A Review on Life Cycle Assessment of the Olive Oil Production

Olive oil is one of the most globally recognized high-value products, with 4 million hectares cultivated in the Mediterranean area. The production process involves many stages: farming, extraction, packing, and waste treatment. Each one of these stages should present critical points for the environmental impacts, and for this reason, the entire sector is adopting mitigation strategies to begin to be more sustainable. The mitigation actions’ efficiency should be evaluated through environmental indicators or environmental impact assessment by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This review aimed to carry out an overview of recent papers (2011–2021) involving an LCA study in the olive oil supply chain by giving a framework of what is included in LCA studies and highlighting the main contributors to environmental impacts. The main scholarly literature databases have been exploited, highlighting a great increase in publications, especially from the producer countries. The review results reflect the heterogeneity of the production process. However, the use of pesticides, fertilizers, water, and fuel for machinery heavily weigh on the farming stage’s environmental impact. Finally, special focus was given to key elements of LCA studies in the olive oil supply chain, such as functional unit, system boundaries, impact categories, calculation method, and software widely used.

Disruptions in the Upstream Palm Oil Supply Chain – A case of Covid-19 Impact on Upstream Intermediaries in Malaysia

The COVID-19 pandemic had a global impact since it was first discovered in late 2019, in Wuhan, China. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 has affected over 179 million people and killed approximately 3.9 million people in more than 200 countries across the globe (WHO,2021). This outbreak has not only affected people’s lives but also disrupted global supply chains. It has shown significant effects on businesses, consumers, and the global economy. Fear of the virus has led to many companies scrambling to respond regarding employees’ job security, ensuring supply security, risk mitigation strategy, and addressing market uncertainties that are driving down demand. Broadly, the objective of this article is to highlight issues faced by the upstream palm oil supply chain actors during this pandemic. Based on the problem, the study concluded that some forms of actions (short-term & long-term) have been proposed to ensure an agile palm oil supply chain.

Effect of pin generatrix on the elastohydrodynamic lubrication performance of pin-bush pair in industrial roller chains

For industrial roller or bush chains, the bush swings relative to the pin at working condition. If proper lubrication is maintained, an elastohydrodynamic lubrication contact is formed between the pin and the bush. In this study, a custom-made pin was used to replace the steel ball of a ball-disk test rig and optical interferometric experiments were carried out to study the effect of pin generatrix on the lubrication performance. The effects of generatrix shape, stroke length and oil supply condition on the lubrication state were explored. It is found that the change of the generatrix has an important influence on the oil film thickness, especially under rare oil supply condition.

Development and Parametric Analysis of Vibration System Controlled by Hydraulic Shock Rotary Vibrator

The improvement of the energy utilization rate of a hydraulic vibration-excitation system is critical to the research and development of hydraulic vibration equipment. In this paper, a hydraulic vibration-excitation system controlled by a new type of shock rotary vibrator is proposed. A system model considering the pipeline effect was established for the hydraulic shock phenomenon. In addition, the model was compared with the one that does not consider the pipeline effect. The effectiveness of the proposed model was verified experimentally. Finally, the shock phenomenon during the process of switching the working state of the vibrator and the influence of certain important parameters of the system on the vibration output were investigated based on the proposed model. The results showed that (1) the hydraulic shock phenomenon occurred when the working state of the hydraulic vibrator was switched and (2) the hydraulic shock wave could effectively improve the excitation force of the system. The excitation force increased with an increase in the oil supply pressure, spindle speed, and load. However, it was negatively correlated with the spring stiffness. The amplitude of the vibration waveform output was positively correlated with the oil supply pressure and negatively correlated with the spindle speed and load. The amplitude first increased and then decreased as the stiffness of the vibration spring increased. The only influence of the precompressed length of the spring on the system output was its alteration of the vibration center of the system output vibration.