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With an ever-growing population, global energy demand increases, thereby contributing to the depletion of fossil resources and their limited reserves. Thereby, to lessen the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, there has been a surge of interest in developing and producing biofuels from renewable feedstocks, such as microbial lipids. Typically, they are derived via a biochemical process using liquid hydrolysates obtained from forestry residues as a substrate. However, microbial lipid production using hydrolysates presents numerous challenges, including the need for a strain that can accumulate high lipid titers, consume five-carbon sugars (C5), and tolerate inhibitory compounds (e.g., furans, phenols, and organic acids), among others. Out of several microorganisms, Rhodosporidium toruloides, an oleaginous yeast, could be a potential alternative to produce lipids. It is known to accumulate lipids up to 70% of its dry cell weight, use different carbon sources, and tolerate several inhibitory compounds. In this sense, the current thesis explores the ability of Rhodosporidium toruloides as a bio-factory to produce microbial lipids using C5 and C6 wood hydrolysates as a culture media. Different R. toruloides strains were screened, and R. toruloides-1588 was determined to have the highest lipid accumulation of 35%. Following the culture media, carbon to nitrogen ratio, use of lipid inducers, and sugar concentration optimization, the lipid accumulation increased from 35% to 57.14%, with 95% and 80% of glucose and xylose utilization in hydrolysates, respectively. Likewise, palmitic, stearic, and oleic fatty acids were the most prominently on the produced lipids. Finally, R. toruloides-1588 demonstrates the capacity to grow, accumulate lipids, and transform furfural into furfuryl alcohol and 2-furoic acid. The strain was also assessed for its ability to tolerate inhibitory compounds, such as 5-hydroxymethyl furfural, vanillin, syringaldehyde, levulinic acid, ferulic acid, acetic acid, vanillic acid, and ...

"A report prepared to review the wind power potential of Eastern Africa and assess its applicability for waterpumping" ; Photocopy ; The viability of wind power as a means of pumping water in Eastern Africa and Botswana is studied. Discusses the activities of several research groups and evaluates projects in terms of feasibility and implementation. Includes a brief state-of-the-art review of wind development programmes in Europe.

El aumento espectacular y sin precedentes de las llamadas células solares de perovskita (PSC) en la eficiencia de conversión con procesos de fabricación de bajo costo ha llamado la atención de la comunidad científica en el campo de la energía fotovoltaica durante los últimos cuatro años. La inclusión de materiales absorbentes de tipo perovskita, típicamente CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 , ha sido el factor clave para el desarrollo de esta tecnología emergente que ha creado muchas expectativas. Sin embargo, muchos aspectos poco conocidos de sus modos de operación aún necesitan explicaciones confiables. Este documento proporciona una breve introducción a la estructura, materiales y características de las PSC. Además, se proporcionan algunos comentarios sobre la estabilidad de estos dispositivos y se discute el estado del arte de varios temas de interés, como el fenómeno de histéresis de las curvas de corriente-voltaje. L'augmentation spectaculaire et sans précédent de l'efficacité de conversion des cellules solaires dites pérovskites (CSP) avec des procédés de fabrication à faible coût a attiré l'attention de la communauté scientifique dans le domaine du photovoltaïque au cours des quatre dernières années. L'inclusion de matériaux absorbants de type pérovskite, typiquement CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 , a été le facteur clé pour le développement de cette technologie émergente qui a créé beaucoup d'attentes. Cependant, de nombreux aspects mal compris de ses modes de fonctionnement ont encore besoin d'explications fiables. Cet article fournit une brève introduction à la structure, aux matériaux et aux caractéristiques des CSP. En outre, quelques remarques sur la stabilité de ces dispositifs sont fournies et l'état de l'art de plusieurs sujets d'intérêt est discuté, tels que le phénomène d'hystérésis des courbes courant-tension. The spectacular and unprecedented rise of so-called perovskite solar cells (PSCs) in conversion efficiency with low-cost manufacturing processes has grabbed the attention of the scientific community in the field of photovoltaics during the last four years.The inclusion of perovskite type absorber materials, typically CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 , has been the key factor for the development of this emerging technology that has created a lot of expectations.However, many poorly understood aspects of its operating modes still need of reliable explanations.This paper provides a brief introduction to the structure, materials and characteristics of PSCs.In addition, some remarks about the stability of these devices are provided and the state-of-the-art of several subjects of interest is discussed, such as the hysteresis phenomenon of current-voltage curves. استحوذ الارتفاع المذهل وغير المسبوق لما يسمى بالخلايا الشمسية البيروفسكيتية (PSCs) في كفاءة التحويل مع عمليات التصنيع منخفضة التكلفة على اهتمام المجتمع العلمي في مجال الخلايا الكهروضوئية خلال السنوات الأربع الماضية. كان إدراج مواد امتصاص من نوع البيروفسكيت، عادةً CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 ، هو العامل الرئيسي لتطوير هذه التكنولوجيا الناشئة التي خلقت الكثير من التوقعات. ومع ذلك، لا تزال العديد من الجوانب غير المفهومة لأوضاع تشغيلها بحاجة إلى تفسيرات موثوقة. توفر هذه الورقة مقدمة موجزة لهيكل ومواد وخصائص PSC. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، يتم تقديم بعض الملاحظات حول استقرار هذه الأجهزة ومناقشة أحدث ما توصلت إليه العديد من الموضوعات المثيرة للاهتمام، مثل ظاهرة التباطؤ في منحنيات الجهد الحالي.

Green ammonia is gaining momentum as a globally significant technology for deep decarbonisation. In this thesis, several models are developed across chemical, techno-economic, and energy system modelling disciplines to explore the future role of green ammonia. First, standalone models of production (i.e., power-to-ammonia) and re-electrification (i.e., ammonia-to-power) are developed and compared to competing technologies. Second, these models are integrated into a planning and dispatch energy system model (ESM) of India to 2050. The ESM has several novel additions including the sector coupling of hydrogen and ammonia, multiple years of granular weather data, and learning-curve-based technology cost forecasts. India is chosen as an ideal case study given its globally unmatched demand growth in all three relevant sectors: electricity, green hydrogen, and green ammonia. The projected electricity demands for green hydrogen and ammonia production account for 25% of the total Indian electricity demand in 2050, underscoring the transformational potential that green hydrogen and ammonia sector coupling can have on the Indian energy system. The results of the state-of-the-art ESM highlight synergistic effects of hydrogen and ammonia sector coupling with the power system. The least-cost system employs seasonal green ammonia production paired with up to 40 million tonnes (i.e., 200 TWh) of ammonia storage, as well as some re-electrification via gas turbines. Sector coupling reduces system curtailment, addresses challenges of long-duration storage, and improves system resilience to interannual weather variations. While India is a crucial case study from a global decarbonisation perspective, the methodology and findings are generally applicable, and it is the aim of this work to motivate and accelerate the wider research community into considering the potential impacts of green ammonia sector coupling on electricity grid design. Finally, this work highlights strategic technology development direction for ammonia producers and gas turbine manufacturers, as well as implications for policymakers.

The recent trend of increasing share of renewable energy sources (RES) in the generation mix has necessitated new operational and planning studies because of the high degree of uncertainty and variability of these sources. RES such as solar photovoltaic and wind generation are not dispatchable, and when there is excess energy supply during off-peak hours, RES curtailment is required to maintain the demand-supply balance. Furthermore, RES are intermittent resources which have introduced new challenges to the provision of ancillary services that are critical to maintaining the operational reliability of power systems. Energy storage systems (ESS) play a pivotal role in facilitating the integration of RES to mitigate the aforementioned issues. Therefore, there is a growing interest in recent years to examine the potential of ESS in the future electricity grids. This research focuses on developing market participation and investment planning frameworks for ESS considering different ownership structures. First, a novel stochastic planning framework is proposed to determine the optimal battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity and year of installation in an isolated microgrid using a novel representation of the BESS energy diagram. A decomposition-based approach is proposed to solve the problem of stochastic planning of BESS under uncertainty. The optimal decisions minimize the net present value of total expected costs over a multi-year horizon considering optimal BESS operation using a novel matrix representing BESS energy capacity degradation. The proposed approach is solved in two stages as mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problems; the optimal ratings of the BESS are determined in the first stage, while the optimal installation year is determined in the second stage. Extensive studies considering four types of BESS technologies for deterministic, Monte Carlo Simulations, and stochastic cases are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The thesis further studies the ...

Introduction: Wind turbines are a source of renewable energy that has become more common in Canada in the past decades. Concerns have been raised over potential adverse health effects from exposure to wind turbines, particularly wind turbine noise. A disagreement exists over the potential harm from exposure to wind turbines to human health, where many public health organizations state that there are no direct human health impacts from wind turbine exposure, while many community groups state that wind turbines are harmful to human health. Objectives: 1. Determine the types of evidence cited by community group websites, and by public health organization websites, to support their respective positions on the potential health effects of wind turbines; and 2. Assess the pattern of citations or links to the evidence used by community groups and public health organizations to characterize and interpret these patterns of evidence citation and to see whether and how these patterns differ between the two groups. Methods: Websites of Canadian community groups, public health organizations, environmental non-governmental organizations (eNGOs) and academic organizations were identified using an Internet search strategy. The identified websites with content on wind turbines and human health that met the inclusion criteria were characterised with a data collection tool to gather information about the webpage structure and its links to evidence sources and other organizations’ websites. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed on the website characteristics and evidence and organization citation data. Testing for significant differences between community groups and public health organizations was done using t-tests and chi-squared tests. Adjacency matrices were created to represent the presence of ties between organization websites and between organization websites and evidence sources. Graphs (sociograms) were created based on the adjacency matrices to visualise the relationship between the different types of ...

Haiti has long faced severe natural and human-created hazards due to its location in the Caribbean hurricane zone and to widespread deforestation. Hazards including storms, floods, and droughts have highly destructive impacts on buildings, land, water, livestock, and people in Haiti. The poorest Haitians, including low-income women, children, and elderly people, are especially vulnerable. The prospects for building Haiti's resilience to climate change are closely tied to post-earthquake reconstruction. As Haiti prepares for more disasters and rebuilds significant parts of its infrastructure, there is a real opportunity to integrate climate resilience into these efforts. This report analyses Haiti's adaptive capacity, adaptation options, and finance and governance issues. It makes recommendations on resilience building and identifies climate-change adaptation needs and opportunities. ; Haïti a subi plusieurs importantes catastrophes naturelles et provoquées ces dernières années, du fait de sa localisation dans la zone cyclonique des Caraïbes et d’un déboisement accéléré. Ces catastrophes (tempêtes, inondations, sécheresses) ont des effets dévastateurs sur les personnes, les constructions, les terres, l’eau et le bétail en Haïti. Les Haïtiens les plus pauvres, dont les femmes, les enfants et les personnes âgées, sont particulièrement vulnérables. Les perspectives pour l’adaptation au changement climatique en Haïti sont aujourd’hui intimement liées aux projets de reconstruction post-séisme. Le pays étant désormais soucieux d’investir dans la préparation aux catastrophes et la reconstruction de ses infrastructures, il est essentiel de saisir cette occasion pour intégrer l’adaptation au changement climatique aux efforts de reconstruction. Ce rapport analyse la capacité d’adaptation d’Haïti, les options d’adaptation et les problèmes de financement et de gouvernance. Il présente des recommandations relatives à la construction de la résilience et identifie des besoins et des opportunités d’adaptation face au changement ...

Growing interest in improving the energy consumption efficiency in residential and commercial buildings has led to the emergence of intelligent energy management systems. This growing technology allows the transformation of the outdated electric distribution network within buildings to a smart and intelligent system. A major challenge in the development of such infrastructure is the need for low cost, integrated, self-contained, and non-invasive wireless sensor nodes. While an electric meter provides the utility company with information regarding the total energy consumption, no information is provided to the consumers regarding the energy consumed by individual appliances. Such visibility can provide consumers with the ability to better control and manage their energy usage leading to a reduced overall energy consumption. This work explores the design and development of a self-contained and non-invasive integrated system intended for real-time electricity monitoring within residential and commercial buildings. The proposed system includes an Energy Harvester, an electric current sensor, a Micro-controller Unit, and a wireless communication device. The proposed system is self-powered and non-invasive, which offers a promising solution in providing real time information regarding the energy distribution within buildings. The design featured in this work provides an innovative approach in the development of a customized interface circuitry that is designed to collect and regulate the energy from the Energy Harvester. The entire sensor node will operate under a power budget in the range of microwatts collected by the Energy Harvester. A Wireless MCU is programmed to acquire, process, and transmit the data from the sensor to the central hub via Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity. The real-time data transmitted to the central hub provides detailed information regarding the energy consumed by individual appliances within the building.

Measurements: Rainfall - Total monthly rainfall including all precipitation (snow, rain, mist and fog) captured in a 12.7 cm rain gauge (mm per month); numbers of days with rain (0.2mm or more); the day with the maximum daily rainfall for that month. Sun shine: the total hours of sunshine recorded for the month; the day with most hours of sunshine; days when no sunshine recorded. Air temperature: the average maximum and average minimum air temperature (degrees C) for the month; the warmest day; the coldest day for the month. Frost: Numbers of air or ground frosts. The average refers to the 30-year mean 1981-2010. The summary report is derived from daily data measured at Rothamsted Research. Teses original raw data are available from the e-RA database. Daily data verification includes checks for instrument errors, missing data and outliers. These weather summaries are reported in the local Harpenden press on a monthly basis. Monthly and summaries and annual summary of rainfall, temperature, sun hours and numbers of ground frosts for 2013. Variation noted in comparison to 30-year means 1981-2010. This report consists of the monthly and annual summaries of meteorological data measured at Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, UK, from January 2013 until December 2013. Daily measurements are taken at Rothamsted Meteorological Station. These data are summarised monthly and annually as a report.

The use of microalgae culture to convert CO2 from power plant flue gases into biomass that are readily converted into biofuels offers a new frame of opportunities to enhance, compliment or replace fossil-fuel-use. Apart from being renewable, microalgae also have the capacity to utilise materials from a variety of wastewater and the ability to yield both liquid and gaseous biofuels. However, the processes of cultivation, incorporation of a production system for power plant waste flue gas use, algae harvesting, and oil extraction from the biomass have many challenges. Using SimaPro software, Life cycle Assessment (LCA) of the challenges limiting the microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris) biofuel production process was performed to study algae-based pathway for producing biofuels. Attention was paid to material use, energy consumed and the environmental burdens associated with the production processes. The goal was to determine the weak spots within the production system and identify changes in particular data-set that can lead to and lower material use, energy consumption and lower environmental impacts than the baseline microalgae biofuel production system. The analysis considered a hypothetical transesterification and Anaerobic Digestion (AD) transformation of algae-to- biofuel process. Life cycle Inventory (LCI) characterisation results of the baseline biodiesel (BD) transesterification scenario indicates that heating to get the biomass to 90% DWB accounts for 64% of the total input energy, while electrical energy and fertilizer obligations represents 19% and 16% respectively. Also, Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) results of the baseline BD production scenario show high proportional contribution of electricity and heat energy obligations for most impact categories considered relative to other resources. This is attributed to the concentration/drying requirement of algae biomass in order to ease downstream processes of lipid extraction and subsequent transesterification of extracted lipids into BD. Thus, four prospective alternative production scenarios were successfully characterised to evaluate the extent of their impact scenarios on the production system with regards to lowering material use, lower energy consumption and lower environmental burdens than the standard algae biofuel production system. A 55.3% reduction in mineral use obligation was evaluated as the most significant impact reduction due to the integration of 100% recycling of production harvest water for the AD production system. Recycling also saw water demand reduced from 3726 kg (freshwater).kgBD- 1 to 591kg (freshwater).kgBD- 1 after accounting for evaporative losses/biomass drying for the BD transesterification production process. Also, the use of wastewater/sea water as alternative growth media for the BD production system, indicated potential savings of: 4.2 MJ (11.8%) in electricity/heat obligation, 10.7% reductions for climate change impact, and 87% offset in mineral use requirement relative to the baseline production system. Likewise, LCIA characterisation comparison results comparing the baseline production scenarios with that of a set-up with co-product economic allocation consideration show very interesting outcomes. Indicating -12 MJ surplus (-33%) reductions for fossil fuels resource use impact category, 52.7% impact reductions for mineral use impact and 56.6% reductions for land use impact categories relative to the baseline BD production process model. These results show the importance of allocation consideration to LCA as a decision support tool. Overall, process improvements that are needed to optimise economic viability also improve the life cycle environmental impacts or sustainability of the production systems. Results obtained have been observed to agree reasonably with Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis, with the production scenario proposing the exploitation of wastewater/sea water to culture algae biomass offering the best result outcome. This study may have implications for additional resources such as production facility and its construction process, feedstock processing logistics and transport infrastructure which are excluded. Future LCA study will require extensive consideration of these additional resources such as: facility size and its construction, better engineering data for water transfer, combined heat and power plant efficiency estimates and the fate of long-term emissions such as organic nitrogen in the AD digestate. Conclusions were drawn and suggestions proffered for further study.