Meng Zhang

Winner of the 2022 Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for best book on forest and conservation history, sponsored by the Forest History SocietyHonorable Mention for the 2022 ISCLH First Biennial Book Prize, sponsored by the International Society for Chinese Law and HistoryTraces the sourcing of logs that fueled early modern urbanizationIn the Qing period (1644–1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources.Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.

Winner of the 2022 Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for best book on forest and conservation history, sponsored by the Forest History SocietyHonorable Mention for the 2022 ISCLH First Biennial Book Prize, sponsored by the International Society for Chinese Law and HistoryTraces the sourcing of logs that fueled early modern urbanizationIn the Qing period (1644–1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources.Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.

The principle of the conventional activated sludge (CAS) for municipal wastewater treatment is primarily based on biological oxidation by which organic matters are converted to biomass and carbon dioxide. After more than 100 years’ successful application, the CAS process is receiving increasing critiques on its high energy consumption and excessive sludge generation. Currently, almost all municipal wastewater treatment plants with the CAS as a core process are being operated in an energy-negative fashion. To tackle such challenging situations, there is a need to re-examine the present wastewater treatment philosophy by developing and adopting novel process configurations and emerging technologies. The solutions going forward should rely on the ways to improve direct energy recovery from wastewater, while minimizing in-plant energy consumption. This book begins with a critical overview of the energy situation and challenges in current municipal wastewater treatment plants, showing the necessity of the paradigm shift from removal to recovery in terms of energy and resource. As such, the concept of A-B process is discussed in detail in the book. It appears that various A-B process configurations are able to provide possible engineering solutions in which A-stage is primarily designed for COD capture with the aim for direct anaerobic treatment without producing excessive biosludge, while B-stage is designated for nitrogen removal. Making the wastewater treatment energy self-sustainable is obviously of global significance and eventually may become a game changer for the global market of the municipal wastewater reclamation technology. The principal audiences include practitioners, professionals, university researchers, undergraduate and post-graduate students who are interested and specialized in municipal wastewater treatment and process design, environmental engineering, and environmental biotechnology.

Digital Twin Driven Smart Manufacturing examines the background, latest research, and application models for digital twin technology, and shows how it can be central to a smart manufacturing process. The interest in digital twin in manufacturing is driven by a need for excellent product reliability, and an overall trend towards intelligent, and connected manufacturing systems. This book provides an ideal entry point to this subject for readers in industry and academia, as it answers the questions: (a) What is a digital twin? (b) How to construct a digital twin? (c) How to use a digital twin to improve manufacturing efficiency? (d) What are the essential activities in the implementation of a digital twin? (e) What are the most important obstacles to overcome for the successful deployment of a digital twin? (f) What are the relations between digital twin and New Technologies? (g) How to combine digital twin with the New Technologies to achieve high efficiency and smartness in manufacturing? This book focuses on these problems as it aims to help readers make the best use of digital twin technology towards smart manufacturing.