A lot of houses built during the Million Homes Programme are in need of major renovation. Today?s technology and materials are better than in the 60?s and 70?s. Both Swedish government and the European Union have set climate goals regarding energy consumption by 2020 and 2050. Achieving these goals would require better standards in buildings than the Building regulations demands, such as Umeå municipality?s construction requirements for new buildings.The report aims to investigate if a renovation of apartment buildings from the Million Homes Programme can reach Umeå municipality?s construction requirements.

This project aims to investigate whether algae can be used for biodiesel production in Italy. Algaes are a good option since they are fast growing and do not occupy arable land. The aspects that have been considered are growing, harvesting, which algae strain that is most suitable, extraction of oil, the production of biodiesel and where in Italy this could be possible due to climate. Cost? and energy calculations have been made to investigate if biodiesel produced from algae would be profitable. During the production of biodiesel there are several residues obtained. When the oil has been extracted from the algae, biogas is produced from the residual biomass by anaerobic digestion and then the electricity that can be produced is supplied to the production of biodiesel.

Heat and power stations are often in need of optimizations. A simulation model is a tool for findingways to optimize the plant. The scope of this diploma work is to develop a simulation model ofBoiler 5 at Mälarenergi AB. Boiler 5 is a circulated fluidized bed boiler that was taken into service inyear 2001. Among the included parts in the boiler are cyclone, convection part andINTREX-chambers.

Underdrainage is a costly investment but often a necessity to maintain rationalized plant cultivation, one can also see underdrainage as insurance to successful plant cultivation. Late ripening crops, low yield and difficult tillage cultivation are examples on an insufficient drainage. (Kvarnemo 1983) A drained field rise in land price and the scheme of the tiled drains is seen as a value item. The interest for underdrainage among the farmers follows with shifting economic situations within agriculture and has for long time been low. A big part of the Swedish tiled drainage systems is since 1930 and ahead. Many of these tiled drainage systems need to be replaced or complemented. The life length of one tiled drainage system varies with maintenance but can still remain in good function after 75 years with correct management.

The cost of forwarding corresponds to about one tenth of the forestry industries raw material cost. This gives a motive to do good follow-ups to get a good overview of the forwarding distance and, thus, enable improvements. Follow-ups are also justified by the possibility to make more accurate calculations of the harvesting costs, if better estimations of forwarding distance are achieved. Today (2009) Stora Enso has GPS and vehicle-computers in most of their forwarders. These are used mainly for the forwarder to follow the tracks of the harvester and for the planning leader to see how the forwarder has been driving within the stand.

International expansion has long been associated with a positive trend that many companies, regardless of industry, choosing to realize mainly to expand its market share and hence its profitability. Various theories describe differentiated strategies to promote corporate expansion. Either they shall be financed by internal funds, or balancing equity with debt, or only increase leverage in order to achieve the desired results. This study focuses on the Swedish fashion market and its degree of internationalization. The purpose is to attempt to discern whether there exists a correlation between the degree of internationalization and its financial performance.The study was based on a quantitative approach where secondary data was collected so that we then would be able to perform regression calculations.

This thesis concerns how the power quality in the grid is affected by the connection of wind power plants. As things are at present, Fortum Distribution AB has a number of wind turbines and wind parks connected to the own grid. As the pressure on building and connecting additional wind power is increasing, so is also the interest of how the already existing wind power generation affects the power quality in the nearby distribution grids. The study is performed by direction of Fortum Distribution AB and is limited to the 10 kV/40 kV-grid in Bohuslän, Sweden. The methods for calculation of power quality are compared to the results of a number of measurements.

The following article consists of two parts; one part is about house construction and the other is a specialization about radon. The house construction part describes how to project a house from start. It contains the conformation of the house, the installations needed, calculations considering the strength of the construction, energy calculation and what materials were chosen. Calculations considering the costs of building and operate the house has been carried out. The result showed that the house would cost approximately two million Swedish kroner to build and thirteen thousand kronor a year to operate.

This Master thesis is about a postal- and telegraphic building in Eskilstuna, Sweden. The construction methods for the specific building and buildings in general from the same time are described. The purpose of the report is to describe the loads acting on the building and how it has been built and why it has been rebuilt during the years. After this, possibilities of reconstruction and adaptation for today?s demands can be evaluated.

A large proportion of the energy consumption is in the building industry and a large part goes to heating our homes and premises. In the developing countries' development now threatens the large consumption of energy in our earth's climate. It is in the West world that we must be good role models in terms of energy efficiency. One solution to reduce energy consumption for heating of buildings may be to continue to build low energy houses and passive houses, but it is also about rebuilding the buildings that currently have high energy consumption such as the old Million program Houses. These buildings will be standing many years and their energy consumption will not diminish over time by itself and energy prices will certainly not diminish in the future.

The first part of this essay is about a single-family house that we have planned and projected. Thesecond part is a deeper study in ways to further insulate windows when they are not in use.In the first part the building?s design and its most important construction elements are described.The planning of all major installations (heating, domestic water, ventilation, sanitation, electricity)are reported so that one can in principle start construction of the house. In addition there arecalculations done on the building?s energy management.The result is a two stored house angled toward the south.

AbstractToday, too many construction projects are delayed and deviates from the budget. Agood project management is the basis for successful construction project. The mostcommon planning methods in the construction industry is currently Gantt chart andCPM. The problem with these is that focus is only at the time of the project anddoesn?t handle the budget.

Background: A large part of the daily political and economic debate in Sweden concerns the EU. One question that has been debated since the beginning of European integration is whether trade is created as a consequence of integration and, ifso, how great are the gains related to the increased trade. An equally important but maybe less debated question is whether countries outside the union are affected by the increased European integration. Is increased European integration made at the cost of countries outside the EU? Purpose: The purpose of this study is, by calculating trade creation and trade diversion, to evaluate if a number of developing countries? trade with Sweden has decreased after Sweden?s membership in the European Union.

This bachelor thesis is an exploratory investigation about the phenomenon 'Gamification', which by some definitions is about implementing game elements into non-game contexts. For example exercise services as Runkeeper and Nike Plus who both are available on android and iOS platforms. This study is mainly about the potential value of gamified systems and services for companies and its users and how such a system or service is developed. The thesis also discusses the development aspect of gamified systems in order to give the reader a more ?in depth? understanding about the phenomenon.

A titania-supported nickel catalyst was prepared and tested in methanation in order to evaluate its catalytic properties (activity, selectivity and specially, activity loss), and compare it with an alumina-supported nickel catalyst.The titania-supported catalyst did not only show higher stability than alumina, but also presented a different cause of deactivation, carbon formation. In addition, a kinetic model was obtained for the titania-supported catalyst, and a study of the effect of different operating conditions (temperature, composition and partial pressures of synthesis gas and water) on the deactivation rate and carbon formation of this catalyst was performed.