• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every sector in the world, ranging from the education sector to the health sector, administration sector, economic sector and others in different ways. Multiple kinds of research have been performed by research centres, education institutions and research groups to determine the extent of how huge of a threat the COVID-19 pandemic poses to each sector. However, detailed analysis and assessment of its impact on every single target within the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have not been discussed so far. We report an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 effect towards achieving the United Nations SDGs. In assessing the pandemic effects, an expert elicitation model is used to show how the COVID-19 severity affects the positive and negative impact on the 169 targets of 17 SDGs under environment, society and economy groups. We found that the COVID-19 pandemic has a low positive impact in achieving only 34 (20.12%) targets across the available SDGs and a high negative impact of 54 targets (31.95%) in which the most affected group is the economy and society. The environmental group is affected less; rather it helps to achieve a few targets within this group. Our elicitation model indicates that the assessment process effectively measures the mapping of the COVID-19 pandemic impact on achieving the SDGs. This assessment identifies that the COVID-19 pandemic acts mostly as a threat in enabling the targets of the SDGs.

This study is about the electrification of the remote islands in the Indian Ocean that were severely affected by the tsunami in the 2004 earth earthquake. To supply electricity to the islands, two diesel generators with capacities of 110 kW and 60 kW were installed in 2019. The feasibility of using renewable energy to supplement or replace the units in these two generators is investigated in this work. In 2019, two diesel generators with capacities of 110 kW and 60 kW were installed in the islands to supply electricity. This work analyses whether the viability of using renewable energy can be used to supplement or replace these two generators. Among the renewable energy options proposed here are a 100 kW wind turbine, solar PV, a converter, and batteries. As a result, the study’s goal is to perform a techno-economic analysis and optimise the proposed hybrid diesel and renewable energy system for a remote island in the Indian Ocean. The Hybrid Optimisation Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) Pro software was used for all simulations and optimisation for this analysis. The calculation is based on the current diesel price of USD 0.90 per litre (without subsidy). The study found that renewable alone can contribute to 29.2% of renewable energy fractions based on the most optimised systems. The Net Present Cost (NPC) decreased from USD 1.65 million to USD 1.39 million, and the levelised Cost of Energy (CoE) decreased from 0.292 USD/kWh to 0.246 USD/kWh, respectively. The optimised system’s Internal Rate of Return (IRR) is 14% and Return on Investment (ROI) 10%, with a simple payback period of 6.7 years. This study shows that it would be technically feasible to introduce renewable energy on a remote island in Indonesia, where numerous islands have no access to electricity.

AbstractWith the ever‐increasing danger of climate change, power plants are shifting from polluting fossil fuels to sustainable bioenergy fuels. As Malaysia continues to pledge to decrease glasshouse gas (GHG) emissions, quick and dramatic action should resolve the reliance on fossil fuel power plants. Furthermore, the coal‐fired power station is Malaysia's biggest supplier of energy and the final power plant to be decommissioned. In Malaysia, a significant portion of palm oil biomass has the potential to replace coal in the generation of renewable energy power. However, the deployment of palm oil biomass as a renewable energy source has not been fully achieved. Furthermore, the surplus of unutilized biomass from the palm oil milling process has emerged as the key talking point leading to environmental concerns. As estimated, this palm oil biomass can generate approximately 5000 MW of electricity under 40% of operation efficiency. This significant power potential has the ability to replace Malaysia's yearly reliance on coal. Nonetheless, the limitations of technological stability, budgetary constraints, and other government policy concerns have prevented the potentials from being fulfilled. This necessitates an integrated framework that synergizes the decarbonization drive in order to realize the primary advantages of energy renewability and carbon neutrality. Among the suggested actions to decarbonize the power generating sector is an integrated scheme of palm oil production, biogas plant for electricity and steam generation, and biofuel pellet manufacture. This review provides an in‐depth overview of palm oil biomass for Malaysian power production decarbonization.This article is categorized under: Sustainable Energy > Bioenergy Climate and Environment > Net Zero Planning and Decarbonization Sustainable Development > Emerging Economies

The application of waste oils as pyrolysis feedstocks to produce high-grade biofuels is receiving extensive attention, which will diversify energy supplies and address environmental challenges caused by waste oils treatment and fossil fuel combustion. Waste oils are the optimal raw materials to produce biofuels due to their high hydrogen and volatile matter content. However, traditional disposal methods such as gasification, transesterification, hydrotreating, solvent extraction, and membrane technology are difficult to achieve satisfactory effects owing to shortcomings like enormous energy demand, long process time, high operational cost, and hazardous material pollution. The usage of clean and safe pyrolysis technology can break through the current predicament. The bio-oil produced by the conventional pyrolysis of waste oils has a high yield and HHV with great potential to replace fossil fuel, but contains a high acid value of about 120 mg KOH/g. Nevertheless, the application of CaO and NaOH can significantly decrease the acid value of bio-oil to close to zero. Additionally, the addition of coexisting bifunctional catalyst, SBA-15@MgO@Zn in particular, can simultaneously reduce the acid value and positively influence the yield and quality of bio-oil. Moreover, co-pyrolysis with plastic waste can effectively save energy and time, and improve bio-oil yield and quality. Consequently, this paper presents a critical and comprehensive review of the production of biofuels using conventional and advanced pyrolysis of waste oils.

Final energy use in Malaysia by the transport sector accounts for a consistent share of around 40% and even more in some years within the past two decades. Amongst all modes of transport, land transport dominates and within land transport, private travels are thought to be the biggest contributor. Personal mobility is dominated by the use of conventional internal-combustion-engine-powered vehicles (ICE), with the ownership trend of private cars has not shown any signs of tapering-off. Fuel consumption by private cars is currently not governed by a national policy on fuel economy standards. This is in contrast against not only the many developed economies, but even amongst some of the ASEAN neighbouring countries. The lack of fuel economy standards has resulted in the loss of potentially tremendous savings in fuel consumption and emission mitigation. This study analysed the increase in private vehicle stock to date, the natural fuel economy improvements brought by technology in a business as usual (BAU) situation, and the additional potential energy savings as well as emissions reduction in the ideal case of mandatory fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, specifically cars in Malaysia. The model uses the latest available data, relevant and most current parameters for the simulation and projection of the future scenario. It is found that the application of the fuel economy standards policy for cars in Malaysia is long overdue and that the country could benefit from the immediate implementation of fuel economy standards.

Abstract Globally, the research on battery technology in electric vehicle applications is advancing tremendously to address the carbon emissions and global warming issues. The effectiveness of electric vehicles depends on the accurate assessment of key parameters as well as proper functionality and diagnosis of the battery storage system. However, poor monitoring and safety strategies of the battery storage system can lead to critical issues such as battery overcharging, over-discharging, overheating, cell unbalancing, thermal runaway, and fire hazards. To address these concerns, an effective battery management system plays a crucial role in enhancing battery performance including precise monitoring, charging-discharging control, heat management, battery safety, and protection. The goal of this paper is to deliver a comprehensive review of different intelligent approaches and control schemes of the battery management system in electric vehicle applications. In line with that, the review evaluates the intelligent algorithms in battery state estimation concerning their features, structure, configuration, accuracy, advantages, and disadvantages. Moreover, the review explores the various controllers in battery heating, cooling, equalization, and protection highlighting categories, characteristics, targets, achievements, benefits, and shortcomings. The key issues and challenges in terms of computation complexity, execution problems along with various internal and external factors are identified. Finally, future opportunities and directions are delivered to design an efficient intelligent algorithm and controller toward the development of an advanced battery management system for future sustainable electric vehicle applications.

Abstract This study deals with the development of an optimal power scheduling controller for energy management of distributed energy resources in the microgrid system. The developed optimized controller is implemented using lightning search algorithm to overcome the uncertainties of microgrid energy management and to provide an optimum power delivery to loads with minimum cost. The primary objectives of the proposed optimized controller are to: (i) develop an optimized controller for microgrids energy management, (ii) minimize the total operating cost of the distributed energy resources units, (iii) reduce the environmental emission, and (iv) solve the complicated constraint optimization problems. The proposed optimization algorithm is implemented in the modified IEEE 14-bus test system to optimize the microgrid power management schedule. The optimized controller is executed based on the real load varying conditions recorded in Perlis, Malaysia. It is observed that the optimized controller successfully reduced the amount of power consumption from 971.65 MW to 364.3 MW which in turn saving cost of RM 265432.06. The proposed scheduling optimized controller performance is compared with the recent reported work of backtracking search algorithm optimization for validation. Result shows that the lightning search algorithm based MG controller produced a cost-effective system with 62.5% of cost saving and 61.98% of carbon dioxide emission reduction which is much higher compared to with MG and backtracking search algorithm based MG optimization, respectively. The effectiveness of the proposed approach outperformed other techniques in terms of minimum total operating cost of distributed energy resources and solving complicated constraints in optimization problems.

The limitation of fossil fuel sources and negative environmental impact persuade scientists around the world to find a solution. One possible solution is by using renewable fuel to replace fossil fuel with an inexpensive, fast, and effective production process. The objective of this study is to investigate the biodiesel production from crude Reutealis trisperma oil using the conventional and the ultrasonic bath stirrer method through the esterification and transesterification process. The result shows that the most effective reaction time with an optimum condition for the esterification and transesterification of Reutealis trisperma oil is at 2 h 30 min by using the ultrasonic bath stirrer method. The optimum conditions at a temperature of 55 °C for the esterification and at 60 °C for transesterification with 2% (v/v) of sulphuric acid with catalyst concentration of 0.5 wt.% were a methanol-to-oil ratio of 60%, and agitation speed of 1000 rpm. This optimum condition gives the highest yield of 95.29% for the Reutealis trisperma biodiesel. The results showed that the ultrasonic bath stirrer method had more effect on the reaction time needed than using the conventional method and reduced half of the conventional method reaction time. Finally, the properties of Reutealis trisperma biodiesel fulfilled the ASTM D6751 and EN 14214 biodiesel standards with density, 892 kg/m3; pour point, −2 °C; cloud point, −1 °C; flash point, 206.5 °C; calorific value, 40.098 MJ/kg; and acid value, 0.26 mg KOH/g.