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Editorial paper of the Renewable Energy's special issue "Integrated biorefinery for the planet's future"

Editorial paper of the Renewable Energy's special issue "Integrated biorefinery for the planet's future"

This study aims to investigate the thermo-kinetics of high-ash sewage sludge using thermogravimetric analysis. Sewage sludge was dried, pulverized and heated non-isothermally from 25 to 800 °C at different heating rates (5, 10 and 20 °C/min) in N2 atmosphere. TG and DTG results indicate that the sewage sludge pyrolysis may be divided into three stages. Coats-Redfern integral method was applied in the 2nd and 3rd stage to estimate the activation energy and pre-exponential factor from mass loss data using five major reaction mechanisms. The low-temperature stable components (LTSC) of the sewage sludge degraded in the temperature regime of 250–450 °C while high-temperature stable components (HTSC) decomposed in the temperature range of 450–700 °C. According to the results, first-order reaction model (F1) showed higher Ea with better R2 for all heating rates. D3, N1, and S1 produced higher Ea at higher heating rates for LTSC pyrolysis and lower Ea with the increase of heating rates for HTSC pyrolysis. All models showed positive ΔH except F1.5. Among all models, Diffusion (D1, D2, D3) and phase interfacial models (S1, S2) showed higher ΔG as compared to reaction, nucleation, and power-law models in section I and section II.

This study aims to investigate the thermo-kinetics of high-ash sewage sludge using thermogravimetric analysis. Sewage sludge was dried, pulverized and heated non-isothermally from 25 to 800 °C at different heating rates (5, 10 and 20 °C/min) in N2 atmosphere. TG and DTG results indicate that the sewage sludge pyrolysis may be divided into three stages. Coats-Redfern integral method was applied in the 2nd and 3rd stage to estimate the activation energy and pre-exponential factor from mass loss data using five major reaction mechanisms. The low-temperature stable components (LTSC) of the sewage sludge degraded in the temperature regime of 250–450 °C while high-temperature stable components (HTSC) decomposed in the temperature range of 450–700 °C. According to the results, first-order reaction model (F1) showed higher Ea with better R2 for all heating rates. D3, N1, and S1 produced higher Ea at higher heating rates for LTSC pyrolysis and lower Ea with the increase of heating rates for HTSC pyrolysis. All models showed positive ΔH except F1.5. Among all models, Diffusion (D1, D2, D3) and phase interfacial models (S1, S2) showed higher ΔG as compared to reaction, nucleation, and power-law models in section I and section II.

Abstract In this paper, an automated tool for the evaluation of I–V characteristics and energy yield of photovoltaic (PV) plants is proposed. The tool translates an AutoCAD drawing of the plant and surrounding obstacles into an in-house Matlab code that automatically generates an equivalent circuit representing the system, which is in turn solved by PSPICE. The plant is described at a high-granularity single-cell level, so that also the non-intuitive influence of small-area shadows can be accurately predicted. Nevertheless, the robust PSPICE engine ensures short simulation times.

Abstract In this paper, an automated tool for the evaluation of I–V characteristics and energy yield of photovoltaic (PV) plants is proposed. The tool translates an AutoCAD drawing of the plant and surrounding obstacles into an in-house Matlab code that automatically generates an equivalent circuit representing the system, which is in turn solved by PSPICE. The plant is described at a high-granularity single-cell level, so that also the non-intuitive influence of small-area shadows can be accurately predicted. Nevertheless, the robust PSPICE engine ensures short simulation times.