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Interconnectivity and interoperability are very important features in the development of integrated energy management systems for industrial facilities. A simple and common strategy for exchanging energy-related information among the entities in a facility is currently lacking. To this end, the purpose of this study is to present an IoT-based communication framework with a common information model to facilitate the development of a demand response (DR) energy management system for industrial customers. Additionally, we developed and implemented an IoT-based energy-management platform based on a common information model and open communication protocols, which takes advantage of integrated energy supply networks to deploy DR energy management in an industrial facility. The experimental results of this study demonstrate that the proposed platform can not only improve the interconnectivity of the entities in industrial energy management systems but also reduce the energy costs of industrial facilities.

Aiming at the large carbon emissions of facility agricultural heating in severe cold regions in winter, a compound parabolic concentrator based soil heating system was presented. The system integrated with novel trough compound parabolic concentrator and was used for soil heating in facility agriculture. Following the structure of the compound parabolic concentrator, TracePro software was selected to trace the light in the compound parabolic concentrator. The variation trend of the light escape rate of the compound parabolic concentrator with the different incident angles was analyzed. Based on the calculation results, the performance of the solar collector system was investigated, and the impact of circulating air velocity on the photo-thermal performance of the solar collector system was explored. Research results indicate that when the circulating air velocity is 1.4 m/s and the average ambient temperature is about 28.9?, the temperature of the system outlet is up to 90.9?. The average instantaneous heat collection, maximum photo-thermal conversion efficiency, and unit area heat collection of the system are 740.6 W, 27.83%, and 0.8 MJ/m2, respectively. This research can effectively promote the efficient integration of the solar collector system in facility agriculture.

Abstract A biomass oil/diesel blend was prepared using an emulsion method and combusted in a diesel engine. An injector was then removed and the morphology, composition, and structure of the carbonaceous deposits on the pintle-type nozzle were characterized using a combination of HRTEM, SEM/EDAX, Raman and XRD. Results showed that the carbon deposition of the emulsified fuel with high crystallinity was greater than that of diesel. The agglomerated particulate diameters of the deposited carbon from diesel and emulsified fuel were approximately 10–30 μm and 50 μm, respectively. The carbon deposition mechanism from the emulsified fuel was attributed to the high oxygen content of the groups leading to increased polymerization and subsequent condensation on the nozzle surfaces that was then carbonised.

Cu2CdSn(S,Se)(4) is an important candidate material for thin film solar cell absorber layers. In this work, low-cost Cu2CdSnS4 nanocrytal thin film with a stannite structure has been successfully fabricated by a butyldithiocarbamate-based ethanol solution approach. The selenized Cu2CdSn(S,Se)(4) thin film shows large densely packed grains and has a suitable band gap value of 1.01 eV. The Cu2CdSn(S,Se)(4) thin film solar cell with a proof-of-concept power conversion efficiency of 3.1% was fabricated. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this paper, a three-rotor turboprop engine (with a fixed-speed free turbine) is set as the studied object. Under the certain flight conditions and the transient state control law, the main influencing factors affecting the position of low-pressure rotor transient state line are studied. They are the ratio of MIL (moment of inertia of low pressure rotor) to MIH (moment of inertia of high pressure rotor), the ratio of HPC (high pressure compressor) pressure ratio to LPC (low pressure compressor) pressure ratio and the ratio of design point HPR (high pressure rotor) speed to design point LPR (low pressure rotor) speed. The influence of these three factors on the position of low-pressure rotor transient state line is obtained and the mechanism is analyzed.

Abstract Accurate estimation of the remaining useful life of lithium-ion batteries is critically important for electronic devices. In the existing literature, the widely applied model-based approaches for remaining useful battery life estimation are limited by the complexity of the electrochemical modeling required. In addition, data-driven approaches for remaining useful battery life estimation commonly define unreliable sliding window sizes empirically and the prediction accuracy of these approaches needs to be improved. To address the above issues, use of a hybrid neural network with the false nearest neighbors method is proposed in this paper. First, the false nearest neighbors method is used to calculate the sliding window size required for prediction. Second, a hybrid neural network that combines the advantages of a convolutional neural network with those of long short-term memory is designed for model training and prediction. Remaining useful life prediction experiments for batteries with various rated capacities are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach, and the results demonstrate that the proposed approach offers wide generality and reduced errors when compared with the other state-of-the-art methods.

Abstract In the present study, Loblolly pine biomass residue was converted to bio-oil in a two-step process, consisting of 1) fast pyrolysis in the presence of zeolite ZSM-5 as a catalyst to produce pyrolysis oil, 2) hydrogenation of pyrolysis oil using formic acid as the hydrogen source in presence of Ru/activated carbon catalyst. Pyrolysis oils were analyzed by 13C, 31P and HSQC-NMR and the results revealed that the zeolite-induced catalytic fast pyrolysis process led to effective demethoxylation, producing more catechol and p-hydroxy-phenyl hydroxyl groups in the bio-oils, resulting in a decrease in the methoxyl group content by about 85 % and rich aromatic structures in the pyrolysis oils. The properties of pyrolysis oil with and without zeolite were in the bio-oil range. Hydrogenated pyrolysis oil showed that 79 % of the aromatic protons are eliminated and 87 % of protons are aliphatic in nature, with no oxygen attached to the α-carbon.

The excavation of a deep foundation pit adjacent to an existing tunnel may lead to the large deformation and induce damages in the tunnel structure. However, the influence on existing tunnel structure from nearby excavations has not been understood clearly, since it is affected by complex influencing factors of not only the geological and topographical conditions but also the construction method and positional relationship of the adjacent structures. This paper presents a numerical investigation into an existing underground rail transit line during the excavation of an adjacent deep foundation pit, in which the behavior of the existing tunnel structure from excavating the aforementioned foundation pit is clarified, and the effectiveness of the adopted three-dimensional model is confirmed by comparison between the numerically calculated and field-measured ground settlement of the monitoring point. The results demonstrate that the deformation of the existing tunnel structure is mostly induced by the excavation of the deep foundation pit. This study can provide a reference of deep excavations adjacent to existing infrastructures.

Uncertainty commonly exists in the wireless power transfer (WPT) systems for moving objects. To enhance the robustness of the WPT system to uncertain parameter variations, a modified WPT system structure and an interval-based uncertain optimization method are proposed in this paper. The modified WPT system, which includes two Q-type impedance matching networks, can switch between two different operating modes. The interval-based uncertain optimization method is used to improve the robustness of the modified WPT system: First, two interval-based objective functions (mean function and variance function) are defined to evaluate the average performance and the robustness of the system. A double-objective uncertain optimization model for the modified WPT system is built. Second, a bi-level nested optimization algorithm is proposed to find the Pareto optimal solutions of the proposed optimization model. The Pareto fronts are provided to illustrate the tradeoff between the two objectives, and the robust solutions are obtained. Experiments were carried out to verify the theoretical method. The results demonstrated that using the proposed method, the modified WPT system can achieve good robustness when the coupling coefficient, the operating frequency, the load resistance or the load reactance varies over a wide range.