| 1. |
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
- Zhang, Chi, et al.
(författare)
-
Crowd-funding Intention and Willingness-to-pay for a Sustainable Milk Product with Integrated Photovoltaic Water Pumping System in China
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In comparison with current financing mechanisms for renewable energy systems, crowd-funding financing mechanism offers a new potential source of financing with recent use of social media. Crowd-funding financing mechanism can also increases the social supports for renewable energy systems as users and investors turn to be more actively engaged in energy systems. As a new potential source of financing, crowd-funding mechanism has different forms, including donation, lending, equity and product reward approaches. In this paper, discrete choice model was used to explore whether crowd-funding financing with a novel sociotechnical product reward practice, has the attractions for potential customers to pay for a more sustainable milk product with distributed photovoltaic (PV) system. We empirically investigated the product reward crowd funding with the specific integrated photovoltaic water pumping (PVWP) system in dairy milk production in China. 48 in-depth interviews were adopted for qualitative analysis of determinants of customer milk purchase decision. The ordered probit regression was employed with 357 online surveys to systematically estimate the purchase intention and willingness to pay value for the online-crowd-funding sustainable milk. Customer behaviours, environmental consciousness, and the individual socio-demographic factors were tested as potential explanatory variables. In the survey and depth interview samples, we found interviewees as potential customers showed strong purchase intentions to the crowd funding dairy milk for noticing milk quality and nutritious improvement, emission reduction and environmental benefits by the integrated PVWP system. In our findings of the regression results, the potential customers with higher income-level, at the age with young children or planning to have children were found with higher willingness to pay than other customers for crowd funding the sustainable dairy milk. The familiarity and popularity with online shopping and pre-sale purchase in China made customers more open and active towards pre-pay and crowd-funding mechanism.
|
|
| 4. |
- Das, Sambit, 1994-, et al.
(författare)
-
Probing the electronic structure of imidazole complexes in solution with quantum chemistry and X-ray absorption spectroscopy
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- By combing soft X-ray spectroscopy and theoretical calculations, characterization of the shared proton in the imidazole molecular complex has been done. With nitrogen core-level excitations as a sensitive reporter about the protonation status, a new absorption resonance is observed at a pH where exactly half of the imidazoles are protonated, right between the known absorptions of pure imidazole and pure imidazolium. Supported by TDDFT calculations, the spectral signature has been assigned to the sharing of the excess proton between two imidazole molecules in an asymmetric double minimum potential. Analysis of the discrete core excitations reveals shared electronic attributes between the molecular complex and individual monomers. The theoretical investigation also uncovers the influence of the shared proton on the intrinsic features and the overall spectral outcome.
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
- Zhang, Chi, et al.
(författare)
-
Economic Assessment of Photovoltaic Water Pumping Integration with Dairy Milk Production
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As dairy consumption grows, domestic dairy farms face challenges in reducing the cost of feeds and the production of high-quality milk for market demands. This paper aims to introduce and integrate solar energy into the milk production chain to investigate its economic performance. By collecting data on milk production processes from 11 dairy farms in China, we quantified electricity usage and costs of milk production to identify the best and worst cases. Crop yields response to the water demand and the electricity requirements of the dairy farms were considered. The study simulated scenarios of self-sufficiency at 20%, 80%, and 100%, in the identified farms by integrating a photovoltaic water pumping (PVWP) system to provide both power and water for alfalfa and other feeds’ irrigation and subsequent milk production. We evaluated annual discounted cost, revenue and net profit under each scenario and case. The results showed that a dairy farm with an integrated PVWP system and self-sufficient feeds would lead to value add-ins, such as electricity saving with solar energy generation, economic cost saving of crops, and CO2 emission reduction. The analysis on return on investment (ROI) and internal rate of return (IRR) revealed that not all the self-sufficient feeds can bring positive marginal profit. Among the investigated scenarios and cases, the dairy farm marked out by the highest ROI with 3.12 and IRR with 20.4%, was the farm where the integrated PVWP system was used to reach 20% self-sufficiency (self-production of only alfalfa). The other scenarios and cases with higher levels of self-sufficiency showed lower ROIs and IRRs. This indicates that high self-production levels of feeds decrease the total profit due to high investment cost. Sensitivity analyses of crop price and operational cost were conducted for ROI with single and double factor approaches. Scale and production of feeds proportions should be carefully considered in improving the economic performance of dairy milk production.
|
|
