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Abstract Planar perovskite solar cells using organic charge selective contacts were fabricated. In a vacuum deposited perovskite-based solar cell, dopant and additive free triazatruxene as the hole transport layer was introduced for device fabrication. High open-circuit voltage of 1090 mV was obtained using methylammonium lead iodide (Eg=1.55 eV) as light harvesting material, thus representing a loss of only 460 mV which is in close vicinity of mature silicon technology (400 mV). The devices showed a very competitive photovoltaic performance, monochromatic incident photon-to-electron conversion efficiency of 80% and the power conversion efficiencies in excess of 15% were measured with a negligible degree of hysteresis.

Abstract Breakthrough alternative technologies are urgently required to alleviate the critical need to decarbonise our energy supply. We showcase non-conventional approaches to battery and solar energy conversion and storage (ECS) system designs that harness key attributes of immiscible electrolyte solutions, especially the membraneless separation of redox active species and ability to electrify certain liquid–liquid interfaces. We critically evaluate the recent development of membraneless redox flow batteries based on biphasic systems, where one redox couple is confined to an immiscible ionic liquid or organic solvent phase, and the other couple to an aqueous phase. Common to all solar ECS devices are the abilities to harvest light, leading to photo-induced charge carrier separation, and separate the products of the photo-reaction, minimising recombination. We summarise recent progress towards achieving this accepted solar ECS design using immiscible electrolyte solutions in photo-ionic cells, to generate redox fuels, and biphasic “batch” water splitting, to generate solar fuels.

{"references": ["U.S. Energy Information Administration. \"How much energy is\nconsumed in residential and commercial buildings in the United States?\"\nAvailable at: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=86&t=1", "S. Darby, \"The effectiveness of feedback on energy consumption.\"\nEnvironmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, 2006. Available\nat: http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/energyconsump-feedback.pdf.\nVisited: September 2015", "J. S. John, \"Putting energy disaggregation tech to the test,\" November,\n2013. Greentech Media. Available at:\nhttp://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/putting-energydisaggregation-tech-to-the-test.\nVisited: September 2015", "A. Zoha, A. Gluhak, M. A. Imran, S. Rajasegarar, \"Non-intrusive load\nmonitoring approaches for disaggregated energy sensing: a survey,\"\nSensors, vol. 12, no. 12, pp. 16838-16866, December 2012.", "G. W. Hart, \"Nonintrusive appliance load monitoring,\" in Proc. of the\nIEEE, vol. 80, pp. 1870-1891, December 1992.", "M. Baranski, J. Voss, \"Non-intrusive appliance load monitoring based\non Optical Sensor,\" IEEE Bologna PowerTech Conference, Bologna,\nItaly, June 2003. Available at:\nhttp://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1304732", "L. Farinaccio, R. Zmeureanu, \"Using a pattern recognition approach to\ndisaggregate the total electricity consumption in a house into the major\nen-uses,\" Elsevier, Energy and Buildings, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 245-259,\nAugust 1999.", "J. M. Abreu, F. C. Pereira, P. Ferr\u00e3o, \"Using pattern recognition to\nidentify habitual behavior in residential electricity consumption,\"\nElsevier, Energy and Buildings, vol. 49, pp. 479-487, June 2012.", "C. Beckel, L. Sadamori, S. Santini, \"Automatic socio-economic\nclassification of households using electricity consumption data,\" in\nProc. of the 4th international conference on future energy systems, New\nYork, 2013, pp. 75-86.\n[10] H. Zhao, F. Magoul\u00e8s, \"A review on the prediction of building energy\nconsumption,\" Elsevier, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews,\nvol. 16, no. 6, pp. 3586-3592, August 2012.\n[11] G. K. F. Tso, K. K. W. Yau, \"Predicting electricity energy consumption:\nA comparison of regression analysis, decision tree and neural networks,\"\nElsevier, Energy, vol. 32, no. 9, pp. 1761-1768, September 2007.\n[12] F. Farzan, S. A. Vaghefi, K. Mahani, M. A. Jafari, J. Gong, \"Operational\nplanning for multi-building portfolio in an uncertain energy market,\"\nElsevier, Energy and Buildings, vol. 103, pp. 271-283, September 2015."]} Energy disaggregation has been focused by many energy companies since energy efficiency can be achieved when the breakdown of energy consumption is known. Companies have been investing in technologies to come up with software and/or hardware solutions that can provide this type of information to the consumer. On the other hand, not all people can afford to have these technologies. Therefore, in this paper, we present a methodology for breaking down the aggregate consumption and identifying the highdemanding end-uses profiles. These energy profiles will be used to build the forecast model for optimal control purpose. A facility with high cooling load is used as an illustrative case study to demonstrate the results of proposed methodology. We apply a high level energy disaggregation through a pattern recognition approach in order to extract the consumption profile of its rooftop packaged units (RTUs) and present a forecast model for the energy consumption.

The use of fuel cells (FC) in heavy duty utility vehicles, including material handling units / forklifts or underground mining vehicles, has a number of advantages over similar battery-driven vehicles including: constant power during the entire shift, and shorter refuelling time as compared to the time to recharge the battery. Most of vehicular FC power systems demonstrated so far have utilised compressed H2 stored in gas cylinders at pressures up to 350 bar. This solution, however, results in too light weight of the FC power modules for the utility vehicles which require additional ballast for a proper counterbalancing to provide vehicle stability. In the underground applications, the use of pressurised hydrogen (> 20 bar) is not acceptable at all for the safety reasons. A promising alternative is the application of metal hydrides (MH) for the on-board hydrogen storage [1]. The “low-temperature” intermetallic hydrides with hydrogen storage capacities below 2 wt% can provide compact H2 storage simultaneously serving as ballast. Thus, their low weight capacity, which is usually considered as a major disadvantage to their use in vehicular H2 storage applications, is an advantage for the heavy duty utility vehicles [2]. Here, we present new engineering solutions [3, 4] of a MH hydrogen storage tank for FC utility vehicles which combines compactness, adjustable high weight, as well as good dynamics of hydrogen charge / discharge. The tank is an assembly of several MH cassettes. Each cassette comprises several MH containers made of stainless steel tube with embedded (pressed-in) perforated copper fins and filled with a powder of a composite MH material which contains AB2- and AB5-type hydride forming alloys and expanded natural graphite. H2 input / output pipelines are ended by gas filters inside the MH containers and connected to a common gas manifold from the opposite side. The assembly of the MH containers staggered together with heating / cooling tubes is encased in molten lead followed by the solidification of the latter. During lead encasing, the inner space of the MH containers is evacuated providing initial activation of the MH material. After cooling down, the MH cassette is filled with pressurised H2 for the initial H2 charge which starts immediately and completes in about 1.5 hours. One MH cassette comprising of five 51.3x800 mm MH containers (each filled with ~3 kg of the MH material) has hydrogen storage capacity about 2.5 Nm3 H2. When heated with a running water to T=40– 50 °C (typical coolant temperature during the operation of a PEMFC stack), the cassette can release more than 60% of this maximum amount at the H2 flow rate of 25 NL/min that corresponds to 1 hour long full load operation of 2.5 kWe stack at 50% efficiency. Furthermore, at the heating temperature about 40 °C and H2 output flow rate of 15 NL/min (equivalent to the stack power of 1.38 kWe at the same efficiency) the H2 release remains stable during >2 hours providing utilisation of ~80% of the stored H2. {"references": ["M.V. Lototskyy, et al, . Progr. Natur. Sci., 27 (2017) 3-20", "M.V. Lototskyy, et al, . J. Power Sources, 316 (2016) 239-250", "M.V.Lototskyy, et. al, Patent application WO 2015/189758 A1", "M.V.Lototskyy, et. al, Patent application UK 1806840.3 (2018)"]}

Wearable power supply devices and systems are important necessities for the emerging textile electronic applications. Current energy supply devices usually need more space than the device they power, and are often based on rigid and bulky materials, making them difficult to wear. Fabric-based batteries without any rigid electrical components are therefore ideal candidates to solve the problem of powering these devices. Printing technologies have greater potential in manufacturing lightweight and low-cost batteries with high areal capacity and generating high voltages which are crucial for electronic textile (e-textile) applications. In this review, we present various printing techniques, and battery chemistries applied for smart fabrics, and give a comparison between them in terms of their potential to power the next generation of electronic textiles. Series combinations of many of these printed and distributed battery cells, using electrically conducting threads, have demonstrated their ability to power different electronic devices with a specific voltage and current requirements. Therefore, the present review summarizes the chemistries and material components of several flexible and textile-based batteries, and provides an outlook for the future development of fabric-based printed batteries for wearable and electronic textile applications with enhanced level of DC voltage and current for long periods of time.

Although modern medicine is available in many developing countries, such as the Comoros Islands, the primary health-care needs of the local population are based on traditional foods and beverages derived from natural resources and medicinal plants for cultural and historical reasons. Aphloia theiformis (Vahl) Benn. (‘Mfandrabo’), Cinnamomum verum J.Presl (‘Mani yamdrara’), Ocimum gratissimum L. (‘Roulé’), Plectranthus amboinicus (Lour.) Spreng. (‘Ynadombwe’), Cymbopogon nardus (L.) Rendle (‘Sandze monach’) and Ocimum americanum L. (‘Kandza’) are six wild plants that are largely utilised to treat many diseases. The leaves of these plants are used in the traditional Comorian tea (aqueous infusion). This study aimed to identify and quantify the main health-promoting compounds in the traditional formulation of Comorian tea by HPLC profiling together with a preliminary assessment of antioxidant capacity to confirm the traditional use of these plants by the local population. The single plants were also studied. The Comoros tea presented a total polyphenolic content (TPC) of 4511.50 ± 74.41 mgGAE/100 g DW, a value higher than the TPCs of the different plants included in the Comorian tea. Moreover, the Comorian tea showed an antioxidant capacity (AOC) of 578.65 ± 6.48 mmol Fe2+/Kg DW, a value higher if compared to all the AOC values obtained in the single plants. The polyphenolic fraction (771.37 ± 35.76 mg/100 g DW) and organic acids (981.40 ± 38.38 mg/100 g DW) were the most important phytochemical classes in the Comorian tea (40.68% and 51.75% of the total phytocomplex, respectively), followed by the monoterpenes (5.88%) and vitamin C (1.67%), while carotenoids were detected in trace (0.02%). The Comorian tea could be important in meeting the high demand in the Comoros Islands and other developing countries for cost-effective and natural health-promoting foods and/or beverages to be produced by agri-food industries and used by the local population. This study may promote traditional foods in rural communities in the Comoros Islands and contribute to sustainable rural development and a commercial valorisation of these plants for health-promoting and food applications.