Many algorithms and numerical methods, such as implicit and explicit finite differences and the method of characteristics, have been applied for transient flow in gas pipelines. From a computational point of view, the state space model is an effective method for solving complex transient problems in pipelines. However, the impulse output of the existing models is not the actual behavior of the pipeline. In this paper, a new lumped parameter model is proposed to describe the inertial nature of pipelines with inlet/outlet pressure and flow rate as outer variables in the state space. Starting from the basic mechanistic partial differential equations of the general one-dimensional compressible gas flow dynamics under isothermal conditions, the transfer functions are first acquired as the fundamental work. With Taylor-expansion and a transformation procedure, the inertia state space models are derived with proper simplification. Finally, three examples are used to illustrate the effectivene... [more]

Utilization of wireless power transfer in light rail transits is seen as one solution for electrification of lines. The main advantage of this supply system is the reduction of installation; moreover, the alignment between the transmitter coil in the track and the receiver coil in the train should be perfect in order not to affect the power transfer. To reduce the effects of misalignment on the input and output electric parameters of the system, a new planar core and coil design, called hybrid intercore coil, is proposed. The proposed design uses a magnetic material layer between the windings in the inner half of the coil to create a non-uniform magnetic field distribution, which makes the system more robust against the effects of coil misalignment on the system current and voltage. Simulations with finite element method software were conducted to compare designs. The results show that the proposed design is less susceptible to the effects of misalignment and is more efficient. Prototy... [more]

Single-tube loop coil (STLC) and multi-turn copper wire coil (MTCWC) wireless power transfer (WPT) methods are proposed in this study to overcome the challenges of battery life during low-power home appliance operations. Transfer power, efficiency, and distance are investigated for charging mobile devices on the basis of the two proposed systems. The transfer distances of 1⁻15 cm are considered because the practicality of this range has been proven to be reliable in the current work on mobile device battery charging. For STLC, the Li-ion battery is charged with total system efficiencies of 86.45%, 77.08%, and 52.08%, without a load, at distances of 2, 6, and 15 cm, respectively. When the system is loaded with 100 Ω at the corresponding distances, the transfer efficiencies are reduced to 80.66%, 66.66%, and 47.04%. For MTCWC, the battery is charged with total system efficiencies of 88.54%, 75%, and 52.08%, without a load, at the same distances of 2, 6, and 15 cm. When the system is load... [more]

°CThe research significance of various scientific aspects of photovoltaic (PV) systems has increased over the past decade. Grid-tied inverters the vital elements for the effective interface of Renewable Energy Resources (RER) and utility in the distributed generation system. Currently, Single-Phase Transformerless Grid-Connected Photovoltaic (SPTG-CPV) inverters (1⁻10 kW) are undergoing further developments, with new designs, and interest of the solar market. In comparison to the transformer (TR) Galvanic Isolation (GI)-based inverters, its advantageous features are lower cost, lighter weight, smaller volume, higher efficiency, and less complexity. In this paper, a review of SPTG-CPV inverters has been carried out. The basic operational principles of all SPTG-CPV inverters are presented in details for positive, negative, and zero cycles. A comprehensive analysis of each topology has been deliberated. A comparative assessment is also performed based on weaknesses, strengths, component r... [more]

Reduced order models (ROMs) are increasingly applied to entrained flow gasification development due to reduced computational requirements relative to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. However, they require greater a posteriori knowledge of the reactor physics. A significant parameter influencing ROM outputs is the jet half-angle of the solid fuel and oxidant mixture in the gasifier. Thus, it is important to understand the geometry of the jet in the gasifier, and how it is dependent on operating parameters, such as solid and carrier gas flow rates. In this work, an existing model for jet half-angles, which considers the ratio of surrounding gas density to jet core density, is extended to a dry solids jet with impinging gas. The model is fitted to experimental jet half-angles. The jet half-angle of a non-reactive flow was measured using laser-sheet imaging for solid fluxes in the range of 460⁻880 kg/m²·s and carrier gas fluxes in the range of 43⁻90 kg/m²·s at the transport line... [more]

A considerable proportion (about 64%) of biomass energy is produced from woody biomass (wood and its wastes). However, waste wood (WW) is very often contaminated with metal(loid) elements at concentrations leading to toxicity emissions and damages to facilities during thermal conversion. Therefore, procedures for preventing and/or alleviating the negative impacts of these elements require further development, particularly by providing informative and supportive information regarding the phase transformations of the metal(loid)s during thermal conversion processes. Although it is well known that phase transformation depends on different factors such as elements’ vaporization characteristics, operational conditions, and process configuration; however, the influences of reaction atmosphere composition in terms of interactions and interferences are rarely addressed. In response, since Cu, Cr, and As (CCA-elements) are the most regulated elements in woody biomass, this paper aims to explore... [more]

Combustion tests and gaseous emissions of olive mill solid wastes pellets (olive pomace (OP), and olive pits (OPi)) were carried out in an updraft counter-current fixed bed reactor. Along the combustion chamber axis and under a constant primary air flow rate, the bed temperatures and the mass loss rate were measured as functions of time. Moreover, the gas mixture components such as O₂, organic carbon (Corg), CO, CO₂, H₂O, H₂, SO₂, and NOx (NO + NO₂) were analyzed and measured. The reaction front positions were determined as well as the ignition rate and the reaction front velocity. We have found that the exhaust gases are emitted in acceptable concentrations compared to the combustion of standard wood pellets reported in the literature (EN 303-5). It is shown that the bed temperature increased from the ambient value to a maximum value ranging from 750 to 1000 °C as previously reported in the literature. The results demonstrate the promise of using olive mill solid waste pellets as an a... [more]

Due to the low biodegradability of mineral oil, intense research is conducted to define alternative liquids with comparable dielectric properties. Natural ester liquids are an alternative in focus; they are used increasingly as insulating liquid in distribution and power transformers. The main advantages of natural ester liquids compared to mineral oil are their good biodegradability and mainly high flash and fire points providing better fire safety. The dielectric strength of natural ester liquids is comparable to conventional mineral oil for homogeneous field arrangements. However, many studies showed a reduced dielectric strength for highly inhomogeneous field arrangements. This study investigates at which degree of inhomogeneity differences in breakdown voltage between the two insulating liquids occur. Investigations use lightning impulses with different electrode arrangements representing different field inhomogeneity factors and different gap distances. To ensure comparisons with... [more]

With the aim to determine the photo-generated current, diode saturation current, ideality factor, shunt, and series resistances related to the one-diode model for p-i-n planar perovskite solar cells, reference cells with active area of approximately 1 cm² and efficiencies ranging between 4.6 and 12.2% were fabricated and characterized at standard test conditions. To estimated feasible parameters, the mean square error between the I-V curve data of these cells and the circuital model results were minimized using a Genetic Algorithm combined with the Nelder-Mead method. When considering the optimization process solutions, a numerical sensitivity analysis of the error as a function of the estimated parameters was carried out. Based on the errors behavior that is showed graphically through maps, it was demonstrated that the set of parameters estimated for each cell were reliable, meaningful, and realistic, and being related to errors lower than 9.1 × 10−9. Therefore, these results can be c... [more]

This paper presents a three-phase loss allocation procedure for distribution networks. The key contribution of the paper is the computation of specific marginal loss coefficients (MLCs) per bus and per phase expressly considering non-linear load models for Electric Vehicles (EV). The method was applied in a unbalanced 12.47 kV feeder with 12,780 households and 1000 EVs under peak and off-peak load conditions. Results obtained were also compared with the traditional roll-in embedded allocation procedure (pro rata) using non-linear and standard constant power models. Results show the influence of the non-linear load model in the energy losses allocated. This result highlights the importance of considering an appropriate EV load model to appraise the overall losses encouraging the use and further development of the methodology

In this paper, a new constant-frequency quasi-resonant converter is proposed. Compared with the traditional LLC converter, the proposed converter can effectively reduce the range of the operating frequency. The output voltage is changed to adjust the reactance of the resonant cavity. The proposed converter has a better loss factor. To verify the theoretical analysis and soft-switching condition, a 250 W, 100 V output prototype was built and compared with the full-bridge LLC converter. Analysis and experimental results verify that a smaller operating frequency range and volume of the transformers, a soft-switching condition, and a higher overall efficiency are achieved with the proposed converter.

Voltage stability analysis of power distribution systems with high photovoltaic (PV) penetration is a challenging problem due to the stochastic generation of a solar power system. Voltage stability is an important benchmark for defining PV’s penetration level in active distribution networks considering loading capacity. The massive integration of PV power units, the effect of distribution system characteristics, like high ratio of R/X, and the reported collapses in power networks come up in serious studies that investigate their impact and upcoming problems on distribution networks. Therefore, this paper proposes analytical voltage stability and it is implemented on IEEE 34 nodes radial distribution systems with 24.9 kV and 4.16 kV voltage levels. In this regard, in addition to given properties in stability and power loss analysis, a penetration coefficient for PVs is considered. Simulation results prove that the applied method can illustrate the positive and negative effects of PV in... [more]

This study performs a 3D turbulent flow numerical simulation to improve heat transfer characteristics of wavy fin-and-tube heat exchangers. A compound design encompassing louver, flat, and vortex generator onto wavy fins can significantly enhance the heat transfer performance of wavy fin-and-tube heat exchangers. Replacement of wavy fins around tubes with flat fins is not effective as far as the reduction of thermal resistance is concerned, although an appreciable pressure drop reduction can be achieved. Adding two louvers with a width of 8 mm to the flat portion can reduce thermal resistance up to 6% in comparison with the reference wavy fin. Increasing the louver number and width can further decrease the thermal resistance. Also, it is found that the optimum louver angle is equal to the wavy angle for offering the lowest thermal resistance. Therefore, compound geometry with three louvers, a width of 12 mm, and the louver angle being equal to wavy angle with waffle height to be the sa... [more]

Wind energy is a commonly utilized renewable energy source, due to its merits of extensive distribution and rich reserves. However, as wind speed fluctuates violently and uncertainly at all times, wind power integration may affect the security and stability of power system. In this study, we propose an ensemble model for probabilistic wind speed forecasting. It consists of wavelet threshold denoising (WTD), recurrent neural network (RNN) and adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). Firstly, WTD smooths the wind speed series in order to better capture its variation trend. Secondly, RNNs with different architectures are trained on the denoising datasets, operating as sub-models for point wind speed forecasting. Thirdly, ANFIS is innovatively established as the top layer of the entire ensemble model to compute the final point prediction result, in order to take full advantages of a limited number of deep-learning-based sub-models. Lastly, variances are obtained from sub-models and t... [more]

A high-temperature oil⁻paper insulation system offers an opportunity to improve the overloading capability of distribution transformers facing seasonal load variation. A high-temperature electrical insulation system (EIS) was chosen due to thermal calculation based on a typical loading curve on the China Southern Power Grid. In order to evaluate candidate high-temperature insulation systems, Nomex® T910 (aramid-enhanced cellulose) immersed in FR3 (natural ester) was investigated by a dual-temperature thermal aging test compared with a conventional insulation system, Kraft paper impregnated with mineral oil. Throughout the thermal aging test, mechanical, chemical, and dielectric parameters of both paper and insulating oil were investigated in each aging cycle. The thermal aging results determined that the thermal class of the FR3-T910 insulation system meets the request of overloading transformer needs.

Corona discharge technology is used widely for air purification in laboratory experiments and industry. On the other hand, corona discharge technology has the disadvantage of requiring large-sized electrodes. Therefore, research is needed to reduce the size of the electrodes. In this study, circular hole aluminum electrodes and an air purifier system were designed to reduce the size of the electrodes. Several sets of power conversions were performed to generate a corona discharge. The system consisted of a half bridge inverter, step-up transformer, and Cockcroft Walton circuit. The range of input and output voltages was 30⁻70 V and 20⁻25 kV, respectively. A corona discharge was generated by the output voltage. The system could remove smoke in less time with a combination of 13 kHz and an electrode with a hole diameter of 0.2 cm than with the other combinations. The electrode hole diameter affected the removal time of species such as hydrogen carbon hydrogen oxygen (HCHO, formaldehyde),... [more]

Highly intermittent renewable energy sources pose new challenges to microgrid operation and control. Thus, many distributed control strategies have been proposed to solve this problem. However, for most previous studies, the system frequency fluctuation can be further controlled on the basis of the optimal control strategy. This paper proposes a novel distributed optimal control strategy of a battery energy storage system in an islanded microgrid to provide desired optimal control performance and fast frequency recovery. The proposed control strategy is implemented through a multi-agent system based on consensus algorithm, which only requires information collected through a local communication network. Furthermore, the measurement of supply⁻demand mismatch is replaced by the control signal obtained from a supplementary controller with the improved linear active disturbance rejection control algorithm. The stability of microgrid frequency can be greatly enhanced through this improvement... [more]

When air flows through pipe systems that include a corrugated segment, a whistling tone is generated and increases in intensity with increasing flow velocity. This whistling sound is related to the particular geometry of corrugated pipes, which is in the form of alternating cavities. This whistling is an environmental noise problem as well as a possible structural danger because of the resulting induced vibration. This paper studies the whistling behavior of various pipe systems with a combination of smooth and corrugated pipes through a series of experiments. The considered pipe systems consist of two smooth pipes attached at the upstream and downstream ends of a corrugated segment. Experiments with smooth and corrugated pipes, which had inner diameters of 15.25 and 16.5 mm, respectively, and various lengths, were performed for flow velocities of up to approximately 30 m/s. The minimum and maximum Strouhal numbers (St) obtained during our experiments were 0.25 and 0.38, respectively.... [more]

The article discusses thermal properties of synthetic ester admixed with nanoparticles. The analyzed thermal properties were: thermal conductivity λ, kinematic viscosity υ, density ρ, specific heat cp, and the thermal expansion factor β- all obtained by means of measurements. On the basis of these, the authors calculated the heat transfer factor α, which determines the ability of the liquid to heat transport. The authors used nanoparticles of fullerene C60 and titanium oxide TiO₂. The analysis of the thermal properties was done for the temperatures of 25, 40, 60 and 80 °C. The authors analyzed the impact of nanoparticles C60 and TiO₂ on thermal properties of synthetic ester. They proved that fullerene C60 in principle had no influence on heat transfer factor α of the ester, while titanium oxide TiO₂ had some positive influence on the factor, the value of which increased about 1⁻3%.

Nanocrystalline samples of Mg-Fe-H were synthesized by mixing of MgH₂ and Fe in a 2:1 molar ratio by hand grinding (MIX) or by reactive ball milling (RBM) in a high-pressure vial. Hydrogenation procedures were performed at various temperatures in order to promote the full conversion to Mg₂FeH₆. Pure Mg₂FeH₆ was obtained only for the RBM material cycled at 485 °C. This extremely pure Mg₂FeH₆ sample was investigated as an anode for lithium batteries. The reversible electrochemical lithium incorporation and de-incorporation reactions were analyzed in view of thermodynamic evaluations, potentiodynamic cycling with galvanostatic acceleration (PCGA), and ex situ X-ray Diffraction (XRD) tests. The Mg₂FeH₆ phase underwent a conversion reaction; the Mg metal produced in this reaction was alloyed upon further reduction. The back conversion reaction in a lithium cell was here demonstrated for the first time in a stoichiometric extremely pure Mg₂FeH₆ phase: the reversibility of the overall convers... [more]

In this paper, a method of extracting the junction temperature based on the turn-on current switching rate (dIDS/dt) of silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) is proposed. The temperature dependence of dIDS/dt is analyzed theoretically, and experimentally to show that dIDS/dt increases with the rising junction temperature. In addition, other factors affecting dIDS/dt are also discussed by using the fundamental device physics equations and experiments. The result shows that the increase of the DC-link voltage VDC, the external gate resistance RG-ext, and the decrease of the driving voltage VGG can increase the temperature sensitivity of the dIDS/dt. A PCB (printed circuit board) Rogowski coil measuring circuit based on the fact that the SiC MOSFET chip temperature and dIDS/dt is estimated in a linear way is designed to obtain the junction temperature. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed junction temperature extracting is eff... [more]

The heterogeneous phase combination flooding (HPCF) system which is composed of a branched-preformed particle gel (B-PPG), polymer, and surfactant has been proposed to enhance oil recovery after polymer flooding in heterogeneous reservoirs by mobility control and reducing oil⁻water interfacial tension. However, the high cost of chemicals can make this process economically challenging in an era of low oil prices. Thus, in an era of low oil prices, it is becoming even more essential to optimize the heterogeneous phase combination flooding design. In order to optimize the HPCF process, the injection strategy has been designed such that the incremental oil recovery can be maximized using the corresponding combination of the B-PPG, polymer, and surfactant, thereby ensuring a more economically-viable recovery process. Different HPCF injection strategies including simultaneous injection and alternation injection were investigated by conducting parallel sand pack flooding experiments and large... [more]

In recent decades, different control strategies have been designed for the increasing integration of distributed generation systems. These systems, most of them based on renewable energies, use electronic converters to exchange power with the grid. Capabilities such as low-voltage ride-through and reactive current injection have been experimentally explored and reported in many research papers with a single inverter; however, these capabilities have not been examined in depth in a scenario with multiple inverters connected to the grid. Only few simulation works that include certain methods of reactive power control to solve overvoltage issues in low voltage grids can be found in the literature. Therefore, the overall objective of the work presented in this paper is to provide an experimental analysis of a low-voltage ride-through strategy applied to distributed power generation systems to help support the grid during voltage sags. The amount of reactive power will depend on the capabil... [more]

This paper discusses the optimization of hybrid power systems, which consist of solar cells, wind turbines, fuel cells, hydrogen electrolysis, chemical hydrogen generation, and batteries. Because hybrid power systems have multiple energy sources and utilize different types of storage, we first developed a general hybrid power model using the Matlab/SimPowerSystemTM, and then tuned model parameters based on the experimental results. This model was subsequently applied to predict the responses of four different hybrid power systems for three typical loads, without conducting individual experiments. Furthermore, cost and reliability indexes were defined to evaluate system performance and to derive optimal system layouts. Finally, the impacts of hydrogen costs on system optimization was discussed. In the future, the developed method could be applied to design customized hybrid power systems.

This paper deals with the design, operation, modeling, and grid integration of bioelectrochemical systems (BES) for power-to-gas application, through an electromethanogenesis process. The paper objective is to show that BES-based power-to-gas energy storage is feasible on a large scale, showing a first approximation that goes from the BES design and operation to the electrical grid integration. It is the first study attempting to cover all aspects of a BES-based power-to-gas technology, on authors’ knowledge. Designed BES reactors were based on a modular architecture, suitable for a future scaling-up. They were operated in steady state for eight months, and continuously monitored in terms of power consumption, water treatment, and biomethane production, in order to obtain data for the following modeling activity. A black box linear model of the BES was computed by using least-square methods, and validated through comparison with collected experimental data. Afterwards, a BES stack was... [more]