• Energy Research
• 13. Climate action close
• Ural Federal University close

Local renewable energy resources (RES) are often considered as an alternative to the conventional power supply by means of power lines. This is an urgent approach for rural electrification if there are long distances from main substations, and distribution feeders’ construction and service is not cost effective for grid companies. Nevertheless, the real potential for RES implementation at some regions could be limited by economic, geographical and climatic factors especially. The paper gives a review of the experience of power supply type selection for distant consumers given the specific northern continental conditions. The main goal of the paper is the methods estimating technical and economical efficiency of power supply system alternatives including centralized power supply and standalone microgrid implementation to select suitable power supply variant.

Abstract The problem of fine particle gas cleaning is especially actual at the present time. This is due to the need to capture the desired product and waste gases cleaning. In both cases, the equipment should provide maximum collection efficiency. Cleaning of gas from thermal power plant (TPP) fly ash is serious problem. Coal-fired thermal power plants provide 27% of the total world energy consumption. Conventional TPP produce more than 700,000 tonnes of fly ash per year. Annually fly ash production only in Russia, according to various estimates, is 27–35 million tons. Various apparatus are used to clean the gases from the fly ash. Required collection efficiency of purification units must to be 99.5–99.7% and higher. Wet scrubbers makes ash recycling more difficult. It requires ash separation from the slurry and drying. One solution of gas cleaning problem is a electrocyclone. It provides gas purification efficiency up to 99.9% at initial ash concentration equal 50 g/m 3 and higher. An electrocyclone allows to obtain a product in dry form. Re-entrainment is return of captured material to clean gas stream. Re-entrainment in the gas cleaning equipment is one of the negative effects. Re-entrainment reduces equipment efficiency at high gas velocities. The present study was carried out to determine the value of re-entrainment in the electrocyclone. The object of study was the electrocyclone of ‘pipe in pipe’ type. Aluminosilicate fly ash from thermal power plant (TPP) was the test material. Study was carried out in dry and wet modes. Re-entrainment was observed in dry operation mode. No re-entrainment was observed in wet operation mode. The value of re-entrainment was calculated. It decreases collection efficiency from 99.9% to 60%. Re-entrainment depends on aerosol velocity (range 14–27 m/s) and the aerosol concentration (range 2–30 g/m 3 ). It is shown, what re-entrainment can be eliminated by water irrigation of collecting electrodes.

Russia is known to be a country with enormous energy resources both renewables and non-renewables. Much of the country’s effort towards energy generation has been on the development of the non-renewables over the years. This study examined the opportunities and challenges in Russia’s Renewable energy (RE) sector. By coupling both interviews and literature reviews, a total of 8 main opportunities and 7 key challenges were identified and discussed. The Best–Worst-Method was used to assign weights to the various factors using inputs of 30 experienced experts in Russia’s RE sector. According to the obtained results, the most significant opportunity that the country would have to take advantage of is the opportunity to export RE outside the shores of the country, it recorded 27.7 percent. This is followed by the country’s target for the RE sector which scored 18%, hydrogen production and need to meet local energy requirements followed with 12% each. The greatest challenge which also serve as a hindrance to the development of RE in the country is the low attention given to clean technologies from government, it recorded a weight of 31.4%. This is followed by unequal playing field, and strict local content requirements which recorded 17.9% and 13.5%, respectively. The study ended with some strategic recommendations to authorities for the development of the sector.

Context. The simultaneous detection of organic molecules of the form C2HnO, such as ketene (CH2CO), acetaldehyde (CH3CHO), and ethanol (CH3CH2OH), toward early star-forming regions offers hints of a shared chemical history. Several reaction routes have been proposed and experimentally verified under various interstellar conditions to explain the formation pathways involved. Most noticeably, the non-energetic processing of C2H2 ice with OH-radicals and H-atoms was shown to provide formation routes to ketene, acetaldehyde, ethanol, and vinyl alcohol (CH2CHOH) along the H2O formation sequence on grain surfaces in translucent clouds. Aims. In this work, the non-energetic formation scheme is extended with laboratory measurements focusing on the energetic counterpart, induced by cosmic rays penetrating the H2O-rich ice mantle. The focus here is on the H+ radiolysis of interstellar C2H2:H2O ice analogs at 17 K. Methods. Ultra-high vacuum experiments were performed to investigate the 200 keV H+ radiolysis chemistry of predeposited C2H2:H2O ices, both as mixed and layered geometries. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy was used to monitor in situ newly formed species as a function of the accumulated energy dose (or H+ fluence). The infrared spectral assignments are further confirmed in isotope labeling experiments using H218O. Results. The energetic processing of C2H2:H2O ice not only results in the formation of (semi-) saturated hydrocarbons (C2H4 and C2H6) and polyynes as well as cumulenes (C4H2 and C4H4), but it also efficiently forms O-bearing COMs, including vinyl alcohol, ketene, acetaldehyde, and ethanol, for which the reaction cross-section and product composition are derived. A clear composition transition of the product, from H-poor to H-rich species, is observed as a function of the accumulated energy dose. Furthermore, the astronomical relevance of the resulting reaction network is discussed.

This study assesses environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis corroborating the role of scale, composite, and technology effects in OECD countries. To this end, we analyze the panel time series data from 1980 to 2017 using cross-sectional-autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL). We document that economic growth and carbon emissions follow a U-shaped relationship, contrary to the EKC hypothesis, which our analysis attributes to the substantial contributions of the industrial, manufacturing, and service sectors to GDP. Technological progress has a somewhat marginal impact in reducing carbon emissions through energy efficiency but is unable to validate the existence of EKC hypothesis.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis many have opinionated on how it may affect society’s response to climate change. Two key questions here are how COVID-19 is expected to influence climate action by citizens and by the government. We answer these by applying topic modelling to textual responses from a survey of Spanish citizens. The identified topics tend to be more negative than positive, and more optimistic concerning future climate action by citizens. Positive views involve increasing pro-environmental behavior and are more common among younger, higher educated and male respondents as well as among those who perceive climate change as a serious threat or positively assessed COVID-19 confinement. Negative topics express concern that financial resources for climate action will be limited due to a focus on healthcare and economic recovery. In addition, they mention government mismanagement and waste due to use of protective measures like masks and gloves as impediments to effective climate action.