The aim of this work was to propose a small-scale Concentrated Solar Power plant using conventional technologies, in order to improve their flexibility and performances, and reinforce their competitiveness compared to traditional systems. Additionally, this study analyzed the possibility of providing continuity of energy production through an optimized hybrid system, which considered thermal energy storage from a gaseous Heat Transfer Fluid, air. It also considered the possibility of recovering part of the energy of the thermodynamic cycle through an Organic Rankine Cycle system with appropriate dimensions. The final outcomes were a 170 kW CSP plant with about 805 MWh of annual electricity production with a global solar capacity of 32.5%, about 900 kWh of thermal storage daily capacity, and an ORC recovery section of 54.2 kW with a specific production of 260 MWh/y.

One of the main challenges for a further integration of renewable energy sources in the electricity grid is the development of large-scale energy storage systems to overcome their intermittency. This paper presents the concept named CHEST (Compressed Heat Energy STorage), in which the excess electricity is employed to increase the temperature of a heat source by means of a high-temperature heat pump. This heat is stored in a combination of latent and sensible heat storage systems. Later, the stored heat is used to drive an organic Rankine cycle, and hereby to produce electricity when needed. A novel application of this storage system is presented by exploring its potential integration in the Spanish technical constraints electricity market. A detailed dynamic model of the proposed CHEST system was developed and applied to a case study of a 26-MW wind power plant in Spain. Different capacities of the storage system were assessed for the case under study. The results show that roundtrip... [more]

With a Euler−Euler (E2P) approach, a mathematical model for predicting the pointwise hydrodynamic behavior of a spouted bed was implemented though computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. The model considered a bed elasticity approach in order to reduce the number of required sub-models to provide closure for the solids stress strain-tensor. However, no modulus of elasticity sub-model for a bed elasticity approach has been developed for spouted beds, and thus, large deviations in the predictions are obtained with common sub-models reported in literature. To overcome such a limitation, a new modulus of elasticity based on a sensitivity analysis was developed and implemented on the E2P model. The model predictions were locally validated against experimental measurements obtained in previous studies. The experimental studies were conducted using our in-house developed advanced γ-ray computed tomography (CT) technique, which allows to obtain the cross-sectional time-averaged solids h... [more]

The objective of this research was to explore correlates and predictors that play a role in the process of adopting and withdrawing from using a smart metering information platform (SMP). The SMP supports energy monitoring behaviors of the electricity consumers. The literature review shows, however, that not every customer is ready to the same extent to adopt novel solutions. Adoption requires going through stages of readiness to monitor energy consumption in a household. In a longitudinal field experiment on Polish residential consumers, we aimed to see whether messages congruent with the stage of readiness in which participants declared to be at a given moment will be more effective in prompting participants to progress to the next stage than a general message or a passive control condition. We also tested the effect of attitude and knowledge about energy monitoring on phase changes. Our study reveals that what affects the phase change is the participation in the study. The longer th... [more]

The article offers a systematic approach to the method of developing mathematical models of a chemical-technological system (CTS) in conditions of deficit and fuzziness of initial information using available data of various types. Based on the results of research and processing of the collected quantitative and qualitative information, mathematical models of the reactor are constructed. Formalized and obtained mathematical statements of the control problem for choosing effective modes of operation of technological systems are based on mathematical modeling. Based on the obtained expert information, linguistic variables were described and a database of rules describing the operation of the input parameters of the reactor unit of the catalytic cracking unit was obtained.

The energy contained in wastewaters has been identified as a promising sustainable energy resource that could be harvested by using microbial fuel cells (MFC). When dealing with real wastewaters, the MFCs should be able to manage high flow rates and flow rates fluctuations. In this work, the short-term effects of the influent flow rate variations on the performance of a microbial fuel cell has been studied. With this aim, the influent flow rate was stepwise increased from 0.72 to 7.2 L/d and then stepwise decreased. The obtained results indicate that, on the one hand, an increase in the influent flow rate leads to higher chemical oxygen demand removal rates up to 396 g/(L/d) and higher electric power generation almost 18 mW/m2, but to lower coulombic efficiencies. On the other hand, the reduction of the flow rate increases the coulombic efficiencies, as well as the percentage of chemical oxygen demand removed, but decreases electric power generation. In the short-term, the exposition t... [more]

The central heating technology with thermal storage technology is an important means to realize thermoelectric decoupling, meet heating demand, reduce primary energy consumption, and protect the ecological environment. For this paper, the numerical simulation method was used to study the temperature variation of large-capacity hot water storage tank (HWST) in an actual combined heat and power system. The influence of various factors, including the length diameter ratio, water supply temperature, and water supply flow, as well as the orifice diameter and number of the water distributor, on the flow uniformity and performance of the HWST was investigated. The results show that the heat storage efficiency and flow uniformity of the HWST can be improved by properly increasing the water supply flow, the orifice diameter, and number of the water distributor. Increasing the length diameter ratio can improve the flow uniformity, but it will reduce the heat storage efficiency of the HWST. Incre... [more]

Electrodialysis is regarded as a novel liquid regeneration method, and the regenerated solution can satisfy the dehumidification requirements even in a hot and humid environment. LiBr solution is an important choice for a liquid desiccant air conditioning system due to its great dehumidifying ability, so it is necessary to conduct experimental exploration of the regeneration characteristics of ED regeneration for LiBr solution. In this paper, the effects of solution concentration, circulation flow rate, current and electrode solution on the performance of the electrodialysis regeneration system were studied by constructing an experimental electrodialysis regeneration system. The results show that growing the starting concentration of the LiBr solution adversely affects the regeneration characteristics of the electrodialyzer and of the air conditioning system dehumidified by the solution. Under test conditions, as the initial concentration of LiBr solution increased from 45% to 55%, the... [more]

In this paper, two new methods for locating single-phase to ground faults in isolated neutral distribution networks are proposed. The methods are based on the analysis of symmetrical sequence currents. They are solely based on currents, not requiring voltage measurement. The first method employs only the zero sequence current and the second one utilizes the negative sequence current in combination with the zero sequence current. It is revealed why using only zero sequence current with a simple threshold is insufficient and may lead to false results. Using the proposed methods, earth faults with high resistances can be located in isolated neutral distribution networks with overhead lines or cables.

This article describes the results of a study of Ecuador’s energy status, using the system dynamics methodology to model supply, demand and CO2 emissions scenarios for the year 2030. Primary energy production increased in the different projected scenarios, with oil as the most important source of energy. The increase observed in final energy consumption was mainly associated with the transport and industry sectors. A reduction in energy intensity was projected for the different scenarios, which could be associated with the projected economic growth. The results obtained were used to build a proposal for energy policies aimed at mitigating emissions. The proposed changes to the national energy matrix could be the factors that will contribute most to the achievement of carbon emission reductions projected by the different scenarios; changes in the energy matrix are mainly associated with the development of projects to replace fossil fuels with renewable energies, mainly hydropower.

CFD-DEM (computational fluid dynamic-discrete element method) is a promising approach for simulating fluid−solid flows in fluidized beds. This approach generally under-predicts the granular temperature due to the use of drag models for the average drag force. This work develops a simple model to improve the granular temperature through increasing the drag force fluctuations on the particles. The increased drag force fluctuations are designed to match those obtained from PR-DNSs (particle-resolved direct numerical simulations). The impacts of the present model on the granular temperatures are demonstrated by posteriori tests. The posteriori tests of tri-periodic gas−solid flows show that simulations with the present model can obtain transient as well as steady-state granular temperature correctly. Moreover, the posteriori tests of fluidized beds indicated that the present model could significantly improve the granular temperature for the homogenous or slightly inhomogeneous systems, whi... [more]

Seismic source location specifies the spatial and temporal coordinates of seismic sources and lays the foundation for advanced seismic monitoring at all scales. In this work, we firstly introduce the principles of diffraction stacking (DS) and cross-correlation stacking (CCS) for seismic location. The DS method utilizes the travel time from the source to receivers, while the CCS method considers the differential travel time from pairwise receivers to the source. Then, applications with three field datasets ranging from small-scale microseismicity to regional-scale induced seismicity are presented to investigate the feasibility, imaging resolution, and location reliability of the two stacking operators. Both of the two methods can focus the source energy by stacking the waveforms of the selected events. Multiscale examples demonstrate that the imaging resolution is not only determined by the inherent property of the stacking operator but also highly dependent on the acquisition geometry... [more]

A water jet is a kind of high-speed dynamic fluid with high energy, which is widely used in the engineering field. In order to analyze the characteristics of the flow field and the change of law of the bottom impact pressure of the oblique submerged impinging jet at different times, its unsteady characteristics at different Reynolds numbers were studied by using the Wray−Agarwal (W-A) turbulence model. It can be seen from the results that in the process of jet movement, the pressure at the peak of velocity on the axis was the smallest, and the velocity, flow angle, and pressure distribution remain unchanged after a certain time. In the free jet region, the velocity, flow angle, and pressure remained unchanged. In the impingement region, the velocity and flow angle decreased rapidly, while the pressure increased rapidly. The maximum pressure coefficient of the impingement plate changed with time and was affected by the Reynolds number, but the distribution trend remained the same. In th... [more]

Electricity theft and fraud in energy consumption are two of the major issues for power distribution companies (PDCs) for many years. PDCs around the world are trying different methodologies for detecting electricity theft. The traditional methods for non-technical losses (NTLs) detection such as onsite inspection and reward and penalty policy have lost their place in the modern era because of their ineffective and time-consuming mechanism. With the advancement in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), newer and efficient NTL detection methods have been proposed by different researchers working in the field of data mining and AI. The AI-based NTL detection methods are superior to the conventional methods in terms of accuracy, efficiency, time-consumption, precision, and labor required. The importance of such AI-based NTL detection methods can be judged by looking at the growing trend toward the increasing number of research articles on this important development. However, the autho... [more]

Through analyzing the transient components and transient characteristics in transient zero-sequence current (TZSC), a novel fault feeder detection method based on the transient correlation of non-power frequency components (NPFCs) for the resonant grounded system is proposed. Firstly, using variational mode decomposition combined with fast Fourier transformation (VMD−FFT) to decompose the TZSC, by removing the power frequency components and noise signals, the transient NPFCs can be obtained. Secondly, to reflect the overall changing trend between faulty and healthy currents, the moving average filter is introduced to smooth the NPFCs; in this way, the fault transient features can be accurately revealed. Finally, the faulty feeder can be detected by comparing the threshold with the maximum difference value of comprehensive correlation coefficient of NPFCs. The detection results show that the proposed fault detection method can accurately select the faulty feeder; it is unaffected by fau... [more]

Tramway systems are more and more diffused today, to reduce pollution and greenhouse emissions. However, their electrical feeding substations can have significant margin for improvement. Therefore, it is questionable which kind of changes can be introduced, by changing their main features. First of all, transformer technology can be enhanced, by moving from the standard transformer to the amorphous metal one; thus, guaranteeing a significant reduction in losses. Then, by installing one dedicated storage systems for each substation. This solution can help to increase the energy efficiency; thus, recovering the tram braking energy and reducing the delivered energy from the grid, and also the reliability of the system; thus, guarantee different levels of services, in the case of failure of a feeding substation. This paper investigates in a systematic approach the two proposed solutions. In particular an amorphous metal transformer has been properly designed, and performance compared to th... [more]

Electro-osmotic drag (EOD) is usually thought of as a transport mechanism of water inside and through the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) in electrochemical devices. However, it has already been shown that the transport of dissolved water in the PEM occurs exclusively via diffusion, provided that the EOD coefficient nd is constant. Consequently, EOD is not a water transport mechanism inside the electrolyte membrane, and this means that its nature is not yet understood. This work proposes a theory that suggests that the root of the EOD is located in the catalyst layers of the electrochemical device where the electric current is generated, and consequently could be linked to one or more of the elementary reaction steps. It is therefore also conceivable that EOD exists at one electrode in an electrochemical device, but not in the other. Moreover, the EOD coefficient nd may depend on the current density as well as the oxidization level of the catalyst. The last consequence, if EOD is li... [more]

Aiming at the problems of large excitation loss and low power generation efficiency of silicon rectifier generators and the unstable output voltage of permanent magnet (PM) generators, a hybrid excitation generator (HEG) with suspended brushless claw pole electrical excitation rotor (EER) and combined magnetic pole PM rotor is proposed in the present work. With only one fractional slot winding stator, the generator adopts PM field as the main magnetic field and electrical excitation field as the auxiliary magnetic field, which not only retains the advantages of high efficiency of PM generators but also effectively reduces excitation consumption. The main structure parameters and the design method were analyzed, and a simulation analysis of no-load magnetic field distribution and flux regulation ability was carried out using finite element software to verify the rationality of the hybrid excitation parallel magnetic circuit design. Moreover, the no-load, load, regulation, and voltage re... [more]

Molecule radiation can be used as a tool to study colder regions in switching arc plasmas like arc fringes in contact to walls and ranges around current zero (CZ). This is demonstrated in the present study for the first time for the case of ablation-dominated high-current arcs as key elements of self-blast circuit breakers. The arc in a model circuit breaker (MCB) in CO2 with and an arc in a long nozzle under ambient conditions with peak currents between 5 and 10 kA were studied by emission and absorption spectroscopy in the visible spectral range. The nozzle material was polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) in both cases. Imaging spectroscopy was carried out either with high-speed cameras or with intensified CCD cameras. A pulsed high-intensity Xe lamp was applied as a background radiator for the broad-band absorption spectroscopy. Emission of Swan bands from carbon dimers was observed at the edge of nozzles only or across the whole nozzle radius with highest intensity in the arc center, de... [more]

In this paper, energy management and control of a microgrid is developed through supervisor and adaptive neuro-fuzzy wavelet-based control controllers considering real weather patterns and load variations. The supervisory control is applied to the entire microgrid using lower−top level arrangements. The top-level generates the control signals considering the weather data patterns and load conditions, while the lower level controls the energy sources and power converters. The adaptive neuro-fuzzy wavelet-based controller is applied to the inverter. The new proposed wavelet-based controller improves the operation of the proposed microgrid as a result of the excellent localized characteristics of the wavelets. Simulations and comparison with other existing intelligent controllers, such as neuro-fuzzy controllers and fuzzy logic controllers, and classical PID controllers are used to present the improvements of the microgrid in terms of the power transfer, inverter output efficiency, load v... [more]

Predicting residential energy consumption is tantamount to forecasting a multivariate time series. A specific window for several sensor signals can induce various features extracted to forecast the energy consumption by using a prediction model. However, it is still a challenging task because of irregular patterns inside including hidden correlations between power attributes. In order to extract the complicated irregular energy patterns and selectively learn the spatiotemporal features to reduce the translational variance between energy attributes, we propose a deep learning model based on the multi-headed attention with the convolutional recurrent neural network. It exploits the attention scores calculated with softmax and dot product operation in the network to model the transient and impulsive nature of energy demand. Experiments with the dataset of University of California, Irvine (UCI) household electric power consumption consisting of a total 2,075,259 time-series show that the p... [more]

Contemporary distributions are now going to underground their overhead distribution lines due to techno-social reasons. Reliability and loss reduction are the two prime objectives for distribution system operation. Since failure rates of ungrounded cables are the function of Joules heating besides their physical lengths, the reliability evaluation of undergrounded distribution systems needs to be reviewed. This paper suggested a suitable modification in existing reliability indices in order to make them more appropriate for underground distribution systems. A multi-objective network reconfiguration problem is formulated to enhance the reliability and performance of distribution systems while duly addressing the variability and uncertainty in load demand and power generation from renewables. The application results on a standard test bench shift the paradigm of the well-known conflicting nature of reliability and network performance indices defined for overhead distribution systems.

Sub-Saharan African countries present chronic energy shortages and heavy reliance on oil imports for diesel. The small demand and high production costs in some countries have compromised the economic feasibility of the biodiesel industry in the region. Therefore, to overcome these limitations a model of “multi-countries” cooperated production and consumption of biodiesel was proposed for a group of seven neighboring countries. The model explored linear programming and simulations to the problem of minimizing biodiesel production costs considering different types of production and demand restrictions. The data processing was realized using the Solver and Linear Interactive Discrete Optimizer software (LINDO). The simulations and scenarios revealed that palm oil is the crop that minimize the production costs (US$0.82/L) and that, although jatropha was classified in the second place (US$1.05/L), it is the crop with the biggest job creation potential (5.0 times that of the palm oil seeds).... [more]

Hydraulic fracturing is a key technical means for stimulating tight and low permeability reservoirs to improve the production, which is widely employed in the development of unconventional energy resources, including shale gas, shale oil, gas hydrate, and dry hot rock. Although significant progress has been made in the simulation of fracturing a single well using two-dimensional Particle Flow Code (PFC2D), the understanding of the multi-well hydraulic fracturing characteristics is still limited. Exploring the mechanisms of fluid-driven fracture initiation, propagation and interaction under multi-well fracturing conditions is of great theoretical significance for creating complex fracture networks in the reservoir. In this study, a series of two-well fracturing simulations by a modified fluid-mechanical coupling algorithm were conducted to systematically investigate the effects of injection sequence and well spacing on breakdown pressure, fracture propagation and stress shadow. The resu... [more]

Nowadays, the payment scheme of European Day-Ahead Market is based on the market clearing price by running the Pan-European Hybrid Electricity Market Integration Algorithm. However, this conventional payment scheme is challenging because of the non-convexity and the short computation time requirement. Thus, the aim of this work is to propose a new clearing model in order to mitigate this challenge. The model is based on make-whole payment mechanism and it includes two major steps: (i) maximizing social welfare and (ii) achieving a Walrasian equilibrium by the “minimum-uplift approach”. The proposed model is validated and investigated by two case studies: one is an artificially created Day-Ahead Market session containing all type of bids encountered in Europe and containing a very large number of bids to stress the algorithm and the other is a reduced, but realistic, model of European market where real data from February to December of 2017 were considered. The tests show a consistent i... [more]