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Shale gas, due to its clean-burning and efficient nature, is becoming an increasingly promising alternative energy resource. It is commonly held that promoting shale gas development will gradually play a significant role in meeting the energy needs of economic and social development as well as reducing harm to the environment. Given the significant implications, many countries are pursuing shale gas opportunities. However, numerous concerns have been raised about the economics of shale gas development, as it is difficult to evaluate. Accurately evaluating the economic viability of shale gas development to reduce investment risks and increase investment opportunity is the key issue that needs to be urgently addressed. This paper presents a systematic review and examination of the technical and economic evaluation techniques for the development of shale gas to provide an overview of their current status. Over time, some progress has been made in existing technical–economic evaluation techniques. It is worth noting that these techniques need to be further improved to more precisely assess the economic feasibility of developing shale gas for assisting investment decisions effectively. For this reason, various potentially useful ideas and approaches are presented to propose some potential improvement in evaluation techniques for shale gas development, which may materialize in possible future trends.

Abstract In the past, most studies considered solar as a drawback to road pavement, especially the asphalt pavement. Not only its radiation causes the asphalt aging, simultaneously with high temperature, asphalt pavement contributes to the urban heat island (UHI) effect. In recent, as the world becomes more supportive towards implementing sustainable energy as the alternatives to the scarcity of non-renewable resources, utilizing the abundant solar radiation as the main source of energy has gradually attracted attention from both industries and academia with its potentials, including solar application on roads. Nevertheless, more researches have focused on the potential energy collection with less consideration to simultaneously overcome the side effects of abundant solar radiation on its lifecycle. This study found the necessity to review a comprehensive correlation between solar radiation and asphalt pavement from both positive and negative effects. The negative effects included asphalt aging and its effects on surroundings i.e. UHI effect. Meanwhile, the positive effects included exhaust purification and solar energy conversion into other forms of energy that can be used by humans using pavement solar heat collection for winter snowmelt, thermoelectric technology and photoelectric technology to convert solar energy into electrical energy. The cases in various application scenarios were analysed and summarized and the existing problems in the current research were proposed in this paper. Also, the reflection on the transformation of road design concept from “avoiding harm” to “seeking profit” was included. Finally, a new concept of “solar-road harmonious symbiosis” for future road application was proposed based on a comprehensive review of previous published works. It is also the new suggestion to scholars on the treatment of solar diseases on roads to prolong its symbiosis functions.

Abstract With the increase of energy consumption and wastes generation due to human activities, anaerobic digestion (AD), a technology which turns wastes into bio-energy, is receiving more and more attention in the world. It is well known that there are at least three stages involved in anaerobic digestion, i.e., hydrolysis, acidification, and methanogenesis. Until now, however, the advances in enhancing acidification and methanogenesis have not been reviewed. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the methods reported to enhance each step involved in anaerobic digestion. More important, enzymes are the key to anaerobic digestion, and the strategies for improving enzyme activity are summarized. As electron transfer has been reported to play an important role in anaerobic digestion, the research progress of the approaches for the acceleration of direct interspecies electron transfer in methane production is also introduced. In addition, the recent advances in increasing the reduction of carbon dioxide to methane, which has been widely observed in methanogenesis step, are reviewed. Furthermore, the techno-economic assessment of anaerobic digestion is made, and the key points for future studies are proposed.

Abstract Many organizations in the world are interested in waste management problems and their potential solutions. In order to solve these problems, a Japanese venture company has developed an innovative thermal decomposer for organic wastes called ERCM (Earth-Resource-Ceramic-Machine). The ERCM reactor employs electron injected air to promote the thermal decomposition reaction, while the effect of electron injection into air has not yet been clarified. An experimental work was performed using a fixed bed reactor to explore the effects of different parameters of electron injection into air, the reaction temperature and different feedstock on the syngas generation. The main purpose of this study is to clarify the phenomena occurring in the ERCM reactor where a direct current electric field is produced in the flame reaction zone to enhance the thermal decomposition of wastes. In this regard, a mathematical model for simulating the thermal decomposition of solid waste in the presence of an electric field have been developed. The equations of aero-thermochemistry are coupled to the balance equations for densities of charged species, and the Poisson equation for the electrical potential is solved. The model was validated by the experimental data and showed a good agreement. The results showed that the electric field significantly improves the stabilization of the flame. From the release behavior of CO and CO2, it is noted that the electron injection would affect the char combustion process significantly. Finally the effect of the flame reaction zone generated by the field induced ion wind on the thermal decomposition was investigated.

Abstract In this study, a novel metal-foam baffle cut shell and tube heat exchanger for waste heat recovery system is presented to recover heat in the exhaust gas. A 3D numerical model is established to investigate the thermal-hydraulic performance of the metal-foam baffle heat exchangers. First, the non-baffle shell and tube heat exchangers and traditional metal baffle shell and tube heat exchangers are simulated as reference for comparison. Then, the velocity distribution, temperature distribution and pressure distribution of three different types of heat exchangers are analyzed. Afterwards, the influences of exhaust gas mass flow rate and baffle thickness on pressure drop and heat transfer performance of metal-foam baffle heat exchangers and traditional ones are evaluated. The results show that, compared with traditional metal baffle heat exchangers, all metal-foam baffle exchangers show better comprehensive performance, and the area goodness factor of metal-foam baffle heat exchangers increases by 151.89%−583.62%. Among the given heat exchangers, the metal-foam baffle heat exchanger with selected metal-foam sample (MF 40.9132) is the optimum one for waste heat recovery.

Abstract The automotive operating protocols is a comprehensive expression of a country or a region’s road, climatic environment and driving habits. It is the foundation of energy consumption, test method and limit method for automobile products. It has direct impact on R & D, production and government access management of enterprises. For fuel cells vehicles, the lifetime is one of the main factors restricting their commercialization. Furthermore, the lifetime evaluation methods and its standard specifications of vehicular proton exchange membrane fuel cell are the critical factors to its technological development, but there is no authoritative recognized life evaluation method and test protocols so far. A logical fuel cell durability test protocol is the fundamental for developing the fuel cell life evaluation methods. A review on the state-of-art in the world for fuel cell accelerated test protocols was given, the research circumstances of different universities and research institutions in China, America, the European Union, Japan and so on are analyzed and summarized in detail. Then the essential characteristics and applicable environments of a comprehensive and effective durability test protocol are summarized based on the analysis and demonstration of the existing durability test protocols in literature. The work in this paper focuses on the research of durability test protocols of the fuel cell stack for the first time. The final conclusion will provide theoretical basis for establishing fuel cell durability test specifications and proposing life evaluation methods, and make a contribution to the long life research of vehicular fuel cells.

Abstract Microalgae have reported to be one of the most promising feedstock for biofuel production. However, microalgal cultivation for biofuel production is a costly process due to the large amounts of water, inorganic nutrients (mainly N and phosphate (P)), and CO2 needed. In this study, we evaluated whether the nutrient-rich ash and flue gas generated in biomass power plants could serve as a nutrient source for Chlorella sp. C2 cultivation to produce biolipids in a cost-efficient manner. When ash was incorporated in the culture medium and photosynthesis was enhanced by CO2 from flue gas, Chlorella cultures produced a lipid productivity of 99.11 mg L−1 d−1 and a biomass productivity of 0.31 g L−1 d−1, which are 39% and 35% more than the control cultures grown in BG11 medium. Additionally, the cultures reduced the nitrogen oxide (NOx) present in the flue gas and sequestered CO2, with a maximum ash denutrition rate of 13.33 g L−1 d−1, a NOx reduction (DeNOx) efficiency of ∼ 100%, and a CO2 sequestration rate of 0.46 g L−1 d−1. The residual medium was almost nutrient-free and suitable for recycling for continuous microalgal cultivation or farmland watering, or safely disposed off. Based on these results, we propose a technical strategy for biomass power plants in which the industrial wastes released during power generation nourish the microorganisms used to produce biofuel. Implementation of this strategy would enable carbon negative bioenergy production and impart significant environmental benefits.

As one of the three high-energy consumption sectors (industry, building, and transportation) in China, the transport sector faced a devastating resource and environment challenge. The transport sector was reportedly responsible for about 15.9% of the country’s total final energy consumption in 2008. This paper investigates the energy consumption and efficiency of China’s transport sector from 2003 to 2009. The transport energy data of 30 China administrative regions were divided into “three-belts” (Eastern, Western, and Central areas), and the corresponding turnovers were reported and analyzed using an index decomposition analysis (Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index). The energy data and turnover of the transport sector indicated that the high growth rate of turnover results is attributed to the high growth rate of diesel, assuming that diesel is the major fuel for freight transport. The growth of diesel is the main contributor to the overall growth of energy consumption. The growth rate of gasoline has become minimal since 2006. Since 2005, all three-belt areas, with regard to the effectiveness of energy conservation policies, have continuously improved their energy efficiencies based on the results of decomposition analysis. The energy intensity effect shows that the energy conservation and efficiency policies were more effective in the Central and Western areas than that in the Eastern area. On the other hand, the regional shift effect indicates that the policies favor to the Eastern area since only its regional shift effect contributes energy savings since 2008. The energy-mix effect is insignificant, which indicates that it is not necessary to conduct CO2 emission decomposition analysis due to the redundant observations. At last, the activity effect dominates the energy consumption increase (98.05% of the accumulated total energy increase) from 2003 to 2009, which is consistent with the rapid development of transportation in China. That is, the policies in the transport sector mainly focused on the economic development but the energy efficiencies in the study period.

Abstract Small Mediterranean islands are remote, off-grid communities characterized by carbon intensive electricity systems coupled with high energy consuming desalination technologies to produce potable water. The aim of this study is to propose a novel dynamic, multi-objective optimization approach for improving the sustainability of small islands through the introduction of renewable energy sources. The main contributions of our approach include: (i) dynamic modelling of desalination plant operations, (ii) joint optimization of system design and operations, (iii) multi-objective optimization to explore trade-offs between potentially conflicting objectives. We test our approach on the real case study of the Italian Ustica island by means of a comparative analysis with a traditional non-dynamic, least cost optimization approach. Numerical results show the effectiveness of our approach in identifying optimal system configurations, which outperform the traditional design with respect to different sustainability indicators, limiting the structural interventions, the investment costs and the environmental impacts. In particular, the optimal dynamic solutions able to satisfy the whole water demand allow high levels of penetration of renewable energy sources (up to more than 40%) to be reached, reducing the net present cost by about 2–3 M€ and the CO2 emissions by more than 200 tons/y.