Editorial

Welcome to the third issue of 2012 in which we present 10 papers on subjects that range from low-carbon manufacturing to vegetable oil-based lubricants.

The issue starts with two manufacturing papers. In the first, Branker et al. present an initial analysis of cost, energy and carbon dioxide emissions that occur during the production of a unique aluminium hat produced by single-point incremental forming. This is followed with a paper by Francis which describes a methodology for enabling customers to identify environmental requirements as part of a quality function deployment process. Continuing the focus on manufactured products, the next two papers deal with product recovery aspects. The paper by Azadivar and Ordoobadi proposes qualitative decision rules that enable a cost-effective approach to the recovery and reuse of parts from nearly new products. Zhifeng Liu et al., in their paper, consider active disassembly of recovered products and describe a design methodology based on the decapitated head method.

Moving on to the theme of construction or the built environment we present a paper by Jamshidi et al. which evaluates the use of incinerator ash in concrete. This is followed by a paper from Cobîrzan et al. which describes an energy balance programme to assist the choice of energy efficient solutions for rehabilitated buildings. The energy theme continues with a paper by Al-Badi and Bourdoucen which models alternative hybrid energy systems based on various combinations of wind turbines, photovoltaic generation, diesel engine generation and battery storage. Next, we have two papers that consider biofuels in diesel engine operation. The paper by Ganesh Shirsath et al. looks specifically at engine performance characteristics, whereas the paper by Banapurmath et al. looks specifically at mixing chamber venture, injection timing, compression ratio and exhaust gas circulation on the performance of the engine.

The final paper, by Sharma et al. has a chemical engineering theme, and considers the chemical processing of aliphatic compounds that are likely to be useful sulphur and metal-free extreme pressure lubricant additives, that are highly compatible with vegetable oil-based lubricants.