Solar greenhouses can be considered as efficient places for biological CO2 capture and utilization if CO2 enrichment becomes a common practice there. As CO2 enrichment is applied only when greenhouses are closed, ventilated greenhouses––which represent a large percentage of greenhouses all over the world––cannot be considered for this practice. Consequently, ventilated...
The Philippine residential sector consumes a large percentage of the country’s generated electricity, and the price of electricity there is one of the highest in Asia. With a government program in renewable energy utilization and energy efficiency, the development of energy efficient houses is important. This paper presents a numerical investigation on how to minimize the house’s...
Ways to produce metallic nanoparticles and the scale-up of these processes have seen increased interest as the industrial application of nanoparticles continues to grow. Their feasibility from an environmental point of view can be assessed by means of life cycle analysis (LCA). In this work two methods of metallic nanoparticle production, by evaporation/condensation of metal...
Concerning the global warming due to large CO2 emission, the efficient use of coal becomes important for getting sustainable energy production. Coal gasification under CO2-rich condition is expected to be an effective way to produce a concentrated and pressurized carbon dioxide stream, resulting in reduction in separation energy of CO2 for CCS. Moreover, the soot formation, which...
Uncertain renewable energy supplies, load demands and the non-linear characteristics of some components of photovoltaic (PV) systems make the design problem not easy to solve by classical optimization methods, especially when relevant meteorological data are not available. To overcome this situation, modern methods based on artificial intelligence techniques have been developed...
The paper studies the possibility of unifying the two branches of the irreversible engineering thermodynamics, namely finite physical dimensions thermodynamics (FPDT) and finite speed thermodynamics (FST), aiming to take into account their benefits and successes and to eliminate as much as possible their disadvantages. Actually, the two branches have the same goal, that of...
Data provided by Italian Ministry of Environment say that in 5 years you consume, just for heating of an apartment, an amount of energy equal to that required for the all construction of the same apartment. The years come down to three if one includes other energy consumption. In terms of primary energy, the building-plant system is responsible for about 45 % of the national...
In this paper, exergy analysis is used to evaluate the performance of a combined cycle: organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and absorption cooling system (ACS) using LiBr–H2O, powered by a solar field with linear concentrators. The goal of this work is to design the cogeneration system able to supply electricity and ambient cooling of an academic building and to find solutions to improve...
Microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology represents a form of renewable energy that generates bioelectricity from what would otherwise be considered a waste stream. MFCs may be ideally suited to the small island developing state (SIDS) context, such as Trinidad and Tobago where seawater as the main electrolyte is readily available, and economically renewable and sustainable...
Pyrolysis of waste plastic is a prospective way of conversion of waste plastic into low-emissive hydrocarbon fuel. The present research is focused on the conversion of waste plastic into low-emissive hydrocarbon fuel by two process namely vacuum and catalytic cracking (activated carbon, activated carbon with granulated charcoal and activated carbon with calcium oxide). Waste...
Spray-drying facilities are among the most energy intensive industrial processes. Using a heat pump to recover waste heat and replace gas combustion has the potential to attain both economic and emissions savings. In the case examined a drying gas of ambient air is heated to 200 °C yielding a heat load of 6.1 MW. The exhaust air from the drying process is 80 °C. The...
Lagoons are among the most important ecosystems in the world. To find out how activities around lagoons affect their physical and chemical properties, we assessed the physicochemical properties and concentrations of seven heavy metals from samples of sediments, Tilapia fish and water of Butuah Lagoon in Ghana, as an example. The lagoon was slightly alkaline with a fairly constant...
Sustainable and renewable are certainly very appreciated terms nowadays. These words may summarize a whole new attitude towards our world and the people who live in it. This paper’s goal is to define an original multi-criteria energy model, named SRIME, specially designed for developing countries. First, an extensive research will be carried out on: energy demand; potential...
The use of energy by the major modes and the environmental impact of freight transportation is a problem of increasing importance for future transportation policies. This paper aims to study the relative energy efficiency of the major transport modes, setting up an impartial analysis, improving previous literature substantially. Gabrielli and von Karman have studied the...
Regenerative gas cycles, including the Stirling engine, are sealed machines using pistons within cylinders to transfer energy from a heat source to a colder reservoir using a gas as working substance. For the optimal design of these cycles, we need a detailed description of gas dynamic behavior. This contribution deals with the simulation of cylinder spaces without internal...
The European buildings occupy a key place among the major energy consumer sectors, with high savings potential. The development of urban planning tools helpful to understand the right policy strategies turning the settled sustainable targets into real energy consumption savings is now a real challenge. Into this paper is described a methodology, for the mid-long term scenarios...
A base-line survey was conducted in 2010 at different locations of Bangladesh to know the present status of solar pumps. The respondents were solar pump users, suppliers and service providers. There were about 150 solar pumps in Bangladesh, among them 65 % were used for supplying drinking water to the poor people of the locality and about 35 % solar pumps were used for irrigation...
According to recent regulations on energy saving in buildings, all new structures should guarantee high-energy performance. To this aim, the building envelope should be equipped with insulated walls and high-efficiency windows. This approach leads to considerable thermal insulation, but at the same time, in the absence of a suitable ventilation system, it results in a worsening...
Nowadays, most rural and hilly areas use the small and microscale plants to produce electricity; it is cheap, available and effective. Utilizing hydrokinetic turbines in flow of rivers, canal or channel to produce power has been a topic of considerable interest to researchers for past years. Many countries that are surrounded by irrigation or rainy channels have a great potential...
The work arises from the consideration that the environmental impact of a road cannot be limited to the analysis of its constituent materials, even if correctly analyzed in their life cycle. In fact, a given road not only consists of the pavement and subgrade, but also includes several different components and accessories (e.g., road marking, drainages, safety barriers, etc...
Discarded carrots are a valuable source of biomass amenable for valorization. Their use as raw material for ethanol production by fermentation, using yeasts immobilized in Calcium alginate, was proposed. The biocatalyst immobilization method, the existence of internal and external mass transfer limitations, the effect of the initial pH and the reuse of immobilized yeasts were...
This work is aimed at defining a possible solution for sustainable energy development in the Menoua Department, West Cameroon. The purpose of the cooperation between ALA Milano Onlus and the Biomass Energy Efficiency Laboratory of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia was to analyze the case study in order to propose a solution for energy production capable of meeting the...
Urban areas usually experience higher temperatures when compared to their rural surroundings. Several studies underlined that specific urban conditions are strictly connected with the Urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon, which consists in the environmental overheating related to anthropic activities. As a matter of fact, urban areas, characterized by massive constructions that...
In order to accomplish the objective of studying and optimizing the flow channel geometries and dimensions for high-temperature proton-exchange-membrane (PEM) fuel cells (with operating temperatures above 120 °C), a mathematical model has been developed in this work. As the major step of the modeling, the average concentrations of gas species in bulk flows as well as in the...
In the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, molecular organic chemistry is undergoing a green revolution in order to avoid waste by developing a cleaner and safer chemistry. This change is subject to the new European regulation REACH. One of the major goals of organic synthesis is to design molecules with high added value by developing synthetic methods highly selective...