Strict regulations and acts have been imposed to limit NOx and carbon emissions. The power generation industry has resorted to innovative techniques to overcome such a low level of tolerance. Amongst those in the literature, CO2-argon-steam oxyfuel (CARSOXY) gas turbines have theoretically been proven to offer an economically sustainable solution while retaining high efficiency. Although theoretical studies have characterized CARSOXY, no experimental evidence has been provided in the literature. Therefore, this paper attempts to experimentally assess CARSOXY in comparison to a CH4/air flame. OH* chemiluminescence integrated with OH Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) imaging has been utilized to study flame stability and flame geometry (i.e., the area of highest heat intensity (AOH¯Max center of highest heat intensity (COH¯Max)) over a range of working fluid Reynolds’ numbers and oxidizing equivalence ratios. In addition, the standard deviation of heat release fluctuations (σ... [more]

To describe the effects of inert compounds in gaseous fuel, experiments on three different process burners (staged fuel burner, staged air burner, and low-calorific burner) were carried out. The tested burners are commercially available, but they were specially designed for experimental usage. Tests were carried out in the semi-industrial burner testing facility to investigate the influence of inert gases on the flame characteristics, emissions, and heat flux to the combustion chamber wall. Natural gas was used as a reference fuel, and, during all tests, thermal power of 500 kW was maintained. To simulate the combustion of alternative fuels with lower LHV, N2 and CO2 were used as diluents. The inert gas in the hydrocarbon fuel at certain conditions can lower NOx emissions (up to 80%) and increase heat flux (up to 5%). Once incombustible compounds are present in the fuel, the higher amount of fuel flowing through nozzles affects the flow in the combustion chamber by increasing the Reyno... [more]

Increasing energy efficiency is included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by the year 2030. Enhancing energy efficiency is also one of the priority areas for improving the operational efficiency of any oil production enterprise. The energy management system of enterprises has been founded and implemented on the basis of the international standard ISO 50001:2018 and it works successfully. The energy efficiency strategy is formulated in the energy policy and integrated into the business model of the companies. Companies receive significant energy savings in the exploration and production segments through technical, technological, and organizational measures. This article shows the main directions for improving the energy efficiency of the artificial lift well stock and the results of their implementation. The main constraints on the implementation of the energy efficiency policy of oil-producing enterprises have been identified and directions for improvement... [more]

The increasing requirements to further reduce pollutant emissions, particularly with regard to the upcoming Euro 7 (EU7) legislation, cause further technical and economic challenges for the development of internal combustion engines. All the emission reduction technologies lead to an increasing complexity not only of the hardware, but also of the control functions to be deployed in engine control units (ECUs). Virtualization has become a necessity in the development process in order to be able to handle the increasing complexity. The virtual development and calibration of ECUs using hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) systems with accurate engine models is an effective method to achieve cost and quality targets. In particular, the selection of the best-practice engine model to fulfil accuracy and time targets is essential to success. In this context, this paper presents a physically- and chemically-based stochastic reactor model (SRM) with tabulated chemistry for the prediction of engine raw em... [more]

The Scheffler type concentrator is a curved metal reflector particularly suitable for solar thermal systems with a receiver fixed to the ground. Its operating principle is to deform the reflector throughout the year to optimize its performance in collecting sunlight. This study analyses the optical performance of a Scheffler reflector during the year. A CAD software tool is utilized to reproduce the mechanical deformations of a real Scheffler concentrator and the shape of the light spot on the receiver is analyzed by means of raytracing simulations. The starting configuration is the equinoctial paraboloid, which produces a point-like spot on the two equinox days only. On all other days of the year, this paraboloid is deformed in a suitable way in order to keep the spot as small as possible, but, even so, it is no longer a point-like spot. In the present work the simulated light distributions on the receiver, generated by the paraboloids (deformed or original), are compared. The results... [more]

In shipboard DC grids, tightly controlled load converters can impair the system stability, thus provoking the ship blackout. Conversely, load converters regulated by low control bandwidths are capable of inducing a stabilizing action. This compensation is verifiable if the loads are few. On the contrary, the balancing of control dynamics is hardly evaluated if the bus feeds multiple (i.e., hundreds or more) DC controlled loads. In this paper, the weighted bandwidth method (WBM) is presented to assess the small-signal stability of a complex shipboard power system by aggregating the multiple converters into two sets of controlled loads. Once the validity of the aggregation is proven, a stability study is performed on the two-loads system. As the last system is more inclined to instability than the initial multiple-loads system, the verification of the two-loads stability criterion guarantees that the shipboard DC grid also remains stable. Finally, emulations on HIL verify the proposed st... [more]

The need for sustainable agricultural sector is growing rapidly due to climate changes. As there are still knowledge gaps and the need for innovations that support farmers in the sustainability transition, there is a need for determining priority research areas that are vital for the sustainable development of agriculture. The aim of our study was to derive a long-term vision of the desirable agricultural sector in Poland and prioritize research areas required to make Polish agriculture sustainable. We applied the living lab approach and, by conducting a backcasting exercise with the lab members, we identified a desirable vision of agriculture in Poland and the research areas needed to realize this vision. Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Cumulative Voting (CV), we prioritized these research areas. Our results show that adaptation to climate changes is the most important area of research, having 38.6% of the total possible number of points using AHP and 29.7% in the case of C... [more]

The purpose of this paper was to develop a simulation model to perform a sensitivity analysis of the energy consumption of an airport baggage handling system to a change in resource allocation strategy. This is a novel approach as this aspect has not been considered until now. This aspect, in turn is very important in terms of sustainability. The paper presents the detailed structure of the model and the data on which it operates. It is universal and can be the basis for analyzing any structure of the baggage handling system in the landside of any airport. An example analysis has shown that even up to 35% benefits can be gained by using the model. Three scenarios were analyzed in the model (dedicated check-in desks scenario, common desks scenario and mixed strategy scenario). However, the model is not limited to these strategies and any resource allocation is possible. The model is useful both for planning a new system as well as optimizing an existing system during its operation.

Innovation is a very important attribute of energy companies. Its level largely depends on employees’ attitudes and behaviours, which are determined on the one hand by individual factors (e.g., psychological contract) and on the other hand by organisational factors (e.g., human resources (HR) practices). The aim of this article is to identify the relationship between pro-innovative HR practices, psychological contract and employee attitudes—commitment and job satisfaction. The research was conducted in a company which is one of the leading Polish electricity suppliers. Data were collected using a proprietary survey questionnaire. The research involved 402 HR professionals responsible for shaping and implementing pro-innovative HR practices in the company. Hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique (PLS-SEM). The results indicate the existence of a positive relationship between pro-innovative HR practices, psychological contract and em... [more]

The aim of the study was to determine the quantitative and qualitative changes taking place in biomass components actively participating in methane fermentation, i.e., in carbohydrates, as a result of chemical pretreatment. Analyses were conducted on agricultural waste (corn stover, also called corn straw, and corncobs) as materials most commonly used in methane fermentation, as well as poplar wood, a material relatively rarely used in biogas production. Pretreatment with the aim of increasing efficiency of methane fermentation was carried out with the use of acid and alkaline solutions of different concentrations. The effect of pretreatment on carbohydrates was analyzed based on the quantitative and qualitative changes in this component. Due to the structural heterogeneity of carbohydrates, their varied reactivity and fermentability were determined in terms of holocellulose, cellulose, and pentosans. The chemical structure of cellulose was also analyzed. It is shown in this study that... [more]

In this paper, a new method to calculate the self-inductance of the Archimedean spiral coil is presented. The proposed method is derived by solving Neumann’s integral formula, and the numerical tool is used to calculate the inductance value. The calculation results are verified with several conventional formulas derived from the Wheeler formula or its modified form and 3D finite element analyses. The comparison with simulation results shows that the conventional formula has an error of above 40% compared to the proposed method, which has below 7% when the wire diameter is reduced. To further check the validity, different sizes of the spiral coil are fabricated by changing the geometrical parameters such as the number of turns, turn spacing, inner radius, outer radius, and wire diameter. Litz wire is chosen for making the spiral coil, and bobbins are made using a 3D printer. Finally, the calculation results are compared with the experimental result. The error between them is less than 2... [more]

Oxy-fuel combustion is a promising strategy to minimize the environmental impact of combustion-based energy conversion. Simple and flexible tools are required to facilitate the successful integration of such strategies at the industrial level. This study couples measured residence time distribution with chemical reactor network analysis in a close-to-reality combustor. This provides detailed knowledge about the various mixing and reactive characteristics arising from the use of the two different oxidizing streams.

Severe wellbore stability issues were reported while drilling in laminated formation with weak planes such as beddings. To accurately determine the safe mud weight according to the changing environment is of primary importance for safety control of drilling. Considering both the elastic and strength anisotropy of bedding formation, a novel theoretical model is established and the stress and failure around wellbores are analyzed. The accuracy and applicability of the theoretical model is verified by in situ field data. For the purpose of fulfilling real-time prediction, the method flowchart of programming is also provided. The results show that the model built can be conveniently used to predict the stress distribution, failure area, and collapse and fracture pressure while drilling, and rather good predictions can be made compared to real field data. In addition, the inhomogeneity of in situ stress and elastic parameters affect the upper limit of the safe mud weight window (SMWW) great... [more]

The fuel efficiency of marine diesel engine as any combustion engine falls with raising the temperature of air at the suction of its turbocharger. Therefore, cooling the engine turbocharger intake air by recovering exhaust gas heat to refrigeration capacity is a very perspective trend in enhancing the fuel efficiency of marine diesel engines. The application of water-fuel emulsion (WFE) combustion enables the reduction of a low-temperature corrosion, and, as a result, provides deeper exhaust gas heat utilization in the exhaust gas boiler (EGB) to the much lower temperature of 90−110 °C during WFE instead of 150−170 °C when combusting conventional fuel oil. This leads to the increment of the heat extracted from exhaust gas that is converted to refrigeration capacity by exhaust heat recovery chiller for cooling engine turbocharger sucked air accordingly. We experimentally investigated the corrosion processes on the condensation surfaces of EGB during WFE combustion to approve their inten... [more]

Path planning is often considered as an important task in autonomous driving applications. Current planning method only concerns the knowledge of robot kinematics, however, in GPS denied environments, the robot odometry sensor often causes accumulated error. To address this problem, an improved path planning algorithm is proposed based on reinforcement learning method, which also calculates the characteristics of the cumulated error during the planning procedure. The cumulative error path is calculated by the map with convex target processing, while modifying the algorithm reward and punishment parameters based on the error estimation strategy. To verify the proposed approach, simulation experiments exhibited that the algorithm effectively avoid the error drift in path planning.

Drilling costs can be 80% of geothermal project investment, so decreasing these deep drilling costs substantially reduces overall project costs, contributing to less expensive geothermal electricity or heat generation. Plasma Pulse Geo Drilling (PPGD) is a contactless drilling technique that uses high-voltage pulses to fracture the rock without mechanical abrasion, which may reduce drilling costs by up to 90% of conventional mechanical rotary drilling costs. However, further development of PPGD requires a better understanding of the underlying fundamental physics, specifically the dielectric breakdown of rocks with pore fluids subjected to high-voltage pulses. This paper presents a numerical model to investigate the effects of the pore characteristics (i.e., pore fluid, shape, size, and pressure) on the occurrence of the local electric breakdown (i.e., plasma formation in the pore fluid) inside the granite pores and thus on PPGD efficiency. Investigated are: (i) two pore fluids, consis... [more]

From its introduction to the present day, Cascaded H-Bridge multilevel converters were employed on numerous applications. However, their floating capacitor, while advantageous for some applications (such as photovoltaic) requires the usage of balancing methods by design. Over the years, several such methods were proposed and polished. Some of these methods use optimization techniques or inject a zero-sequence voltage to take advantage of the converter redundancies. This paper describes an optimization-based capacitor balancing method with additional features. It can drive each module DC-Link to a different voltage for independent maximum power point tracking in photovoltaic applications. Moreover, the user can specify the independent active power set points to modules connected to batteries or any other energy storage systems. Finally, DC current ripple can be reduced on some modules, which can extend the lifespan of any connected ultra-capacitors. The method as a whole is tested on re... [more]

This paper presents a study on the effect of the ratio of biodiesel and injection timing on the performance of diesel engines and their emissions. The research engine is a cylinder engine AVL-5402, simulated by software AVL-Boost. The simulated fuel includes fossil diesel and biodiesel blended with a replacement rate from 0% to 50%, with a simulation mode of 2200 (rev/min), at a rate of a 25%, 50% and 75% load. In this speed range, the engine has the lowest fuel consumption. The parameters to be evaluated are power, fuel consumption and emissions, based on the proportions of blended biodiesel. The results show that there is a relationship between the proportion of blended biodiesel, injection timing and the parameters of the engine. Specifically, the ratio of the biodiesel blend increases, injection timing tends to move closer to the top dead center (TDC), the tendency reduce engine power, fuel consumption increases, the emissions of CO and soot reduces, while NOx increases.

Fault tolerance has been known as one of the main advantages of multiphase drives. When an open-circuit fault happens, smooth torque can be obtained without any additional hardware. However, a reconfiguration strategy is required to determine new reference currents. Despite advantages of non-sinusoidal electromotive forces (NS-EMFs) such as high torque density, multi-harmonics existing in NS-EMFs cause more challenges for control, especially under faulty conditions. Therefore, to guarantee high-quality vector control of multiphase drives with multi-harmonic NS-EMFs, this two-part study proposes control schemes using adaptive linear neurons (Adalines) to adaptively eliminate torque ripples. The proposed simple Adalines are efficient because of taking advantage of the knowledge of rotor position and of torque harmonic rank induced by the NS-EMFs. The control scheme using an Adaline for healthy mode was described in part I of this study. In this second part, the control scheme using anoth... [more]

The need to reduce global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is driving the conversion of coal-fired power plants to use methane, which can reduce CO2 emissions by >40%. However, conducting gas firing in coal boilers changes the heat transfer profile; therefore, preliminary evaluations using computational fluid dynamics are required prior to conversion. Here, methane was used as a heat input source in the simulation of an existing coal boiler, and combustion, nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission characteristics, and heat transfer profile changes inside the boiler were analyzed. Furthermore, changes in the burner zone stoichiometric ratio (BZSR) were simulated to restore the decreased heat absorption of the furnace waterwall, revealing that air distribution could change the heat absorption of the waterwall and tube bundles. However, this change was smaller than that caused by conversion from coal to methane. Therefore, to implement gas firing in coal boilers, alternatives such as output derating,... [more]

The energy industry must change dramatically in order to reduce CO2-emissions and to slow down climate change. Germany, for example, decided to shut down all large nuclear (2022) and fossil thermal power plants by 2038. Power generation will then rely on fluctuating renewables such as wind power and solar. However, thermal power plants will still play a role with respect to waste incineration, biomass, exploitation of geothermal wells, concentrated solar power (CSP), power-to-heat-to-power plants (P2H2P), and of course waste heat recovery (WHR). While the multistage axial turbine has prevailed for the last hundred years in power plants of the several hundred MW class, this architecture is certainly not the appropriate solution for small-scale waste heat recovery below 1 MW or even below 100 kW. Simpler, cost-effective turbo generators are required. Therefore, the authors examine uncommon turbine architectures that are known per se but were abandoned when power plants grew due to their... [more]

The article presents an innovative construction of the Axial Flux Permanent Magnet (AFPM) machine designed for generator performance, which provides the shape of induced voltage that enables estimation of the speed and rotational angle of the machine rotor. Design solutions were proposed, the aim of which is to limit energy losses as a result of the occurrence of eddy currents. The method of direct estimation of the value of the rotational speed and rotational angle of the machine rotor was proposed and investigated on the basis of the measurements of induced voltages and machine phase currents. The advantage of the machine is the utilization of simple and easy-to-use computational procedures. The acquired results were compared with the results obtained for estimation performed by using the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF).

The electric vehicles (EVs) could potentially have a significant impact on power quality parameters and distribution networks as they are non-linear loads and their charging might result in tremendous power demand. When connected to the utility grid, a large number of EV charging stations from different manufacturers might create significant harmonic current emissions, impact the voltage profile, and eventually affect the power quality. Nevertheless, practical examples of disturbances from charging stations have not been made public. This paper aims to clarify the characteristics of conductive disturbances and levels of current harmonics generated by charging station and their severity on the quality of electric energy. The analysis was based on tests of a prototype station of an EV charging station integrated with a LED street light. The tests concern the determination of current harmonics and the values of conductive electromagnetic disturbances in the 150 kHz−30 MHz range. The test... [more]

This paper presents a constant-pressure hydraulic PTO system that can convert stored pressure energy into electrical energy at a stable speed through hydraulic motors and generators. A multi-chamber cylinder can be connected to the main power generation circuit by check valves, and the motor displacement can be controlled by a fuzzy controller to maintain the main power generation circuit under stable pressure. The hydraulic transformer can control the forces applied to the floater. The hydrodynamic parameters of the floater are calculated by AQWA, and the optimal PTO damping of the hydraulic system is analyzed as the target of transformer control. MATLAB/Simulink and AMESim are used to carry out the co-simulation. Three kinds of wave elevation time-series for the specific state are designed for the simulation. In the co-simulation, three approaches are carried out for the simulation including no control strategy, fuzzy control with a fixed transformer ratio, and fuzzy control with a v... [more]

In this study, we performed the electromagnetic and mechanical characteristic analyses of an 8-pole 12-slot interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM). Permanent magnet synchronous motors are classified into surface permanent magnet synchronous motor and interior permanent magnet synchronous motors according to the type of rotor. The IPM type is advantageous for high-speed operation because of the structure where the permanent magnet is embedded inside the rotor, and it has the advantage of having a high output density by generating not only the magnetic torque of the permanent magnet, but also the reluctance torque. However, such a motor has more vibration/noise sources than other types, owing to changes in reluctance. The sources of motor noise/vibration can be broadly classified into electromagnetic, mechanical, and aerodynamic sources. Electromagnetic noise sources are classified into electromagnetic excitation sources, torque pulsations, and unbalanced magnetic forces (UM... [more]