An increase in demand for energy natural resources has stimulated the development of gas pipeline networks in Europe, as well as globally. Also, in Poland in recent years there has been a significant increase in natural gas consumption. Therefore, it is necessary to build new pipelines networks using dig and no−dig techniques. Horizontal Directional Drilling is one of the most popular trenchless technologies. The aim of this article is to present a new approach in the design of HDD trajectories in two−dimensional space (2D). A review of the trajectories used so far has been provided, offering calculation algorithms to determine their well path. Then, the original catenary method is proposed, taking into account natural deflection of casing pipes. Applicable formulas and computational algorithms have been given, together with a computational example which enables comparison of the classical design methodology with the new one. According to the authors, due to natural stress distribution... [more]

The online monitoring of a high voltage apparatus is a crucial aspect for a predictive maintenance program. Partial discharges (PDs) phenomena affect the insulation system of an electrical machine and—in the long term—can lead to a breakdown, with a consequent, significant economic loss; wind turbines provide an excellent example. Embedded solutions are therefore required to monitor the insulation status. The paper presents an online system that adopts unsupervised methodologies for assessing the condition of the monitored machine in real time. The monitoring process does not rely on any prior knowledge about the apparatus; nonetheless, the method can identify the relevant drifts in the machine status. In addition, the system is specifically designed to run on low-cost embedded devices.

Kinetic hydrate inhibitors (KHI) and anti-agglomerants (AA) rather than thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors (THI) are often used for flow assurance in pipelines. This is because they require much lower dosages than thermodynamic inhibitors. Although the hydrate-phase equilibria are not affected, KHI and AA prevent the formed hydrate crystals from growing to a bulky state causing pipeline blockage. However, these KHIs might have huge environmental impact due to leakages from the pipelines. In this study, two biodegradable AA candidates from natural sources (that is, lecithin and lanolin) are proposed and their performances are evaluated by comparing them with and without a conventional AA (Span 80, sorbitan monooleate). At 30% and 50% water cut, the addition of AA materials was found to enhance the flow characteristics substantially in pipelines and hardly affected the maximum value of the rotational torque, respectively. Considering the cost-effective and environmental advantages of the s... [more]

Solar radiation is the sole energy source for Chinese solar greenhouse agriculture. A favorable light environment is the foundation of a desirable crop growth environment, and it is key in solar greenhouse design. In this study, a mathematical model is established to quantitatively evaluate the solar greenhouse light environment. The model was developed considering the greenhouse shape parameters, materials’ optical properties, and interior solar radiation evolution, including the beam radiation, diffuse radiation, and multi-reflection. The model was validated under different weather conditions, and the results reveal a mean percentage error of 1.67 and 10.30% for clear sunny weather and cloudy weather, respectively, and a determination coefficient of 0.9756. By using this model, the solar radiation allocation in a solar greenhouse was calculated to determine the solar radiation availability for the heat-storage north wall and the entire greenhouse, and the dynamical spatial distributi... [more]

The conversion efficiency of the thermoelectric generator (TEG) is adversely affected by the quality of thermal contact between the module and the heat source. TEGs with the planar substrate are not suitable for the curved heat sources. Several attempts have been made to tackle this issue by fabricating complex tubular-shaped TEGs; however, all efforts have been limited to low-temperature applications. Furthermore, the electrical contact resistance of the module is critical to achieving a high-power output. In this work, we developed the tubular TEG with significantly low specific contact resistance by optimizing the joining process. We show that the modified resistance welding (MRW) performed by spark plasma sintering (SPS) is an efficient joining method for the fabrication of the TE module, with high feasibility and scalability. This research seeks to suggest important design rules to consider when fabricating TEGs.

This paper presents an off-design analysis of a gas turbine Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) combined cycle. Combustion turbine performances are significantly affected by fluctuations in ambient conditions, leading to relevant variations in the exhaust gases’ mass flow rate and temperature. The effects of the variation of ambient air temperature have been considered in the simulation of the topper cycle and of the condenser in the bottomer one. Analyses have been performed for different working fluids (toluene, benzene and cyclopentane) and control systems have been introduced on critical parameters, such as oil temperature and air mass flow rate at the condenser fan. Results have highlighted similar power outputs for cycles based on benzene and toluene, while differences as high as 34% have been found for cyclopentane. The power output trend with ambient temperature has been found to be influenced by slope discontinuities in gas turbine exhaust mass flow rate and temperature and by the upp... [more]

Multi-stage refrigeration systems cover a wide range of possibilities and are diffusing more and more. The idea that inspired this work derived from the need to have a tool to model the energy behavior of the intercooler inside a multi-stage refrigeration system. In this work, a semi-analytical model of a single bubble, injected into the liquid of an intercooler of a multi-stage system, has been developed. The developed model is a set of equations derived from the Fourier equation for heat conduction in defined conditions and includes the effects of sensible and latent heat. The vapor bubble is supposed to be injected in the saturated liquid contained in a tank at a defined depth, at an intermediate pressure. The model has been implemented in Matlab and the results show the influence of the liquid surface tension, the injection depth and the thermal diffusivity of the vapor. The model developed here is a useful low-cost tool for evaluating heat transfer optimization of a separator/inte... [more]

The traditional discrete vapor cavity model (DVCM) is widely used in water hammer simulation. Water column separation in pipelines is usually predicted with this model. Nevertheless, the main weaknesses of this model consist of numerical instability and nonconvergence. Regarding the weaknesses of the traditional model, this paper discusses an improved method. The new method uses a new water hammer velocity formula, a new cavity model, and a floating grid method. Through simulations to test the effects of the new model, an experimental platform can be established to realize a water hammer with multipoint collapsing. The numerical simulation was programmed in C++ and the test was carried out with an actual pipeline model built in the laboratory. After certain modelling and calibration, the parameters in the simulation calculation were consistent with the measured parameters in the test. The numerical simulation results were compared with the experimental results. For the hydraulic transi... [more]

Over the past decade, energy forecasting applications not only on the grid side of electric power systems but also on the customer side for load and demand prediction purposes have become ubiquitous after the advancements in the smart grid technologies. Within this context, short-term electrical energy consumption forecasting is a requisite for energy management and planning of all buildings from households and residences in the small-scale to huge building complexes in the large-scale. Today’s popular machine learning algorithms in the literature are commonly used to forecast short-term building electrical energy consumption by generating an abstruse analytical expression between explanatory variables and response variables. In this study, gene expression programming (GEP) and group method of data handling (GMDH) networks are meticulously employed for creating genuine and easily understandable mathematical models among predictor variables and target variables and forecasting short-ter... [more]

Injecting carbon dioxide to enhance shale gas recovery (CO2-EGR) is a useful technique that has raised great research interests. Clear understanding of the two-component gas transport mechanisms in shale nanopores is the foundation for the efficient development of shale gas reservoir (SGR) and also the long-term geological storage of CO2. Although extensive studies on single-component gas transport and corresponding models in shale nanopores have been carried out in recent years, limited studies have been conducted on two-component or even multi-component gas transport models in shale nanopores. In this work, the shale nanopores were classified into inorganic and organic nanopores. The corresponding models for two-component gas transport were constructed. Mechanisms including Knudsen diffusion, slip flow, viscous flow, and molecular diffusion are considered in the inorganic pores. In the organic pores, due to existence of adsorption gas, surface diffusion is further considered besides... [more]

Global warming caused by excessive emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is one of the greatest challenges for mankind in the 21st century. China is the world’s largest carbon emitter and its transportation industry is one of the fastest growing sectors for carbon emissions. However, China is a vast country with different levels of carbon emissions in the transportation industry. Therefore, it is helpful for the Chinese government to formulate a reasonable policy of regional carbon emissions control by studying the factors influencing the carbon emissions of the Chinese transportation industry at the regional level. Based on data from 1997 to 2017, this paper adopts the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) decomposition method to analyze the influencing degree of several major factors on the carbon emissions of transportation industry in different regions, puts forward some suggestions according to local conditions, and provides references for the carbon reduction of Chinese tra... [more]

In this study, a two-dimensional CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analysis was performed to investigate the heat-transfer and fluid-friction characteristics in a solar air heater having a transverse triangular block at the bottom of the air duct. The Reynolds number, block height (e), pitch (P), and length (l) were chosen as design parameters. The results are validated by comparing the Nusselt number predicted by simulation with available experimental results. Renormalization-group (RNG) k - ε model with enhanced wall-treatment was selected as the most appropriate turbulence model. From the results, it was found that the presence of a transverse triangular block produces a higher Nusselt number than that of smooth air duct. The enhancement in Nusselt number varied from 1.19 to 3.37, according to the geometric conditions investigated. However, the use of transverse triangular block also results in significantly higher friction losses. The thermohydraulic performance (THPP) w... [more]

Hurricanes lead to substantial infrastructure system damages, such as roadway closures and power outages, in the US annually, especially in states like Florida. As such, this paper aimed to assess the impacts of Hurricane Hermine (2016) and Hurricane Michael (2018) on the City of Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, via exploratory spatial and statistical analyses on power outages and roadway closures. First, a geographical information systems (GIS)-based spatial analysis was conducted to explore the power outages and roadway closure patterns in the city including kernel density estimation (KDE) and density ratio difference (DRD) methods. In order to provide a more detailed assessment on which population segments were more affected, a second step included a statistical analysis to identify the relationships between demographic- and socioeconomic-related variables and the magnitude of power outages and roadway closures caused by these hurricanes. The results indicate that the high-risk... [more]

Energy efficiency has aroused great interest in research worldwide, because energy consumption has increased in recent years, especially in the residential sector. The advances in energy conversion, along with new forms of communication, and information technologies have paved the way for what is now known as smart homes. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the convergence of various heterogeneous technologies from different application domains that are used to interconnect things through the Internet, thus allowing for the detection, monitoring, and remote control of multiple devices. Home automation systems (HAS) combined with IoT, big data technologies, and machine learning are alternatives that promise to contribute to greater energy efficiency. This work presents HEMS-IoT, a big data and machine learning-based smart home energy management system for home comfort, safety, and energy saving. We used the J48 machine learning algorithm and Weka API to learn user behaviors and energy consu... [more]

A microgrid energy management system (MEMS) optimally schedules the operation of dispatchable distributed energy resources to minimize the operation costs of microgrids (MGs) via an economic dispatch (ED). Actual ED implementation in the MEMS relies on an optimization software package called an optimization solver. This paper presents a comparative study of optimization solvers to investigate their suitability for ED implementation in the MEMS. Four optimization solvers, including commercial as well as open-source-based ones, were compared in terms of their computational capability and optimization results for ED. Two-stage scheduling was applied for the ED strategy, whereby a mixed-integer programming problem was solved to yield the optimal operation schedule of battery-based energy storage systems. In the first stage, the optimal schedule is identified one day before the operating day; in the second stage, the optimal schedule is updated every 5 min during actual operation to compens... [more]

We analyzed the peak spring tidal current speeds, annual mean tidal power densities ( T P D ) and annual energy production ( A E P ) obtained from experiment 06.1, referred as the “HYCOM model” throughout, of the three dimensional (3D), global model HYCOM in an area covering the Baja California Pacific and the Gulf of California. The HYCOM model is forced with astronomical tides and surface winds alone, and therefore is particularly suitable to assess the tidal current and wind-driven current contribution to in-stream energy resources. We find two areas within the Gulf of California, one in the Great Island Region and one in the Upper Gulf of California, where peak spring tidal flows reach speeds of 1.1 m per second. Second to fifth-generation tidal stream devices would be suitable for deployment in these two areas, which are very similar in terms of tidal in-stream energy resources. However, they are also very different in terms of sediment type and range in water depth, p... [more]

To effectively predict the rolling bearing fault under different working conditions, a rolling bearing fault prediction method based on quantum particle swarm optimization (QPSO) backpropagation (BP) neural network and Dempster−Shafer evidence theory is proposed. First, the original vibration signals of rolling bearing are decomposed by three-layer wavelet packet, and the eigenvectors of different states of rolling bearing are constructed as input data of BP neural network. Second, the optimal number of hidden-layer nodes of BP neural network is automatically found by the dichotomy method to improve the efficiency of selecting the number of hidden-layer nodes. Third, the initial weights and thresholds of BP neural network are optimized by QPSO algorithm, which can improve the convergence speed and classification accuracy of BP neural network. Finally, the fault classification results of multiple QPSO-BP neural networks are fused by Dempster−Shafer evidence theory, and the final rolling... [more]

Battery electric vehicles (BEV) provide an opportunity to balance supply and demand in future power systems with high shares of fluctuating renewable energy. Compared to other storage systems such as pumped-storage hydroelectricity, electric vehicle energy demand is highly dependent on charging and connection choices of vehicle users. We present a model framework of a utility-based stock and flow model, a utility-based microsimulation of charging decisions, and an energy system model including respective interfaces to assess how the representation of battery electric vehicle charging affects energy system optimization results. We then apply the framework to a scenario study for controlled charging of nine million electric vehicles in Germany in 2030. Assuming a respective fleet power demand of 27 TWh, we analyze the difference between power-system-based and vehicle user-based charging decisions in two respective scenarios. Our results show that taking into account vehicle users’ chargi... [more]

The circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boiler is a mainstream technology of biomass combustion generation in China. The high flue gas flow rate and relatively low combustion temperature of CFB make the deposition process different from that of a grate furnace. The dynamic deposition process of biomass ash needs further research, especially in industrial CFB boilers. In this study, a temperature-controlled ash deposit probe was used to sample the deposits in a 12 MW CFB boiler. Through the analysis of multiple deposit samples with different deposition times, the changes in micromorphology and chemical composition of the deposits in each deposition stage can be observed more distinctively. The initial deposits mainly consist of particles smaller than 2 μm, caused by thermophoretic deposition. The second stage is the condensation of alkali metal. Different from the condensation of KCl reported by most previous literatures, KOH is found in deposits in place of KCl. Then, it reacts with SO2, O... [more]

A controlled suspension usually consists of a high-level and a low-level controller. The purpose the high-level controller is to analyze external data on vehicle conditions and make decisions on the required value of the force on the shock absorber rod, while the purpose of the low-level controller is to ensure the implementation of the desired force value by controlling the actuators. Many works have focused on the design of high-level controllers of active suspensions, in which it is considered that the shock absorber can instantly and absolutely accurately implement a given control input. However, active shock absorbers are complex systems that have hysteresis. In addition, electro-pneumatic and hydraulic elements are often used in the design, which have a long response time and often low accuracy. The application of methods of control theory in such systems is often difficult due to the complexity of constructing their mathematical models. In this article, the authors propose an ef... [more]

In the permanent magnet direct-drive wind power grid-connected system, in order to solve the coupling problem between d -axis and q -axis currents and to improve the disturbance rejection performance of direct current (DC) bus voltage under grid faults, a new dual closed-loop structure based on linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) is proposed. This new dual closed-loop control includes current inner loop decoupling control and DC bus voltage outer loop control with first-order LADRC. As the LADRC has the advantages of decoupling and disturbances rejection, it is applied to the control of wind power grid-connected inverter. Through analysis, it is demonstrated that the current decoupling control is simpler than proportional integral (PI) control algorithm, the dynamic response speed is faster, and the DC bus voltage control has better anti-disturbance. Finally, a 1.5 MW direct-drive permanent magnet wind power system was established through digital simulation, a... [more]

Advanced thermal control technologies have been continuously developed to complement conventional models and algorithms to improve their performance regarding control accuracy and energy efficiency. This study analyses the strengths and weaknesses of simultaneous controls for the amount of air and its temperature by use of on-demand and predictive control strategies responding to two different outdoor conditions. The framework performs the comparative analyses of an on-demand model, which reacts immediately to indoor conditions, and a predictive model, which provides reference signals derived from data learned. Two models are combined to make a comparison of how much more efficient the combined model operates than each model when abnormal situations occur. As a result, when the two models are combined, its efficiency improves from 20.0% to 33.6% for indoor thermal dissatisfaction and from 13.0% to 44.5% for energy use, respectively. This result implies that in addition to creating new... [more]

This paper discusses whether the concepts of energy democracy, energy justice and the principles of good market regulation could play a role in developing a more consistent approach towards the regulation of the energy sector. It is concluded that the principles of good regulation can provide a useful framework within which advantages and disadvantages can be weighed of regulatory choices to be made when modernizing the regulation of the energy markets. A case study of the Dutch heat market is used as an example, showing that a lot remains to be gained in terms of flexible regulation and supervision and the facilitation of citizen participation. Both energy democracy and energy justice call for this. The lack of flexibility in the current regulatory framework could lead to ineffective and disproportionate regulation, hindering a sustainable, reliable and affordable development of the heat market. A larger need for flexibility is justified because of the differences between the types of... [more]

In this work, we develop the general theory for analyzing the thermodynamic consistency of the Richardson−Duhmann model for vacuum thermionic energy converters. In addition to the electron fluxes from emitter to collector and vice versa, we calculate the energy and entropy fluxes associated to them. The calculation of the entropy fluxes is what allows us to conclude that the model is consistent by verifying that both at the emitter and at the collector the entropy generation rate is positive. In the process, we review the Richardson−Duhmann model in order to assure that the assumptions we make for calculating the energy and entropy fluxes are consistent. We also generalize the Richardson−Duhmann model in order to consider Fermi−Dirac statistics.

The paper presents the results of tests of the shear strength of the ash−slag mixture taken from the landfill located in Kraków (Poland) and the interfacial friction resistance at the contact between the ash−slag mixture and woven or nonwoven geotextiles. The tests were carried out in a direct shear apparatus on samples with and without water saturation. The samples for testing were formed in the apparatus box at the optimum moisture by compacting them to IS = 0.90 and 1.00. The test results reveal that the shear strength parameters of the ash-slag mixture were large. It was stated the significant influence of the compaction, the growth of which has resulted in an increase in the angle of internal friction (from 7% to 9%) and cohesion (from 60% to 97%). Whereas the saturation of the samples reduced the shear strength parameters (from 4% to 6%, of the internal friction angle and 30% to 43% of cohesion). The values of the interfacial friction resistance at the contact between the ash−sla... [more]