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This research looked at the state of soils faced with urbanization processes in the Arctic region of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District (YANAO). Soils recently used in agriculture, which are now included in the infrastructure of the cities of Salekhard, Labytnangi, Kharsaim, and Aksarka in the form of various parks and public gardens were studied. Morphological, physico-chemical, and agrochemical studies of selected soils were conducted. Significant differences in fertility parameters between urbanized abandoned agricultural soils and mature soils of the region were revealed. The quality of soil resources was also evaluated in terms of their ecotoxicology condition, namely, the concentrations of trace metals in soils were determined and their current condition was assessed using calculations of various individual and complex soil quality indices.

The growing number of electric vehicles in recent years is observable in almost all countries. The country’s energy transition should accompany this rise in electromobility if it is currently generated from non-renewable sources. Only electric vehicles powered by renewable energy sources can be considered zero-emission. Therefore, it is essential to conduct interdisciplinary research on the feasibility of combining energy recovery/generation structures and testing the energy consumption of electric vehicles under real driving conditions. This work presents a comprehensive approach for evaluating the energy consumption of a modern public building–electric vehicle system within a specific location. The original methodology developed includes surveys that demonstrate the required mobility range to be provided to occupants of the building under consideration. In the next step, an energy balance was performed for a novel near-zero energy building equipped with a 199.8 kWp photovoltaic installation, the energy from which can be used to charge an electric vehicle. The analysis considered the variation in vehicle energy consumption by season (winter/summer), the actual charging profile of the vehicle, and the parking periods required to achieve the target range for the user.

The use of natural gas as an energy source is increasing significantly due to its low greenhouse gas emissions. However, the common methods of natural gas storage and transportation, such as liquefied or compressed natural gas, are limited in their applications because they require extreme conditions. Gas hydrate technology can be a promising alternative to conventional approaches, as artificially synthesized hydrates provide an economical, environmentally friendly, and safe medium to store energy. Nevertheless, the low rate of hydrate formation is a critical problem that hinders the industrial application of this technology. Therefore, chemical promoters are being developed to accelerate the kinetics of gas hydrate formation. In this paper, the effect of new sodium sulfosuccinate compounds, synthesized based on glycerol and pentaerythritol, on methane hydrate formation was studied. Experiments under dynamic conditions using high-pressure autoclaves demonstrated that the conversion of water-to-hydrate forms increased from 62 ± 5% in pure water to 86 ± 4% for the best promoter at concentration 500 ppm. In addition, the rate of hydrate formation increases 2–4 times for different concentrations. Moreover, none of the synthesized reagents formed foam, compared to sodium dodecyl sulfate, in which the foam rate was 3.7 ± 0.2. The obtained reagents showed good promotional properties and did not form foam, which makes them promising promoters for gas hydrate technology.

The current stage of development of autonomous energy systems is characterized by a rapid increase in renewable energy sources’ installed capacity. Such growth is observed both in centralized and isolated energy systems. Renewable energy sources show high efficiency in the electrification of rural remote settlements around the world. The power of such power complexes varies from several kilowatts to tens of megawatts. When solving the problems of rural remote settlements electrification, the main issues of optimizing the composition of equipment and the structure of the energy systems play an extremely important role. Moreover, depending on the specifications of the problem being solved, criteria for evaluating efficiency are used, which are different. For example, the following are used as objective functions: minimization of the levelized cost of energy and fossil fuel consumption; maximizing the standard of people living and reliability indicators; the payback period of the project and other indicators. Various combinations of objective functions and the solution to the multi-criteria optimization problem are possible. Moreover, an important stage in the development of renewable energy in remote rural areas is the availability of new mechanisms to support an environmentally friendly generation. These mechanisms can be used in solving problems of optimizing the structure and composition of energy equipment in remote power systems. The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the world practices of optimal design of isolated energy systems. The review includes both the main questions that arise when solving such problems, and specific problems that require a more detailed analysis of the object of study.

The paper considers the transformation of human resource management processes in the healthcare settings of Ukraine in the context of war and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is noted that the unstable and hostile environment of a healthcare setting during times of crisis leads to the need to change the personnel selection and team formation model to increase the adaptability and resilience of human resources involved in the provision of medical care. The key features of the human resource management process in a turbulent environment are the high migration activity of personnel, which leads to the need to reallocate resources, the need to operate under severe financial constraints, and the need to consider personnel as a non-renewable resource when it is impossible to attract additional resources. To ensure the reliability of the functioning of a medical institution, the transformation of human resource management processes should be based on strategic agility and human resource management, organizational resilience as a resource-based capability, corporate sustainability, and transformation of enterprises’ resources, which can be achieved by applying methodological support for resource management in a multi-project environment. Considering a network of medical institutions as a multi-project environment will allow using the methodology of project-oriented resource management, forming adaptive teams in a multi-project environment, to ensure flexible redistribution of resources both within a single institution and within a network of institutions. It is proposed to use formal transformations to manage a medical institution’s human resources. Applying the proposed approach for managing the human resources of a medical institution is considered. The formation of a project team that satisfies the minimum requirements with the maximum value of the team’s qualification score is considered. It is shown that the use of this methodological support made it possible to choose the composition of the project team with a minimum number and a maximum value of the characteristic.

A circular economy emerged as an alternative transition model, which is considered to be a solution to massive environmental degradation. The transition from a linear economy to a circular economy requires companies to be actively involved in more sustainable practices. For such a transition, companies must rethink, innovate on business models, and encourage sustainability-oriented innovation to deliver customer value, while simultaneously considering environmental and social aspects. On the other hand, the role of the circular economy in energy conservation and infrastructure has not been mapped out in the current literature. This systematic literature review seeks to map out the main interrelated topics of the circular economy and sustainability-oriented innovation, describing internal and external factors that need to be considered in the transition to a clean energy future. Key lines of research are identified, and suggestions for future research and for how to facilitate the movement towards a circular economy are provided. This study contributes to an enhancement of the literature by identifying priority areas regarding the circular economy and sustainability-oriented innovation to encourage future research that contributes to sustainability and environmental preservation.

Due to growing worldwide energy demand, the search for diversification of the energy matrix stands out as an important research topic. Bioethanol represents a notable alternative of renewable and environmental-friendly energy sources extracted from biomass, the bioenergy. Thus, the assurance of optimal growth conditions in the fermenter through operational variables manipulation is cardinal for the maximization of the ethanol production process yield. The current work focuses in the determination of optimal control scheme for the fermenter feed rate and batch end-time, evaluating different parametrization profiles, and comparing evolutionary computation techniques, the genetic algorithm (GA) and differential evolution (DE), using a dynamic real-time optimization (DRTO) approach for the in silico ethanol production optimization. The DRTO was able to optimize the reactor feed rate considering disturbances in the process input. Open-loop tests results obtained for the algorithms were superior to several works presented in the literature. The results indicate that the interaction between the intervals of DRTO cycles and parametrization profile is more significant for the GA, both in terms of ethanol productivity and batch time. In general lines, the present work presents a methodology for control and optimization studies applicable to other bioenergy generation systems.

A huge concern regarding global warming, as well as the depletion of natural fuel resources, has led to a wide search for alternative energy sources. Due to their high reliability and long operation time, thermoelectric generators are of significant interest for waste heat recovery and power generation. The main disadvantage of TEGs is the low efficiency of thermoelectric commercial modules. In this work, a unique design for a multilayer TE unicouple is suggested for an operating temperature range of 50–600 °C. Two types of thermoelectric materials were selected: «low temperature» n-and p-type TE materials (for the operating temperature range of 50–300 °C) based on Bi2Te3 compounds and «middle temperature» (for the operating temperature range of 300–600 °C) n- and p-type TE materials based on the PbTe compound. The hot extrusion technology was applied to fabricate n- and p-type low-temperature TE materials. A unique design of multilayer TEG was experienced to achieve an efficiency of up to 15%. This allows for the possibility of extracting this amount of electrical power from the heat generated for domestic and water heating.