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Abstract This paper presented a novel method of dissipating solar photovoltaic heat based on the technology of micro-heat-pipe array and the utilization of photovoltaic-cell waste heat. This novel technology solved the problems of low PV electrical efficiency and thermal failure caused by high cell temperature, greatly increased the comprehensive utilization efficiency of solar energy, and extended the service life of photovoltaic modules. One-year experiments were conducted to investigate the electrical and thermal performance of a forced-circulation, household-type photovoltaic/thermal system based on micro-heat-pipe array in Beijing, China. Test results showed that on the four typical days in different seasons, the average electrical efficiencies were 13.76%, 11.92%, 13.71%, and 14.65%; the average thermal efficiencies were 31.62%, 33.07%, 24.99%, and 17.24%; and the average total efficiencies were 45.38%, 44.99%, 38.70%, 31.89%, respectively. The system met the demand of power supply on sunny days and the demand of hot water between March and November, except in cloudy days. These experimental results can provide basis and reference for practical applications of the system.

Abstract Global hydropower growth continues to accelerate with 25% of total capacity installed in just the last 10 years. This accelerating expansion and the important storage facility hydropower means it is increasingly important to understand the reasons for operational failures. This is a challenge because the major reason for failures involves the complex interaction of hydraulic, mechanical and electric subsystems. Historically, reliability modelling has been split in two directions, focusing on different sub-systems, and has not yet been unified. Here these approaches are unified with a novel expression of unbalanced forces. This model with operational data are validated and the important modes of oscillation in the shaft are identified. Finally, the mechanism of the first-order oscillation mode exciting a second-order mode is presented. This integrated and accurate mathematical model is a major advance in the diagnosis and prediction of failures in hydropower operation.

This paper presents a robust model predictive control strategy for improving the supply air temperature control of air-handling units by dealing with the associated uncertainties and constraints directly. This strategy uses a first-order plus time-delay model with uncertain time-delay and system gain to describe air-conditioning process of an air-handling unit usually operating at various weather conditions. The uncertainties of the time-delay and system gain, which imply the nonlinearities and the variable dynamic characteristics, are formulated using an uncertainty polytope. Based on this uncertainty formulation, an offline LMI-based robust model predictive control algorithm is employed to design a robust controller for air-handling units which can guarantee a good robustness subject to uncertainties and constraints. The proposed robust strategy is evaluated in a dynamic simulation environment of a variable air volume air-conditioning system in various operation conditions by comparing with a conventional PI control strategy. The robustness analysis of both strategies under different weather conditions is also presented.

Abstract This study proposes a novel interconnector, termed beam and slot interconnector (BSI), for the anode-supported planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). A detailed comparative investigation is conducted on various transport characteristics and electrical performance of the SOFC stacks with conventional straight channel interconnectors (SCIs) or with novel interconnectors. Results show that the peak power density of a SOFC stack with BSIs is 24.8% higher than it with SCIs at 700 °C and a fuel–air flow rate of 16–40 Nml/(min·cm2). Moreover, BSI can reduce the fuel–air feeding and enhance the fuel–air utilization while maintaining high output power density. Compared with SCI, BSI promotes the gas disturbance, significantly increases the gas velocity and vorticity, and leads the gas to flow in the direction perpendicular to the channel. BSI eliminates the limitation of SCIs on gas diffusion in the electrode and transfers sufficient reactant gas into the electrode function layers for electrochemical reactions. BSI shortens the charge transfer path in SOFC and almost avoids the adverse effects of the electrode-interconnector contact resistance. Compared with the conventional SOFC stack, the novel SOFC stack with BSIs significantly reduces various overpotentials. At 700 °C and 0.5 A/cm2, the activation, concentration, and contact overpotentials are reduced by 8.5%, 47.4%, and 96.4% respectively, and the total overpotential finally drops by 20.0%. Overall, the electrical performance of the SOFC stack with novel interconnectors significantly exceeds the one with conventional interconnectors under the same operating conditions.

Abstract Water fuel emulsion has been widely studied with the advantages of saving energy, enhancing engine torque, improving engine performance, and reducing the pollutant emissions. However, it has unfavorable disadvantages such as phase separation and long ignition delay. Water fuel microemulsion with rhamnolipid as the surfactant was formed in this study and characterized in comparison to water fuel emulsion. Water fuel microemulsion was thermodynamically stable without phase separation after 90 days vs. the milky-white emulsion fuel, separated within 2 days. In the thermogravimetric analysis, the TG and DTG curves were shifted to higher temperatures as the increment of heating rate. However, the shift for emulsion at 40 K min −1 was inconspicuous, which implies the reduction in heat transfer, mass transfer, and vaporization rates and further the lengthened ignition delay upon combustion in diesel engine. The activation energies ( E a ) predicted by Ozawa–Flynn–Wall (OFW), Kissinger–Akhira–Sunose (KAS), and Starink’s methods indicate that the formation of microemulsion could decrease the activation energy of the fuel by about 5 kJ mol −1 , while the formation of emulsion would increase by 15 kJ mol −1 . The lower activation energy of microemulsion fuel is an indication of easy ignition or shortened ignition delay. Thus, microemulsification may be a more competitive technique for fuel upgrading compared to emulsification.

Abstract A new kind of shape-stabilized phase change materials (PCMs) with positive temperature coefficient (PTC) effect was prepared in this paper. The materials were prepared by adding graphite powder (GP) to the paraffin/low density polyethylene (LDPE) composite and the PTC characteristic was found by adjusting the component ratio of the material. Then the physical structures and thermal properties of the materials were investigated and the effect of various GP mass fractions and paraffin/LDPE mass proportions on the PTC behavior of the materials was studied experimentally. The results showed that the switching temperature of the materials was about 25 °C (room temperature) which approached to the first phase change temperature of paraffin dispersed in the materials. The PTC behavior of the materials was the best when the GP mass fraction and the mass proportion of LDPE/paraffin were 40 wt% and 30:70, respectively. Furthermore, the negative temperature coefficient (NTC) effect of the materials could be eliminated effectively with heat treatment. This new kind of materials is different from the former PTC materials which the switching temperatures focus on high temperature ranges. It makes up for the defect of previous materials that the switching temperatures only range in high temperature rather than room temperature and provides a potential means for the thermal control of the electronic devices or other room temperature thermal control applications.

Abstract An attempt was made to develop multiple regression models for office buildings in the five major climates in China – severe cold, cold, hot summer and cold winter, mild, and hot summer and warm winter. A total of 12 key building design variables were identified through parametric and sensitivity analysis, and considered as inputs in the regression models. The coefficient of determination R2 varies from 0.89 in Harbin to 0.97 in Kunming, indicating that 89–97% of the variations in annual building energy use can be explained by the changes in the 12 parameters. A pseudo-random number generator based on three simple multiplicative congruential generators was employed to generate random designs for evaluation of the regression models. The difference between regression-predicted and DOE-simulated annual building energy use are largely within 10%. It is envisaged that the regression models developed can be used to estimate the likely energy savings/penalty during the initial design stage when different building schemes and design concepts are being considered.

Thermally integrated pumped-thermal electricity storage (TI-PTES) offers the opportunity to store electricity as thermal exergy at a large scale, and existing studies are primarily focused on TI-PTES systems based on high-temperature thermal energy storage. This paper presents a thermo-economic analysis of a “cold TI-PTES” system which converts electricity into cold energy using a vapor compression refrigeration (VCR) unit and stores it at sub-ambient temperatures during the charging process, and generates electricity by using an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) working between the sub-ambient temperature and an external low-grade heat source during the discharging process. The effects of key parameters, i.e., mass flowrate and temperature of the storage medium, ORC evaporation temperature, component efficiencies, and pinch-point temperature differences, on the system performance are evaluated based on a whole-system thermo-economic model. The results reveal that the roundtrip efficiency and levelized cost of storage (LCOS) of the system increases while the electrical energy storage capacity decreases as the temperatures of the two cold storage tanks approach each other. When the temperature of the cold storage tank 1 rises from 1 °C to 8 °C while the cold storage tank 2 remains as 13 °C, there is an increase of 25% and 20% in the roundtrip efficiency and LCOS respectively while the energy storage capacity decreases by 69%. A roundtrip efficiency of 0.74 and LCOS of 0.32 $/kWh are achieved with a heat source temperature of 85 °C, using a mass flowrate and temperature of the cold storage medium of 50 kg/s and 1 °C. Furthermore, any change in cold storage medium mass flowrate changes both electrical energy storage capacity and power output by the same proportions. With a continuous high-flowrate external heat source, the LCOS can be as low as 0.17 $/kWh. By providing sufficient heat from an external heat source, the proposed system possesses a high potential for medium-to-large scale energy storage with a unique hybrid ...

Abstract Parameter estimation of photovoltaic cells is essential to establish reliable photovoltaic models, upon which studies on photovoltaic systems can be more effectively undertaken, such as performance evaluation, maximum output power harvest, optimal design, and so on. However, inherent high nonlinearity characteristics and insufficient current–voltage data provided by manufacturers make such problem extremely thorny for conventional optimization techniques. In particular, inadequate measured data might save computational resources, while numerous data is also lost which might significantly decrease simulation accuracy. To solve this problem, this paper aims to employ powerful data-processing tools, for instance, neural networks to enrich datasets of photovoltaic cells based on measured current–voltage data. Hence, a novel improved equilibrium optimizer is proposed in this paper to solve the parameters identification problems of three different photovoltaic cell models, namely, single diode model, double diode model, and three diode model. Compared with original equilibrium optimizer, improved equilibrium optimizer employs a back propagation neural network to predict more output data of photovoltaic cell, thus it can implement a more efficient optimization with a more reasonable fitness function. Besides, different equilibrium candidates of improved equilibrium optimizer are allocated by different selection probabilities according to their fitness values instead of a random selection by equilibrium optimizer, which can achieve a deeper exploitation. Comprehensive case studies and analysis indicate that improved equilibrium optimizer can achieve more desirable optimization performance, for example, it can achieve the minimum root mean square error under all three different diode models compare to equilibrium optimizer and several other advanced algorithms. In general, the proposed improved equilibrium optimizer can obtain a highly competitive performance compared with other state-of-the-state algorithms, which can efficiently improve both optimization precision and reliability for estimating photovoltaic cell parameters.