Emissions from the road transport sector are a major contributor to the climate change. Commonly used heavy vehicles powered by diesel engines emit toxic and harmful compounds that adversely affect the environment. For this reason, increasingly newer Euro emission standards are being introduced. Therefore, the emission performance of heavy-duty vehicles used in the transportation processes of diverse loads was investigated. The first research object was a set of vehicles equipped with a crane used for loading and unloading timber. The measurements were carried out in a specially designed research test reflecting the way the vehicle is used. It consisted of the drive to the loading site, the transport of timber to the destination and the processes of loading and unloading timber. The test route included driving on both unpaved forest roads and asphalt roads. The second research object was a set of vehicles used in long-distance road transport. The research route characterizing the traff... [more]

Biodiesel is a clean-burning, alternative diesel replacement fuel that may be used in existing diesel engines in either pure or blended form without or with modest modifications. In some countries, biodiesel is recommended as a potential alternative to diesel fuel since it is a renewable energy source that is environmentally benign. The main problems with the widespread commercialization of biodiesel are its high viscosity and its limited feedstock, due to which complete replacement of diesel fuel is not possible and the use of blends of biodiesel and petrodiesel are being used increasingly worldwide. The paper presents a behavioral study of the petro-based diesel, and their blend (B20, B40, B60, B80) with Pongamia and Jatropha biodiesel. The results reveal a considerable viscosity lowering due to the dilution effect of increasing diesel concentration in both the cases. In addition, improvements in oxidation stability in both cases have also been observed. The research shows that as th... [more]

The development of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) for powering vehicles requires high power densities. The radial flows generated by the insert structures in SOFC fuel channels could improve the power density by facilitating the fuel to enter the porous anode for electrochemical reactions. In this paper, we developed a 2D axisymmetric numerical model to examine the influence of a convergent conical ring insert on the flow and mass transfer characteristics in a tubular SOFC. The mass transfer conductance of fuel was analyzed and proposed to quantify the performance of different insert designs. The effects of the radius and offset angle of the convergent conical ring insert were examined and analyzed. We demonstrate that increasing the insert radius could increase the fuel mass transfer conductance and effectively improve the net output power of the tubular SOFC by 12% while the offset angle of the inserts exhibits a negligible impact on the fuel mass transfer conductance. Increasing the... [more]

This study comprehensively examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on energy consumption in the United States. The purpose of the study is to quantify the effects of lockdowns and pandemic disruptions on energy consumption trends in order to inform policymakers and utilities on how to prepare for such events in the future. The study focuses on 2020 data collected by the Federal government. The effects are quantified using descriptive statistics. State-wise and sector-wise data have been presented using plots and heat maps. Related metrics like COVID case data, GDP, emissions, and expenditures were also presented. The total energy consumption fell by 7.5% in 2020. Besides Alaska, every state saw a decrease in energy, with some as high as 26%. The residential sector had the most states that saw an increase in energy, stemming from lockdowns and working from home. Similarly, petroleum consumption saw a decrease of 11.4% as a result of a decrease in travel. Biomass-related renewable... [more]

Geothermal heat pump systems (GHP) are the spearhead of geothermal achievement and development, and one of the fastest growing applications of renewable energy technologies worldwide. When Swiss GHP activities started in the late 1970s, market introduction and penetration needed science-based proof of reliable, stable, long-term GHP operation. A special, extended project, realized in a field-laboratory setting, provided this proof. Detailed measurements, as well as numerical model simulations, proved the sustainable operation of the installed GHP system. The measurement setup, the recording of the various time series, and their interpretation are presented. Furthermore, basic perceptions were elaborated concerning geothermal resources behavior in production and regeneration. The Swiss GHP was developed from nothing. Early GHP installation costs halved within 20 years; GHP growth was nearly exponential from 1980 to 2020 (8.5% annually). Drilled borehole heat exchanger (BHE) meters are t... [more]

Solar concentrator collectors have the potential of meeting the medium- and high-temperature thermal energy demands of the world. A heat transfer fluid (HTF) is a vital component of a concentrating system to transfer and store thermal energy. This paper presents the design development of a solar paraboloidal dish concentrator (SPDC) and a study of selected HTFs using the storage receiver system of the concentrator. The locally designed SPDC (diameter 1.21 m and height 0.20 m) has features like light weight, effortless tracking, convenient transportation along with high optical and thermal performance. Three HTFs, silicone oil (SO), engine oil (EO) and ethylene glycol (EG), are selected based on their favorable properties for medium temperature (150−300 °C) applications. The characteristic parameters of HTFs, heating rate (Rh), instant thermal efficiency (ηith) and the overall heat loss coefficient (UL), are illustrated and determined experimentally. A new characteristic parameter, the... [more]

Balancing electricity demand and supply remains a significant challenge for the power systems in developing countries, such as Nigeria. In Nigeria, there is a shortage of adequate power supply, and demand-side management (DSM) plays a minor role in the power balancing mechanism with load shedding being widely used. The paper aims to review and compare various existing and emerging DSM strategies in developing countries. An extensive and systematic review was conducted to evaluate potential solutions using DSM to increase the overall energy efficiency in the Nigerian electricity market. This study found that, although the technical and economic potentials of DSM vary in developed countries, the uptakes of DSM have been severely hampered hence preventing the full exploitation and utilisation of the full potential of DSM. The initiatives of a DSM model in Nigeria and other developing countries can play a significant role in addressing demand and supply challenges but an upgrade of the ene... [more]

Renewable energy forecasting is a key for efficient resource use in terms of power generation and safe grid control. In this study, we investigated a short-term statistical forecasting model with 1 to 3 h horizons using photovoltaic operation data from 215 power plants throughout South Korea. A vector autoregression (VAR) model-based regional photovoltaic power forecasting system is proposed for seven clusters of power plants in South Korea. This method showed better predictability than the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. The normalized root-mean-square errors of hourly photovoltaic generation predictions obtained from VAR (ARIMA) were 8.5−10.9% (9.8−13.0%) and 18.5−22.8% (21.3−26.3%) for 1 h and 3 h horizon, respectively, at 215 power plants. The coefficient of determination, R2 was higher for VAR, at 4−5%, than ARIMA. The VAR model had greater accuracy than ARIMA. This will be useful for economical and efficient grid management.

Most of the world’s energy requirements are still derived from natural resources. This will result in a catastrophic energy crisis with negative environmental consequences. The increased energy supply will result in greater consumption of non-renewable sources. The production of biomass producer gas (BPG) from biomass gasification has received significant attention as an alternative fuel due to the depletion of non-renewable resources. This experimental study aimed to determine the flame propagation, flame propagation speed, and chamber pressure trace of BPG at different equivalence ratios. Understanding the characteristics of the BPG’s combustion, finding lower greenhouse gas emissions of BPG, and minimizing the use of fossil fuels is necessary to mitigate these problems. Using the direct visualization technique, an optical constant volume combustion chamber (CVCC) was developed to measure combustion characteristics. Liquid petroleum gas (LPG) was used to compare the flame propagation... [more]

Recently proposed organic flash cycles maintain lower irreversibility in the evaporator than traditional organic Rankine cycles. This study presented a novel combined heat and power system that was based on a regenerative organic flash cycle, in order to improve thermal efficiency. Parametric analyses for the proposed combined heat and power system were carried out, using six working fluids, and performed with heat source temperatures and heat sink temperatures that ranged from 130 °C to 170 °C, and from 20 °C to 40 °C, respectively. The results showed that the preferable working fluid was altered, with a change in the operating condition. Isopentane, R1234ze(Z), R1233zd(E), and R245fa performed better at a cooling water temperature of 20 °C. The system that used R245fa showed more promising performance when the heat source temperatures were set to 150 °C and 160 °C. R365mfc was determined to be the best working fluid at a heat source temperature of 150 °C, and at cooling water tempera... [more]

Coal permeability is related to the fracture-pore structure of coal and is a key factor in determining gas drainage efficiency. The characteristics of the methane flow in coal fractures are different from those in coal matrix pores. However, due to the difficulty of observing fast methane flow in coal fractures, the effect of gas flow in coal fractures on coal permeability has seldom been considered and investigated. In this study, a cylindrical coal sample is used for the measurement of coal permeability under different gas pressures, and an abrupt change in coal permeability evolution was observed. Then, a tandem fracture-pore permeability model was adopted to analyze these new methane flow phenomena. In this permeability model, the deformation of coal fractures was directly analyzed and modeled without the reversed derivation. With the consideration of elastic modulus of coal fractures, the deformation of coal fractures is controlled by the effective strain of coal fractures, the ad... [more]

Tracking the trend of restricted access to natural fossil energy resources determines the need to search for alternative energy sources, introducing energy-efficient technologies, and optimizing the energy supply system based on intelligent networks. Understanding district heating enterprises’ readiness to work with innovative renewable resources based on climate neutrality plays a unique role. Thus, this article is devoted to the study of the features of providing and determining the district heating enterprises’ capacity to integrate climate management of innovative resources to produce green thermal energy. The research methodology is based on a combination of systemic, process and cybernetic approaches to determining the resource sustainability of district heating enterprises for implementing climate innovations. The scientific novelty of the study lies in a comprehensive assessment of the ability of district heating enterprises to use renewable resources (biomass, waste, hydropowe... [more]

The rapidly increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide lead to a threat of global climate change. As one of the major sources of carbon emissions in the Antarctic region, shipborne tourism in the Antarctic is expanding rapidly. Consequently, the carbon emissions of shipborne tourism in Antarctica are rapidly increasing. However, there is not enough attention being paid to this issue. In this paper, a calculation model was established to calculate the carbon emissions of cruise ships from the 2003/04 season to the 2016/17 season. The evolution of the carbon emissions from Antarctic cruise ships was described. An aggregate energy efficiency index was developed to evaluate the energy efficiency performance of Antarctic vessels. The key drivers were analyzed to find the paths of carbon reduction. The results show that: (1) The emissions per passenger-trip did not show a downward trend. The total carbon emissions increased continuously with the increasing number of tourists. The total carb... [more]

A novel Class-C pulsed power amplifier with a voltage divider integrated with a high-voltage transistor and switching diodes is proposed to reduce DC power consumption and increase the maximum output power for handheld ultrasound instruments. Ultrasonic transducers in ultrasound instruments are devices that convert electrical power into acoustic power or vice versa, which are triggered by power amplifiers. Efficient power conversion is also very important to avoid thermal issues in handheld ultrasound instruments owing to limited battery power and excessive heat generation caused by the enclosed structures of the handheld ultrasound instruments. Consequently, higher output power and lower DC power consumption are desirable for a power amplifier. Therefore, a circuit to control power amplifiers was developed. The measured output power (94.66 W) and DC power consumption (2.12 W) when using the proposed circuit are better than those when using the existing Class-C pulsed power amplifier (... [more]

All solid-state room-temperature lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have gained increasing attention due to their ability to eliminate the polysulfides shuttle effects and the safety dangers associated with the liquid electrolytes. Herein, a novel composite solid-state electrolyte, which is nickel-tungsten carbides (NiWC) over mesoporous silica (SBA-15) filled polyethylene oxide (PEO), was developed and investigated for Li-S batteries. The filler minimizes the crystallinity of the PEO and increases the ionic conductivity of the electrolyte, resulting in lowering the AC impedance of electrolyte composite from 26,256 ohm to 2416 ohm and to 5734 ohm after adding the electrolyte material with Ni/W ratios of 1:1 and 9:1, respectively. A high initial specific capacity of 1305 mAh g−1 and a capacity retention of 66.7% after 8 cycles at C/10 was obtained at room temperature after adding NiWC/SBA-15 with a Ni/W ratio of 1:1. This novel composite solid-state electrolyte shows a remarkable long-term... [more]

Aiming at the problem that the current dynamic economic dispatch (DED) fails to consider the response risk of spinning reserve caused by the fluctuation and uncertainty of wind power, we work out a DED problem considering time-coupling spinning reserve response risk while the stochasticity and variability arising from RESs are taken into consideration. The developed framwork unified the response risk of reserve caused by forced shutdown of the unit into the response risk caused by time coupling. The expected customer interruption cost (ECOST) and the expected abandoned wind cost considering this reserve response risk are added to the objective function. While seeking the minimum objective function, the system is automatically configured with suitable reserve to ensure the consistency of the system’s response risk in each period. An improved multi-universe parallel quantum genetic algorithm was used to solve the model. Numerical examples and analysis prove the effectiveness and feasibil... [more]

The poor operational stability of electrolytes is a persistent impediment in building redox flow battery technology; choosing suitable stability additives is usually the research direction to solve this problem. The effects of five phosphate containing additives (including 1-hydroxyethylidene-1,1-diphosphonic acid (HEDP), hexamethylene diamine tetramethylene phosphonic acid (HDTMPA), amino trimethylene phosphonic acid (ATMPA), sodium ethylenediamine tetramethylene phosphonate (EDTMPS), and diethyl triamine pentamethylene phosphonic acid (DTPMP)) on the thermal stability and electrochemical performance of the positive electrolyte of vanadium redox flow battery were investigated. With 0.5 wt% addition, most of the selected additives were able to improve the thermal stability of the electrolyte. HEDP and HDTMPA extended the stability time of the pentavalent vanadium electrolyte at 50 °C from 5 days (blank sample) to 30 days and 15 days, respectively. The electrochemical performance of the... [more]

The efficiency of a fluidized bed reactor depends on the bed fluid dynamic behavior, which is significantly influenced by the bubble properties. This work investigates the bubble properties of a bubbling fluidized bed reactor using computational particle fluid dynamic (CPFD) simulations and electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) measurements. The two-dimensional images (along the reactor horizontal and vertical planes) of the fluidized bed are obtained from the CPFD simulations at different operating conditions. The CPFD model was developed in a commercial CPFD software Barracuda Virtual Reactor 20.0.1. The bubble behavior and bed fluidization behavior are characterized form the bubble properties: average bubble diameter, bubble rise velocity, and bubble frequency. The bubble properties were determined by processing the extracted images with script developed in MATLAB. The CPFD simulation results are compared with experimental data (obtained from the ECT sensors) and correlations in t... [more]

Integrated energy systems (IES) for combined power, heat and refrigeration supply achieved a wide application due to high flexibility in matching current loading. So as electricity is easily convertible into any other form of energy, gas engines are widely applied as driving engines characterized by high electrical and overall efficiency of about 45% and 90%, respectively. However, the highest thermal efficiency is achieved at full matching heat generated by the engine and heat transformed. This is often impossible in actual practice, especially if the heat is transformed into refrigeration by the most efficient and widespread absorption lithium-bromide chillers (ACh) and the heat not consumed by the ACh is removed from the atmosphere through an emergency radiator. The unused heat might be transformed by an ejector chiller (ECh) as the simplest and cheapest. So as the thermodynamic efficiency of any combustion engine is influenced essentially by the sucked air temperature, the excessiv... [more]

This research presents the design and simulation of a distributed secondary control based on a consensus algorithm for the efficient management of an isolated DC microgrid (MG-DC) that secures the distribution of active power according to the capacities of each storage unit, reducing duty cycles and extending its life cycle. The balance of powers is fulfilled through a photovoltaic (PV) generation unit and an energy storage system (ESS) based on batteries. The PV Boost converter has a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller based on the perturb and observe (P & O) method. In contrast, a Buck−Boost converter is integrated into each battery, which is bidirectionally controlled through a local controller and a primary droop control that balances the required power at the loads. It produces a voltage deviation on the DC bus. To compensate for this deviation, a distributed secondary control strategy based on consensus is proposed to restore the voltage while managing the power sharin... [more]

Pollutant emission standards and, in particular, those concerning particles from an internal combustion engine (ICE) are becoming increasingly restrictive. Thus, it is important to determine the main factors related to the production of particulate matter. In this article, the phenomenon of oil sweeping by the blowby gases between the rings/piston/cylinder is investigated. First, a blowby gas simulation model based on experimental results from a Turbocharged Gasoline Direct Injection (TGDI) is developed. From this model, it is possible to characterise the amount of oil swept by the blowby gases. This depends on the endgap position of both the compression and sealing rings. It also depends on the intensity of the blowby flow rate, which is highest at low rpm and high load. At 1500 rpm and full load, this flowrate exceeds 25 mg.cycle−1. From this result, it is possible to quantify the amount of oil swept by these gases as a function of the endgap position. For θrings=180°,  the quan... [more]

In this work, the performance of on-board vehicle exhaust emission sensors is investigated and compared to reference laboratory and on-road instrumentation for two modern diesel light-duty commercial vehicles, type-approved as Euro 6d-TEMP-EVAP-ISC and Euro 6d-ISC-FCM. The first step of the analysis was to perform emissions tests in the laboratory and compare the NOx concentrations registered by the vehicle sensors available at the engine-out and tailpipe positions with those recorded by reference laboratory instrumentation. In a second step, tests were also conducted on road, comparing the performance of on-board sensors with those of Portable Emission Measurement System (PEMS) analysers, which were taken as references. The uncertainty related to exhaust flow measurements was also addressed. In particular, emissions factors calculated using the flow rates measured either in the laboratory or on-road were compared to those obtained by computing exhaust flows with on-board recorded data... [more]

Geothermal energy exhibits considerable development potential in space heating. Shallow geothermal energy stored in the soil in the form of low-grade energy is mainly extracted via the ground source heat pump (GSHP) system. GSHP systems use the subsoil as a heat source, typically involving a vertical borehole heat exchanger (BHE) to extract heat from the formation. Accurate measurement of the thermal properties of the formation is very important for the design of BHEs. At present, the most common and effective method to measure the thermal conductivity of the formation in the field is the thermal response test (TRT). However, the test conditions (heat load, test time) during the thermal response test can impact the test results. Therefore, in this study, a borehole with a depth of 130 m was evaluated in the field. The TRT module and the distributed thermal response test (DTRT) module based on distributed optical fiber temperature sensor (DOFTS) technology were used to monitor the test... [more]

Deep knowledge about pressure and energy losses in each part of a steam turbine is crucial for assuring the required efficiency and operational reliability. This paper presents the experimental as well as the numerical study of pressure losses in the inlet chamber of an intermediate-pressure steam turbine. Measurements were carried out on a complex model, where not only was there an inlet turbine chamber, but also a compact valve assembly situated upstream and nozzles situated downstream. The compact valve as well as the turbine inlet chamber were relatively small. Therefore, greater pressure losses were expected. The aerodynamic laboratory of the Institute of Thermomechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences was responsible for acquiring the measurements, which were carried out in a modular in-draft wind tunnel. In order to learn further details, numerical simulations were carried out. Doosan Skoda Power was responsible for this. A package of ANSYS software tools was used. Measured dat... [more]

Gas turbine failure diagnosis is performed in this work based on seven types of tag data consisting of a total of 7976 data. The data consist of about 7000 normal data and less than 500 abnormal data. While normal data are easy to extract, failure data are difficult to extract. So, this study mainly is composed of normal data and a one-class support vector machine (OC-SVM) is used here, which has an advantage in classification accuracy performance. To advance the classification performance, four hyperparameter tuning (manual search, grid search, random search, Bayesian optimization) methods are applied. To analyze the performance of each technique, four evaluation indicators (accuracy, precision, recall, and F-1 score) are used. As a result, about 54.3% of the initial failure diagnosis performance is improved up to 64.88% through the advanced process in terms of accuracy.