techniques to prepare themselves with the necessary tools for increased flexibility and economic low volume production. Additive Manufacturing is considered as one such technique of preparing for mass production due to its flexibility in manufacturing.
\nAdditive manufacturing (AM) is defined as “the process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies, such as traditional machining” according to American Society of Testing and Materials [21]. A lot have already been achieved on the way to the widespread application of AM technology. This is not limited to new design freedom, elimination of tools and fixtures, economic low volume production. However, the present and future development in the additive manufacturing industry should be adopted by industries as this new and potentially disruptive technology can be explored to produce high value products and generate new business opportunities [22].
\nThe ability to fabricate several physical models directly from digital data is a key factor to ensuring product development cycle, hence, assisting in the intelligent manufacturing of products. This is in line with Industry 4.0 depicts smart production. Given that AM is an embedded technique in a digitally connected factory, it involves a lot of information and data processing and transmission between the manufacturing parties involved. Much of the information acquired and transmitted will be of great value during production, thereby, enhancing mass production [23].
\nIn traditional means of production such as injection moulding, “tooling costs” are significant, accounting for as much as 93.5% of traditional manufacturing costs, while in AM the only outlay involved is in updating the design files [24]. Instead of economies of scale, AM can create “economies of scope”. As there are, fewer costs associated with switching between making different things, adopting the technology makes it easier for companies to bring a range of products to market.
\nAdopting and modifying the architecture of the framework proposed by Mellor et al. [22] by focusing on technological variables. The technology factors in the production creation process through AM have been categorised into front-end factors comprising data-preparation and applied software, into machine related factors such as raw material supply, maintenance issues, production capacity and surface quality, and into back-end factors that comprise post-processing steps. The technological factors are as depicted in Figure 8.
\nTechnology factors in the AM production creation process [22].
Products suitable for AM production are desired to have one or more of the following characteristics: high degree of customisation, increased design optimised functionality and low volume production. The factors influencing AM implementation for mass production are categorised into technological, operational, organisational and internal/external factors according to Saberi et al. [25]. These are further enlisted in Figure 9.
\nFramework for influencing additive manufacturing implementation for mass production [22, 25].
The factors influencing additive manufacturing implementation for mass production are as follow;
Technological factors: Additive manufacturing involves the elimination of tooling and fixturing, design modification for flexibility and function, lower material wastage and inventory etc. Hence, technological considerations are divided into front-end factors, machine related factors, back end factors and overall process challenges.
Operational factors: Production planning and control systems are crucial in all evaluated cases for controlling for the quality of the process output. The unique characteristics of the additive manufacturing processes require new design tools and practices to be developed. There is not an absolute geometric freedom and based on the specific process, different considerations have to be taken into account when designing products.
Organisational factors: The operation strategy for AM systems vendor is characterised by offering comprehensive customer support and by deriving revenues from powder supply and maintenance service. Organisational structure of a company, often defined by its size, is the key factor to successful implementation of new manufacturing technology and therefore it could be essential for an organisation to first re-design organisational structures and processes before adopting a new manufacturing technology [26].
Internal and external factors: The level of success in the implementation of a complex technology innovation is often related to the level of user-supplier interaction. Machine manufacturers and other additive manufacturing technology companies can play a role in effective implementation of the technology by advising on operational and organisational changes to the user geared towards mass production.
AM technology also enables some manufacturers to alter their production processes, simplifying supply chains by reducing the number of assembly steps that a product must undergo to reach its final form. AM does this by giving designers the ability to redesign parts to take advantage of part and sub-assembly consolidation. Parts and sub-assemblies machined as separate pieces can be manufactured as single objects using AM. This can have major impacts on the supply chain, including reductions in labour inputs, the required tooling and machining centres, and work-in-process inventory [27].
\nIn this work, the deployment of recent technological advances relating to the fourth industrial revolution particularly the use of robotic and additive manufacturing solutions for mass production in the rail industry was discussed. A dual arm, 12-axis welding robot with advance sensors, camera and algorithm as well as intelligent control system was designed in the Solidworks 2017 environment and simulated using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy interference system (ANFIS) in order to evaluate the performance of the robot and determine the kinematic motion of the robotic arm. The simulation results showed the smooth motion of the robot and its suitability to carry out the welding operations for mass production of components during rail car manufacturing. In addition, the prospects of additive manufacturing for mass production in the rail manufacturing industry can be harnessed due to its ability to fabricate several physical models directly from digital data through additive manufacturing. This is a key factor in ensuring mass production and rapid product development cycle.
\nFurthermore, the deployment of virtual and augmented reality (VAR), with machine vision and light-based communication technologies (LiFi); artificial intelligence (AI) and digital solutions in rail car manufacturing as well as monitoring systems with low-cost sensor networks and smart algorithms are will boost mass production, cost effectiveness, process improvement, reliability and safety in the railway industry. It will also make the supply chain faster and flexible with attendant increase in productivity and efficiency due to access to real time data, digital business models and virtual simulation tools. This will also bring about significant improvement in the developmental stages of the rolling stock, which encompasses design, fabrication and optimization.
\nIntechOpen celebrates Open Access academic research of women scientists: Call Opens on February 11, 2018 and closes on March 8th, 2018.
",metaTitle:'Call for Applications: "IntechOpen Women in Science 2018" Book Collection',metaDescription:"IntechOpen celebrates Open Access academic research of women scientists: Call Opens on February 11, 2018 and closes on March 8th, 2018.",metaKeywords:null,canonicalURL:"/page/women-in-science-book-collection-2018/",contentRaw:'[{"type":"htmlEditorComponent","content":"On February 9th, 2018, which marks the official celebration of UNESCO’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we have announced we are seeking contributors for the upcoming “IntechOpen Women in Science 2018” Book Collection. The program aims to support women scientists worldwide whose academic needs include quality assurance, peer-review, fast publishing, collaboration among complementary authors, immediate exposure, and post-publishing citations reporting.
\\n\\nAPPLYING FOR THE “INTECHOPEN WOMEN IN SCIENCE 2018” OPEN ACCESS BOOK COLLECTION
\\n\\nWomen scientists can apply for one book topic, either as an editor or with co-editors, for a publication of an OA book in any of the scientific categories that will be evaluated by The Women in Science Book Collection Committee, led by IntechOpen’s Editorial Board. Submitted proposals will be sent to designated members of the IntechOpen Editorial Advisory Board who will evaluate proposals based on the following parameters: the proposal’s originality, the topic’s relation to recent trends in the corresponding scientific field, and significance to the scientific community.
\\n\\nThe submissions are now closed. All applicants will be notified on the results in due time. Thank you for participating!
\\n"}]'},components:[{type:"htmlEditorComponent",content:"On February 9th, 2018, which marks the official celebration of UNESCO’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we have announced we are seeking contributors for the upcoming “IntechOpen Women in Science 2018” Book Collection. The program aims to support women scientists worldwide whose academic needs include quality assurance, peer-review, fast publishing, collaboration among complementary authors, immediate exposure, and post-publishing citations reporting.
\n\nAPPLYING FOR THE “INTECHOPEN WOMEN IN SCIENCE 2018” OPEN ACCESS BOOK COLLECTION
\n\nWomen scientists can apply for one book topic, either as an editor or with co-editors, for a publication of an OA book in any of the scientific categories that will be evaluated by The Women in Science Book Collection Committee, led by IntechOpen’s Editorial Board. Submitted proposals will be sent to designated members of the IntechOpen Editorial Advisory Board who will evaluate proposals based on the following parameters: the proposal’s originality, the topic’s relation to recent trends in the corresponding scientific field, and significance to the scientific community.
\n\nThe submissions are now closed. All applicants will be notified on the results in due time. Thank you for participating!
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