This handbook presents state-of-the-art research in reinforcement learning, focusing on its applications in the control and game theory of dynamic systems and future directions for related research and technology. The contributions gathered in this book deal with challenges faced when using learning and adaptation methods to solve academic and industrial problems, such as optimization in dynamic environments with single and multiple agents, convergence and performance analysis, and online implementation. They explore means by which these difficulties can be solved, and cover a wide range of related topics including: deep learning; artificial intelligence; applications of game theory; mixed modality learning; and multi-agent reinforcement learning. Practicing engineers and scholars in the field of machine learning, game theory, and autonomous control will find the Handbook of Reinforcement Learning and Control to be thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

This book analyses and quantifies how and where energy and water are consumed by the ceramic sanitary-ware industry and provides solutions as to how to reduce this. The whole production process is mapped, including modelling methods. The book begins by providing an introduction to ceramic sanitary-ware production and types of factories casting technology. It then moves on to discuss the process and energy modelling for the production line, analysis of energy and water consumptions and proposals for improvements. The last chapter presents the practical implementation of the selected modelling configuration. This book is of particular interest to water and energy management professionals within the ceramic industry, but the methods are of interest to those in other production industries as well.

For thousands of years, forest biomass or wood has been among the main energy sources of humans around the world. Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuels have replaced wood and become the dominant source of energy. The use of fossil fuels has the disadvantage of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially carbon dioxide (CO2), with the consequent warming of global climate and changes in precipitation. In this context, the substitution of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources like forest biomass is among the ways to mitigate climate change. This book summarizes recent experiences on how to manage forest land to produce woody biomass for energy use and what are the potentials to mitigate climate change by substituting fossil fuels in energy production. In this context, the book addresses how management can affect the supply of energy biomass using short-rotation forestry and the conventional forestry applying long rotations. Furthermore, the book outlines the close interaction between the ecological systems and industrial systems, which controls the carbon cycle between the atmosphere and biosphere. In this context, sustainable forest management is a key to understand and control indirect carbon emissions due to the utilization of forest biomass (e.g. from management, harvesting and logistics, and ecosystem processes), which are often omitted in assessing the carbon neutrality of energy systems based on forest biomass. The focus in this book is on forests and forestry in the boreal and temperate zones, particularly in Northern Europe, where the woody biomass is widely used in the energy industry for producing energy.

This book focuses on the fundamentals of blockchain technology along with the means and methods of its integration with Internet of Things (IoT). The book allows the reader to have a deeper understanding of blockchain technology, IoT and various application areas wherein both technologies can be implemented. The book serves the purpose of providing knowledge about the fundamentals of blockchain and IoT to a common reader along with allowing a research scholar to identify some futuristic problem areas that emerge from the convergence of both technologies. Furthermore, the authors discuss relevant application areas such as smart city, e-healthcare, smart travel, etc. throughout the course of the book. The book also talks through a few case studies illustrating the implementation and benefits of using blockchain and IoT. Provides a comprehensive view of blockchain technology and its integration with IoT; Facilitates in having a valuable understanding of various application areas pertaining to blockchain and IoT; Assists the reader in exploring new research areas wherein blockchain and IoT can find their applicability based upon their list of benefits.

This book focuses on the combination of IoT and data science, in particular how methods, algorithms, and tools from data science can effectively support IoT. The authors show how data science methodologies, techniques and tools, can translate data into information, enabling the effectiveness and usefulness of new services offered by IoT stakeholders. The authors posit that if IoT is indeed the infrastructure of the future, data structure is the key that can lead to a significant improvement of human life. The book aims to present innovative IoT applications as well as ongoing research that exploit modern data science approaches. Readers are offered issues and challenges in a cross-disciplinary scenario that involves both IoT and data science fields. The book features contributions from academics, researchers, and professionals from both fields.

Precisely matched unit-by-unit to the 2010 specification, providing a no-nonsense approach to tackling the new specification. *Full technical checks from JTL and an external technical reviewer on all text and diagrams, so that tutors can take top quality reliable content as a given. *Knowledge checks at the end of each chapter including multiple choice questions get candidates to test what they've learned, to help them keep track of their progress, and retain their motivation.

This book presents the select peer-reviewed proceedings of the International Conference on Futuristic Trends in Mechanical Engineering (ICOFTIME 2020). The contents focus on latest research in different areas of mechanical engineering such as additive manufacturing, vibrations, robotics and automation, nano and smart materials, green energy, supply chain management, aviation, and biomechanics. The book also includes numerical and optimization methods relevant for several real-life mechanical engineering problems. Given its contents, this book will prove useful for researchers and professionals alike.

The introduction of Li-ion batteries in 1991 created a tremendous change in the handheld devices landscape. Since then, the energy stored and put to use in palm-sized electronic devices has quadrupled. Devices are continuously getting more power hungry, outpacing battery development. Written by leading engineers in the field, this cutting-edge resource helps professionals overcome this challenge, offering them an insightful overview and in-depth guide to the many varied areas of battery power management for portable devices. Engineers may find the latest details on optimizing charging circuits, developing battery gauges that provide the longest possible run-time while ensuring data protection, and utilizing safety circuits that provide multiple independent levels of protection for highly energetic batteries. This unique book features detailed design examples of whole systems, providing practitioners with the real-world perspective needed to put this knowledge into practice. Readers learn how to perfect their designs, helping to ensure the development of devices that will succeed in the fast-growing portable device marketplace.It is suitable for electrical and power engineers whose work involves the development of portable, industrial, medical, or military devices.

This book presents the design and development of an access control architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) systems. It considers the significant authentication and authorization issues for large-scale IoT systems, in particular, the need for access control, identity management, delegation of access rights and the provision of trust within such systems. It introduces a policy-based access control approach for the IoT that provides fine-grained access for authorized users to services while protecting valuable resources from unauthorized access. Further, the book discusses an identity-less, asynchronous and decentralized delegation model for the IoT leveraging the advantage of blockchain technology. It also presents an approach of attribute-based identity and examines the notion of trust in an IoT context by considering the uncertainty that exists in such systems. Fully explaining all the techniques used, the book is of interest to engineers, researchers and scientists working in the field of the wireless sensor networks, IoT systems and their access control management.

This book on Applied Operations Research and Financial Modelling in Energy (AORFME) presents several applications of operations research (OR) and financial modelling. The contributions by a group of OR and Finance researchers focus on a variety of energy decisions, presenting a quantitative perspective, and providing policy implications of the proposed or applied methodologies. The content is divided into three main parts: Applied OR I: Optimization Approaches, Applied OR II: Forecasting Approaches and Financial Modelling: Impacts of Energy Policies and Developments in Energy Markets. The book appeals to scholars in economics, finance and operations research, and to practitioners working in the energy sector. This is the eighth volume in a series of books on energy organized by the Centre for Energy and Value Issues (CEVI). For this volume, CEVI collaborated with Hacettepe University's Energy Markets Research and Application Center. The previous volumes in the series are: Financial Aspects in Energy (2011), Energy Economics and Financial Markets (2012), Perspectives on Energy Risk (2014), Energy Technology and Valuation Issues (2015), Energy and Finance (2016), Energy Economy, Finance and Geostrategy (2018), and Financial Implications of Regulations in the Energy Industry (2020).

This multimedia eBook establishes a solid foundation in the essential principles of how signals interact with transmission lines, how the physical design of interconnects affects transmission line properties, and how to interpret single-ended and differential time domain reflection (TDR) measurements to extract important figures of merits and avoid common mistakes. This book presents an intuitive understanding of transmission lines. Instructional videos are provided in every chapter that cover important aspects of the interconnect design and characterization process. This video eBook helps establish foundations for designing and characterizing the electrical properties of interconnects to explain in a simplified way how signals propagate and interact with interconnects and how the physical design of transmission structures will impact performance. Never be intimidated by impedance or differential pairs again.

Shale Oil represents a huge additional global fossil fuel resource. However, extracting oil from the shale is no simple task; much still needs to be understood to make the process more cost-effective to increase economic flow rates. Clear and rigorous, Oil Shale Production Process will prove useful for those scientists and engineers already engaged in fossil fuel science and technology as well as scientists, non-scientists, engineers, and non-engineers who wish to gain a general overview or update of the science and technology of fossil fuels. Not only does the book discuss the production processes but also provides methods which should reduce environmental footprint by properly addressing: surface mining and extraction processes, in situ conversion process and hydrotreatment.
Covers production processes technologies such as: surface mining and retorting, in Situ Retoring and processes, direct and indirect retorting and hydrotreatment for shale oil.

Methods which should reduce environmental footprint

Easy-to-read understand overview of the chemistry, engineering, and technology of shale oil "

This book offers ideas to help improve digital technologies and increase their efficiency during implementation and application for researchers and practitioners. The outstanding position of the book among others is that it dwells with cyber-physical systems' progress and proposes ideas and finding around digital tools and technologies and their application. A distinguished contribution is in presenting results on Digital Twins development and application, enhancing approaches of communication and information transferring between cyber-physical systems connected within the Internet of things platforms, computer linguistic as a part of cyber-physical systems, intelligent cybersecurity and computer vision systems. The target audience of this book also includes practitioners and experts, as well as state authorities and representatives of manufacturing and industry who are interested in creating and implementing of cyber-physical systems in framework of digitalization projects.

This book analyzes the formation and evolution of the giant hydrocarbon reservoirs based on major basins onshore China. It discusses exploration and research advantages of major basins in China, such as Sichuan, Tarim, and Ordos Basins and also systematically analyzes and summarizes the formation conditions, distribution rules, and main controlling factors of deep oil and gas fields. On this basis, it forecasts the exploration prospect of China's onshore deep oil and gas, providing theoretical guidance and technical support for deep oil and gas exploration breakthrough and large-scale reserves growth. This book focuses on the analysis and discussion of hydrocarbon generation mechanism of deep-paleo source rocks, discusses the accumulation rules of cross-structural reservoir formation and oil-gas enrichment in ancient strata, the combination of gypsum-salt rocks and carbonate rocks, the potential of oil and gas accumulation under salt, the main controlling factors and distribution rules of deep oil and gas fields, and preliminarily grasps the geological understanding of the formation and distribution of deep-large oil and gas fields, namely 1abundant hydrocarbon supplied by two types of source kitchens, 2three large-scale lithologic reservoir rocks, 3hydrocarbon accumulation controlled by three paleoes (paleouplift, paleoplatform margin, and paleofaults), and 4reservoir formation across major tectonic periods. The book serves as a guidance for both researchers and students majoring in petroleum geology and other related fields.

Create affordable solid fuel blends that will burn efficiently while reducing the carbon footprint. Solid Fuel Blending Handbook: Principles, Practices, and Problems describes a new generation of solid fuel blending processes. The book includes discussions on such topics as flame structure and combustion performance, boiler efficiency, capacity as influenced by flue gas volume and temperature, slagging and fouling, corrosion, and emissions. Attention is given to the major types of combustion systems including stokers, pulverized coal, cyclone, and fluidized bed boilers. Specific topics considered include chlorine in one or more coals, alkali metals (e.g., K, Na) and alkali earth elements, and related topics.

Coals of consideration include Appalachian, Interior Province, and Western bituminous coals; Powder River Basin (PRB) and other subbituminous coals; Fort Union and Gulf Coast lignites, and many of the off-shore coals (e.g., Adaro coal, an Indonesian subbituminous coal with very low sulfur; other off-shore coals from Germany, Poland, Australia, South Africa, Columbia, and more). Interactions between fuels and the potential for blends to be different from the parent coals will be a critical focus of this of the book.

One stop source to solid fuel types and blending processes Evaluate combustion systems and calculate their efficiency Recognize the interactions between fuels and their potential energy out put Be aware of the Environmental Aspects of Fuel Blending "