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In response to increasing concerns about domestic food safety issues, establishing tracking systems in the food industry is mandatorily required under newly launched food safety laws. However, the kinds of monitoring and certification systems that should be set up to ensure practical adoption and the effectiveness of the regulation remain unclear. This study aims to analyze consumers' preferences for milk traceability, with particular interest in investigating how consumers' preferences could be affected by monitoring and certification systems of the regarding system. Survey data from a choice-based conjoint (CBC) experiment are used to achieve this objective. In the experiment, milk is defined by a set of attributes in which we assume that milk traceability can be certified by three entities: the government, an industrial association, and a third party. The CBC data are then analyzed by using the alternative-specific form of a conditional Logit (McFadden's Choice) model. We found that urban Chinese consumers have a strong desire for traceable milk, but their preference for traceable milk is significantly related to the associated certificate issuers. Currently, the highest willingness-to-pay goes to government certificated traceable milk, followed by industrial association certificated and third-party certificated milks. In the future, however, consumers are likely to give more credit to third-party certification with rising income and knowledge.JEL classifications: D12, Q18

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Abstract:A state-of-charge (SOC) versus open-circuit-voltage (OCV) model developed for batteries should preferably be simple, especially for real-time SOC estimation. It should also be capable of representing different types of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), regardless of temperature change and battery degradation. It must therefore be generic, robust and adaptive, in addition to being accurate. These challenges have now been addressed by proposing a generalized SOC-OCV model for representing a few most widely used LIBs. The model is developed from analyzing electrochemical processes of the LIBs, before arriving at the sum of a logarithmic, a linear and an exponential function with six parameters. Values for these parameters are determined by a nonlinear estimation algorithm, which progressively shows that only four parameters need to be updated in real time. The remaining two parameters can be kept constant, regardless of temperature change and aging. Fitting errors demonstrated with different types of LIBs have been found to be within 0.5%. The proposed model is thus accurate, and can be flexibly applied to different LIBs, as verified by hardware-in-the-loop simulation designed for real-time SOC estimation.

A novel flow battery: A lead acid battery based on an electrolyte with soluble lead(II) Part VIII. The cycling of a 10 cm × 10 cm flow cell a b s t r a c tThe design of a 10 cm × 10 cm flow cell for the soluble lead acid flow battery is described. A number of extended charge/discharge cycling experiments are presented to demonstrate the capability of the battery to cycle over lengthy periods and to identify the problems that limit the number of cycles that can be achieved. A charge efficiency below 100%, leading to a build up of deposits on both electrodes and a consequent drop in the concentration of Pb 2+ in the electrolyte are found to limit cycle life.