• Energy Research
• 11. Sustainability close
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Abstract Oil provides energy for 95% of transportation and the demand of transport fuel continues to rise. According to the assessment of IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) to climate change, global oil demand will rise by 60% from 75 Mb/d in 2000 to 120 Mb/d in 2030. Almost three quarter of the increase in demand will be form the transport sector. Oil will remain the fuel of choice in road, sea and air transportation. Our country being a developing country, the increase in demand in our country for oil for use in the transport sector will grow at a much higher rate. All countries including India are grappling with the problem of meeting the ever increasing demand of transport fuel with the constraints of international commitments, legal requirements, environmental concerns, and limited resources. In this context transport fuels of biological origin have drawn a great deal of attention during the last two decades. Biofuels are renewable liquid fuels coming from biological raw materials and have been proved to be good substitute for oil in the transportation sector. As such Biofuels ethanol and Biodiesel are gaining world wide acceptance as a solution for problems of environmental degradation, energy security, retracting imports, rural employment and agricultural economy. With a view to add Bio-Fish Oil to the list of biodiesel, experimental studies were made using this bio oil in a single cylinder diesel engine and generator set as substitute for diesel fuel and the results are discussed. It is also blended with oxygenate and EGR technique also used to improve the performance and reduce the emission of the engine. Encouraging results were obtained from this investigation. The percentage reduction is CO – 91%, CO2 – 62%, NOx – 92% and CxHy – 90% were attained when the engine was run at maximum load using BFO with 2% additive with EGR and there was reduction in all the percentages when the engine was run in other loads also. In the case of NOx, there was an increase of this emission by about 48% in the maximum load with BFO when compared with diesel, for obvious reasons and that was also reduced because of the addition of oxygenates and EGR technique. The optimum values were obtained with 2% of additive. When this percentage is increased or decreased the emission were increased.

Abstract Narrowing the performance deficit between design intent and the real-time environmental and energy performance of buildings is a complex and involved task, impacting on all building stakeholders. Buildings are designed, built and operated with increasingly complex technologies. Throughout their life-cycle, they produce vast quantities of data. However, many commercial buildings do not perform as originally intended. This paper presents a semantic web based approach to the performance gap problem, describing how heterogeneous building data sources can be transformed into semantically enriched information. A performance assessment ontology and performance framework (software tool) are introduced, which use this heterogeneous data as a service for a structured performance analysis. The demonstrator illustrates how heterogeneous data can be published semantically and then interpreted using a life-cycle performance framework approach.

Abstract For computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of large urban areas the air flow near surfaces is normally modelled using Wall Functions (WFs). This study aims at improving the accuracy of WFs, in terms of heat transfer predictions. Turbulent boundary layers at heated building surfaces in a street canyon were analysed with low-Reynolds number modelling (LRNM). Buoyancy was accounted for, due to its importance in street canyons e.g. by solar radiation. Two extreme types of normalized temperature profiles could be identified in the thermal boundary layer dependent on the Richardson (Ri) number. One extreme at low Ri number could be attributed to forced convective flow, which is adequately described by existing standard wall functions (SWFs), and the second extreme at Ri>1 to mixed convective flows, where WFs adapted for non-equilibrium flows (NEWFs) are appropriate. Based on these two extremes, an adaptive temperature wall function (AWF) was derived that varies between the two existing WFs dependent on the local Ri. This AWF can account for the co-occurrence of forced and mixed convective flow regimes at a single surface. CFD simulations of street canyon configurations with SWF showed errors in the wall heat fluxes up to 60%, compared to the LRNM results, and up to 30% for NEWFs. With the proposed AWF, these errors were reduced to less than 10% for the majority of the cases studied over the whole range of Ri numbers. We conclude that the proposed AWF allows for more accurate convective heat transfer analysis in urban CFD studies.

Africa is blessed with abundant energy sources that can promote economic growth and provide sufficient capacity to meet up with the future electricity demand. This paper evaluates the progress made in renewable energy (RE) development in Nigeria and Cameroon together with the roadmaps for future implementation. Since the early 2000, Nigeria has identified RE as an additional source to improve electrical power generation, while Cameroon is yet to have a defined policy for RE development. Presently, in both countries, RE is being developed for empowering the local economies, but the RE incorporation to the national grid is yet to be implemented at a greater scale. Since Nigeria and Cameroon have similar climatic conditions, they can benefit from each other through greater cooperation in the RE sector. For the two countries, there is high solar irradiation and excellent wind speed that can be effectively utilized for electricity generation. For all these to benefit both nations, there is a greater need for good leadership and good governance.

In the current decade, we are facing a parking problem with the advancement in technology. The population in urban cities is dense due to which lots of vehicles are running on the road leads to the parking problem, traffic problem. The world is facing the new challenge of Vehicle parking. It is observed that one million vehicles consume oil on daily basis. In this paper, an automatic real-time system for automated Vehicle parking is proposed. This system has been implemented with the help of the internet of things (IOTs). IOT generally exchanges information or data between the two physical devices. Arduino Uno is a microcontroller used in the proposed system. The main use of Arduino in the proposed system is to provide a platform to communicate digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control physical devices. The proposed system has been implemented with the help of Arduino Uno board for vehicle parking and Node MCU to connect parking area with web or internet. The proposed system incorporated an infrared sensor in each slot for getting information about the vacancy position of the parking slot. The user book-parking slot well in advance, all the necessary information is available on the server. Every user has an exclusive username and password. In case any misuse happened then the system will alert the responsible person.

The potential of carbon dioxide emissions mitigation in the building sector can be achieved through energy policies, progressive goals, and support systems to attain sustainable constructions that guarantee the reduction of emissions. Net-Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) is a concept that allows moving forward to neutralize buildings’ carbon emissions. This has been demonstrated by more industrial countries which have set goals and challenges to progressively approach an energy neutrality balance for buildings. Therefore, the target of this research is to define a framework for a new standard to reach NZEB in Chile. Firstly, an exhaustive review of the energy policies, NZEB definitions, and components of an NZEB system took place. Secondly, focus group discussions with local and international professionals from the building sector were organized to define a vision, opportunities, and potential measures with a focus on policies, to implement and develop local technologies for NZEB buildings in Chile. The study identifies the need to advance public policies to achieve an integrated policy for the implementation of energy neutral concept buildings. Finally, the paper presents a NZEB standard framework, including key performance indicators and suggested performance metrics thresholds.

Abstract This study focuses on improving the efficiency of the microwave (MW) pretreatment of waste activated sludge (WAS) through deflocculation mediated by sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP), a cationic binding agent. Deflocculated sludge was subjected to MW pretreatment to assess its impact on biomass disintegration. At the optimised energy for MW pretreatment (14,000 kJ/kg TS), the chemical oxygen demand (COD) solubilisation was 28% and 21% and the reduction in suspended solids (SS) was 38% and 26%, respectively, for deflocculated (treated with a cationic binding agent followed by microwaves) and flocculated (treated by microwaves alone) sludge samples. The formation of volatile fatty acids in the deflocculated sludge medium (840 mg/L) was comparatively higher than that in the flocculated sludge (420 mg/L) and the control (62 mg/L). This study indicates that deflocculated sludge is more amenable to hydrolysis. The results of a test of biochemical methane potential also confirmed the greater amenability of deflocculated sludge for anaerobic degradation.

A modeling framework for citywide solar microgrids with real hourly consumption, and the interplay between spatial costs and resilience.