• Energy Research
• 11. Sustainability close
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Abstract Hydrothermal treatment (HT) is one of the efficient approaches for upgrading municipal solid waste (MSW). In the present study, emission characteristics of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from hydrothermally treated municipal solid waste (H-MSW) combustion alone and H-MSW/coal co-combustion were investigated at different temperatures. The results showed that for all fuel combustion, the majority of PAHs were 3- or 4-ring PAHs. In addition, flue gas had the highest yields of PAHs followed by fly ash and bottom ash, while the ring number of dominated PAHs in fly ash was higher than those in flue gas and bottom ash. Compared to MSW, H-MSW combustion generated less PAHs at the value of 1131.95–7649.24 μg/g. The blending of H-MSW and coal reduced total PAH emissions and positive interactions were observed between H-MSW and coal during co-combustion. The toxicity equivalent quantity (TEQ) values of the PAHs from combustion were in the order MSW > H-MSW > H-MSW/coal, which was consistent with the total PAH emissions. The present study illustrated that significant reduction of PAH emissions and toxicity from combustion could be achieved by HT and the blending of H-MSW and coal.

Effectively analyzing and then treating energy-related air pollution requires examining every factor, from the pollution source to the end of treatment. This paper applies index decomposition analysis and a whole process treatment perspective to identify the factors facilitating air pollution reduction across three stages: source prevention, process control, and end-of-pipe treatment. Empirical research using data from China’s Jiangsu Province and its 13 cities reveals differences in local approaches to pollution prevention. At the provincial level, end-of-pipe treatment remains the primary approach to control air pollution emissions, indicating that the pattern of “pollute first, govern later” has not yet been fundamentally reversed. At the city level, 13 cities can be divided into four types, based on their approach to air pollution treatment: the leading type, process-dependent type, end-dependent type, and lagging type. Of these, 7 cities are using multiple control approaches, reflecting the comprehensive effect of whole process treatment. The Jiangsu Province should consider further strengthening effective whole process air pollution treatment models, by transitioning to pollution control, adjusting industrial structure, promoting technological progress, and consuming clean energy.

Carbon emission reduction is a long-term strategy for China to promote its economic and social development. However, emission reduction often involves a huge amount of technological investment, which could vary substantially across different provinces due to their discrepancy in economic and technological development levels. Emission trading as a useful policy instrument may help different provinces achieve their emission reduction targets cost-effectively. This paper models the economic performance of an interprovincial emission reduction quota trading scheme in China. The marginal abatement cost curve of each province in China is first estimated. A nonlinear programming model is further developed to evaluate the economic performance of interprovincial emission reduction quota trading. Five equity criteria are used to conduct the initial allocation of emission reduction targets between different provinces. Our modeling results show that China’s total emission abatement cost could decrease by over 40% through implementing such an interprovincial emission reduction quota trading scheme. Of the five alternative criteria, the CO2 emissions and population criteria look fairer and are recommended for use in the initial allocation of CO2 emission reduction targets.

Abstract Accurate rooftop solar energy potential characterization is critically important for promoting the wide penetration of renewable energy in high-density cities. However, it has been a long-standing challenge due to the complex building shading effects and diversified rooftop availabilities. To overcome the challenge, this study proposed a novel 3D-geographic information system (GIS) and deep learning integrated approach, in which a 3D-GIS-based solar irradiance analyzer was developed to predict dynamic rooftop solar irradiance by taking shading effects of surrounding buildings into account. A deep learning framework was developed to identify the rooftop availabilities. Experimental validations have shown their high accuracies. As a case study, a real urban region of Hong Kong was used. The results showed that the annual solar energy potential of the entire building group was reduced by 35.7% due to the shading effect and the reduced rooftop availability. The reductions of individual buildings varied from 13.4% to 74.5%. In spite of the substantial reductions of the annual solar energy, the shading effect could only slightly reduce the peak solar power. In fact, the annual solar energy reduction could be five times higher than the peak solar power reduction. Further analysis showed that simple addition of the respective solar energy potential reductions, caused by the shading effect and the rooftop availability, tends to highly overestimate the total reduction by up to 26%. For this reason, their impacts cannot be considered separately but as joint effects. The integrated approach provides a viable means to accurately characterize rooftop solar energy potential in urban regions, which can help facilitate solar energy applications in high-density cities.

This paper aims to develop a green building meta-model for a representative passively designed high-rise residential building in Hong Kong. Modelling experiments are conducted with EnergyPlus to explore a Monte Carlo regression approach, which intends to interpret the relationship between input parameters and output indices of a generic building model and provide reliable building performance predictions. Input parameters are selected from different passive design strategies including the building layout, envelop thermophysics, building geometry and infiltration & air-tightness, while output indices are corresponding indoor environmental indices of the daylight, natural ventilation and thermal comfort to fulfil current green building requirements. The variation of sampling size, application of response transformation and bootstrap method, as well as different statistical regression models are tested and validated through separate modelling datasets. A sampling size of 100 per regression coefficient is determined from the variation of sensitivity coefficients, coefficients of determination and prediction uncertainties. The rank transformation of responses can calibrate sensitivity coefficients of a non-linear model, by considering their variation obtained from sufficient bootstrapping replications. Furthermore, the acquired meta-model with MARS (Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines) is proved to have better model fitting and predicting performances. This research can accurately identify important architectural design factors and make robust building performance predictions associated with the green building assessment. Sensitivity analysis results and obtained meta-models can improve the efficiency of future optimization studies by pruning the problem space and shorten the computation time.

Abstract The time-varying nature of the heating loads of public buildings creates scope for exploring strategies to improve the energy system efficiency and to reduce the energy consumption and system operating costs. A well-researched and refined energy system operation strategy based on time-varying heating load demands is proposed in this paper. The proposed strategy is more effective and efficient than the existing experience-based operation strategies used to run energy systems. With full consideration of the factors affecting building heating loads under various scenarios, a multi-objective particle swarm optimisation algorithm combined with a scenario analysis is presented in this paper. The system efficiency and operation cost are set as two basic objectives to generate a Pareto frontier, and the occupant thermal comfort level is the dominant consideration while selecting an optimal state point for the final operation strategy. Using this simplified decision-making process, this approach can simultaneously calculate both the starting sequence and parameter settings for an optimised operation of the heat supply units. An energy plant on a university campus in Tianjin was selected to implement and evaluate this optimisation strategy. The case study results show that, without compromising the requirements of the thermal comfort of the building occupants, the energy system operating cost can be reduced by 38.9%, with an increase by a factor of 2.24 in the system coefficient of performance when compared with the current experience-based operation strategies.

Abstract Fuel cell vehicles and carsharing depict two potential solutions with regard to pollution and noise from traffic in cities. They are most effective when combined, and hydrogen is produced via electrolysis using renewables. One major hurdle in utilizing fuel cell vehicles is to size hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) and hydrogen production via electrolysis properly in order to fulfill the carsharing vehicles’ demand at any given time. This paper presents data on refueling behavior in free-floating carsharing, which have not been available thus far. Refueling profiles of hydrogen carsharing vehicles are modeled based on this data. Furthermore, this analysis presents and applies a methodology for optimizing topology of a wind turbine-connected HRS with onsite electrolysis via an evolutionary algorithm. This optimization is conducted for different carsharing fleet sizes, and HRS profitability is evaluated. The results show that larger fleets are capable of decreasing hydrogen production costs significantly. Moreover, adding capacity to the HRS in order to prepare for hydrogen demand from private vehicles in the future does not significantly increase costs. However, overall costs are still high compared to the current market price in Germany, requiring further cost reductions.

Simple and reliable, PV direct-coupled DC pumps are promising in solar water heating systems (SWHS). However, there is limited experimental data on the performance comparison of PV-coupled SWHS with traditional SWHS. Hence in this study, a comparative test rig is set up to measure and analyze the performance of the PV-coupled SWHS and the traditional system under the same conditions. The experimental results show that on sunny days the PV-coupled SWHS has similar daily thermal efficiency as the traditional SWHS, and slightly higher efficiency after improving the design of the PV module. Under low irradiation, the PV-coupled SWHS gains much more heat than the traditional SWHS, which indicates the potential of the PV-coupled SWHS having much higher efficiency than the traditional SWHS on cloudy days. In order to improve the performance of the PV-coupled SWHS, two different designs of PV module are proposed, and their influence on the pump startup characteristics, the flow rate profile, and the thermal efficiency of the system is investigated. It is found that the modified design of the PV module can reduce the requirement of PV cells and increase the efficiency of the system.