As the industry develops and energy demand increases, wind turbines are increasingly being used to generate electricity, resulting in an increasing number of obsolete turbine blades that need to be properly recycled or used as a secondary raw material in other industries. The authors of this work propose an innovative technology not yet studied in the literature, where the wind turbine blades are mechanically shredded and micrometric fibers are formed from the obtained powder using plasma technologies. As shown by SEM and EDS studies, the powder is composed of irregularly shaped microgranules and the carbon content in the obtained fiber is lower by up to seven times compared with the original powder. Meanwhile, the chromatographic studies show that no hazardous to the environment gases are formed during the fiber production. It is worth mentioning that this fiber formation technology can be one of the additional methods for recycling wind turbine blades, and the obtained fiber can be used as a secondary raw material in the production of catalysts, construction materials, etc.

A gliding arc discharge (GAD) plasma device has been developed and tested. Possible applications areas for GAD plasma could be microalgae suspension treatments and the creation of plasma-activated water. To understand its behavior, the influence of the input power on the electrical characteristics of the generated GAD plasma was investigated using an oscilloscope. The waveforms of the voltage and current of GAD plasma are presented. The duration of the discharge time and the evolution of the arc during discharge were determined and investigated. It was revealed that the increase in the output voltage prolonged the duration of the arc discharge. The composition of the air plasma was investigated using a flame-emission spectrometer and acousto-optic emission spectrometer. It was revealed that the main species in the emission spectra of the GAD air plasma were N₂, N₂⁺, N⁺, NO, and O species. Furthermore, the increase in the input power enhanced the ionization degree of the air plasma and increased the intensities of the emission lines associated with N₂⁺, NO, and O species. An increase in the conductivity of the BG-11 medium was observed. Physicochemical analyses of the plasma-activated BG-11 medium indicated an increase in the concentration of nitrite and nitrate ions and hydrogen peroxide with an enhancement of the voltage.

In order to make plant cultivation as economical and efficient as possible, and to reduce the amount of human errors and labour costs, autonomous systems for growing plants and, in this case, also mushrooms, are increasingly being implemented. In this work, a prototype of an electronic/automatic system was designed and manufactured for the monitoring and control of the parameters of mushroom growing conditions. Appropriate sensors were used to monitor the application parameters such as CO₂ level, temperature and humidity, and the data were sent to the main logic controller using an RS 485 interface-based local data transmission network. Both the main controller and the individual parts of the system were made on the basis of PIC18F25K83 microcontrollers, using the C programming language to create the program code. In order to achieve optimal system operation, a software algorithm was created to ensure fast system operation. During the production, the PCBs of the system were optimized to achieve the smallest possible dimensions and optimal construction and the arrangement of the active electronic elements. For the convenience of the user, a system application was created so that it is possible to monitor information from the environmental sensors and the process of parameter control. This work aimed to show that such autonomous systems based on environmental sensor monitoring are universal and can be applied to a large number of plant species. In addition, the capabilities of the plant cultivation system can be expanded if needed by additionally connecting relevant environmental sensors and environmental parameter regulation units.

Al₂O₃ and Al₂O₃-ZrO₂ coatings were deposited on stainless steel using atmospheric plasma spraying. The influence of arc current and zirconia addition on the surface morphology of the coating, phase composition and tribological properties under dry sliding conditions were investigated. The addition of zirconia reduced the surface roughness of the coatings. The X-ray diffraction measurements indicated that the Al₂O₃ coatings were composed of β-Al₂O₃, α-Al₂O₃, and γ-Al₂O₃ phases. The addition of zirconia led to the formation of tetragonal and monoclinic phases of zirconia in the as-sprayed coatings. The friction coefficients of Al₂O₃ and Al₂O₃-ZrO₂ coatings were similar and varied in the range of 0.72–0.75. The specific wear rates of the as-sprayed coatings were reduced with the increase of arc current. It was obtained that the wear rates of the Al₂O₃-ZrO₂ coatings were at least three times lower compared to Al₂O₃ coatings.

The plasma-activated reactive evaporation technique was used for the formation of indium-tin-oxide (ITO) films. The ITO films were deposited on a heated (up to 350 °C) glass substrates using various mass ratios of indium and tin. The optical and electrical properties of the deposited ITO films were determined. The influence of the indium-to-tin mass ratio on the optical transmittance, bandgap, resistivity and resistance of ITO films was investigated. The bandgap of ITO films was increased from 3.18 to 3.37 eV, and the M_In/M_Sn ratio increased from 4.25 to 10.00. The average values of optical transmittance at the visible light wavelengths increased from ~43% to ~64% as tin mass was reduced. We demonstrated that ITO films with low resistivity ranging from 7.4 × 10⁻³ to 43.7 × 10⁻³ Ω·cm were obtained, and the M_In/M_Sn ratio changed from 4.25 to 10.00. The ITO film formed at the 9.25 M_In/M_Sn ratio demonstrated high transparency, a wide bandgap and optimal resistivity and resistance values. The heating characteristics indicated that the frozen ice on the ITO films was completely removed after 30 s when the applied voltage was 24 V.