Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy最新文献

In the face of climate change challenges, energy demand is still increasing, and renewable energy is becoming increasingly necessary as a sustainable resource. Solar energy stands out as a promising renewable resource, yet its widespread adoption faces challenges, notably the substantial land requirements for photovoltaic (PV) panels. This conflict intensifies as land could be more efficiently utilized for agriculture and development. Conversely, railway infrastructure occupies expansive tracts of land, presenting an opportunity to integrate PV panels without disrupting rail operations. However, a comprehensive assessment of the solar potential along railway tracks on a national scale is lacking for different countries and the UK is one of them. This study addresses this gap by evaluating the feasibility of installing PV panels on railway tracks throughout the UK to generate electricity. Utilizing mathematical models tailored to five distinct solar panel technologies, the study incorporates various factors, including solar radiation levels across different months. Assumptions were made where necessary, with values for certain variables averaged to facilitate calculations. The findings reveal that solar energy harnessed from railways could satisfy up to 8% of the UK's total electricity demand, with a minimum contribution of 0.3%. This study provides valuable insights from a UK-centric perspective and offers a replicable framework for similar assessments in other countries with extensive railway networks, such as China and India. By leveraging existing infrastructure for renewable energy generation, such initiatives could contribute significantly to global sustainability efforts.

This study delves into harnessing solar energy potential through innovative floating bifacial solar power generation systems. Employing a comprehensive 10E analysis—encompassing Energy, Exergy, Economic, Environmental, Energo-economic, Exergo-economic, Enviro-economic, Energo-environmental, Exergo-environmental, Energy Payback Time, and Embodied Energy factors—the research evaluates energy performance, economic viability, and environmental impact. Among coolants, fresh water exhibited optimal performance, with peak output power (399 W), final yield (371.9351 W), and performance ratio (59.08173655). Capacity utilization factors were comparable (~0.516), with fresh water (0.5165764992) and black water (0.5154933033) excelling. Fresh water also minimized energy loss (−365.639816266105). Exergy efficiency peaked with fresh water (32.10%). Energo-economic Analysis indicated lower LCOE (3.39 $/MWh) and higher enviro-economic parameter (243.4965981) for Fresh Water. Exergo-environmental Analysis showed consistent efficiency across conditions (exergy performance time [EPT]: 37.28410450–37.35602872). The Embodied Energy for panels was 2840.67 kWh/kg. Freshwater emerges as the frontrunner, offering high energy efficiency, minimized energy loss, and environmental sustainability. Embracing freshwater coolant opens avenues for inventive and environmentally conscious solar energy solutions in buoyant applications.

This study experimentally investigates the integration of a flat plate solar collector and a condensation chamber into a basin solar still. Three prototypes were designed and constructed for evaluation: a basin solar still coupled to both a solar collector and a condensation chamber, a basin coupled with a solar collector, and a simple basin solar still as a reference. The experiments, conducted from July 24 to 28, 2016, at the UDES site in Bouismail, Algeria, used seawater from the Fouka region. Solar radiation emerged as the primary influencer on the solar desalination system, with active solar stills, particularly those equipped with a flat plate collector, showing significant temperature increases. Daily cumulative production analysis revealed the condensation chamber as a significant contributor, representing 58% of total production. Incorporating a flat plate collector resulted in a 110% increase in daily production compared to the conventional solar still. Simultaneously incorporating both the flat plate collector and the condensation chamber showcased an impressive 176% increase in daily production. Daily production quantified at 5.9 kg/m² for the active with a condensation chamber, 4.5 kg/m² for the active solar still, and 2.1 kg/m² for the simple solar still. Economic analysis indicated that the active solar still with the condensation chamber enables more cost-effective freshwater production than the active solar still alone. Water analyses demonstrated the efficiency of solar distillation, converting high-salinity saltwater (31.4%) into exceptionally pure distillate (0.00%).

Activated carbon can be used as a catalyst for the reduction of Co(III)TETA to Co(II)TETA so as to maintain the ability of removing NO from gas stream with Co(II)TETA solution. Calcium nitrate has been utilized to treat activated carbon to improve its catalytic ability in the regeneration of Co(II)TETA. The biggest Co(III)TETA conversion is gained by the carbon being soaked in 0.3 mol/L calcium nitrate solution at 65°C for 12 h with a solid/liquid ratio of 1 g/50 mL followed being carbonized at 400°C for 2 h in nitrogen. The characterization with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, XPS, BET (Brunauer-Emmett-Teller) and Boehm titration indicates that the modification with calcium nitrate increases the specific surface area and acidic groups on activated carbon. The continuous experiments reveal that the NO removal efficiency obtained by the modified carbon is over 12% up to that by the original one.

The control of heliostat is crucial for the development of solar tower power plant. Currently, most power plants use open-loop control, which has low cost but low efficiency, closed-loop control has high concentrating efficiency, but each heliostat requires sensors and has high cost, and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller has good control effect, but the parameter adjustment is difficult and overshooting problem occurs. In this paper, we propose a DDPG-based heliostat cluster control aimed at improving the heliostat control effect and reducing the control cost. A leader-follower strategy is used to control the heliostat, where the whole heliostat field is divided into several groups, each group is assigned a leader heliostat, and the rest of the heliostats follow the leader heliostat to rotate. The leader acquires the control error by means of a photoelectric sensor or a camera device. The following heliographs rotate with the leader to obtain the control signal, so there is no need for sensors, which reduces the number of sensors and lowers the cost. To address the shortcomings of traditional PID, we propose a DDPG-based PID control algorithm. The algorithm is trained to find out the optimal value at each moment, which ensures that the controller parameters are optimal at each moment. The results show that the tracking error is below 0.0001 rad for both cluster control and individual control. This ensures effective tracking performance while reducing the sensor cost. The controller based on the DDPG algorithm eliminates overshoots, reduces errors, and shortens the stabilization time by 0.5 seconds.

This review shows an outlook about several works which have used the factorial design methodology for synthesizing zeolites and mesoporous materials, included the use of wastes as sources of silicon and aluminum. In the bibliography several interesting works were identified with a complete development of the factorial design methodology. However, there are other works that showed a limited statistical analysis of the results. In spite of these issues, their contribution in the advance of synthesis of zeolites is important. Moreover, different ways to measure the crystallinity were detected being the X-ray diffraction (XRD) the most used technique. This work also gives a proposal of the complete factorial design methodology as a guide in future works for synthesizing zeolites or zeo-types materials. This work presents a detailed review of the methodology of designing experiments for the synthesis of zeolite or zeo-type materials, where it has been shown and analyzed the type of design used, because the choice of a design involves a large number of experiments or few experiments thus facilitating the production of zeolite, in addition to the factors that influence the synthesis give information of the type to obtained zeolites, also includes a guide for applying this methodology. Experiment design methodology can help to produce high quality zeolites from virgin raw material or waste that impact the economy of the zeolite industry.

The present study investigated the performance of dual function reverse flow solar collector (RFSC). The impact of the mass flow rate of air and water on outlet temperature, thermal performance, and overall performance of dual-function solar air heater (SAH) has also been investigated. An experimental investigation of three different working models namely, Model-A: SAH, Model-B: solar water heater (SWH), and Model-C: integrated solar air-water heater (SAWH) for dual heating applications was performed to analyze the actual performance of these models. The investigation of the impact of time intervals on the water inlet and outlet temperatures at various mass flow rates of water is conducted to analyze the time-varying efficiency of SWH systems. Furthermore, the effect of solar intensity on the performance of the dual-function heating system has also been explained. The result reveals that the maximum thermal efficiency of Models: A and B can be achieved at about 78.8% and 67.9%, at a mass flow rate of 0.0644 and 0.10 kg/s, respectively, according to the experimental findings. The maximum temperature rise of air and water reaches about 52.4 and 55.58°C for Models A and B, respectively. The total efficiency of Model C reaches 81.69%, exceeding that obtained in Models A and B individually. The efficiency, outlet temperature of the fluid, and heat transfer effectiveness of the system strongly depend on the mass flow rate. The increase in heat removal factor is negligible for a higher flow rate (more than 0.10 kg/s).

The study of radionuclide concentrations is significant for the exposure of the radiation on the livings from these radionuclides and they are transferred from plants, animals to livings, and this is important for the health of livings. In this paper, ⁴⁰K concentration and elements content of wheat, barley, corn, and chick feeds, which are used as animal feed using gamma-ray spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) were examined. The animal feeds were obtained from two different sellers for representative and to be able to compare the obtained results from studied animal feeds. The mean value of ⁴⁰K radionuclide concentration for wheat, barley, and corn is smaller than the world mean value whereas it is higher for chick feeds than the world mean value. The H_in, H_ex, and I_γ of studied animal feeds are lower than limit value reported in the scientific report. There are positive and significant correlations between K, Ca, Fe, Mg, Na, P, and ⁴⁰K at the 0.01 level and between Cu, Mn, Ni, Zn, and ⁴⁰K at 0.05 level.

The present research employed ethylenediaminetetraacetic (EDTA) modified cellulose to remove basic violet 10 (BV10) and reactive orange 16 (RO16) dyes. The cellulose was obtained from sago bark which was solid waste of sago starch industries. Sago bark contains 56.86% cellulose so that it can provide significant amount of active site. The optimum condition was examined using batch method investigating some parameters including pH, initial dye concentration, contact time, and thermodynamics. The adsorption capacity of cellulose (Cell) itself was also investigated for the comparison. The characterization of adsorbent showed the presence of ester bond, amine groups and escalating of surface area and pores after EDTA modification. The adsorption capacity of EDTA-modified cellulose (Cell-EDTA) was 73.53 mg/g for BV10 and 22.42 mg/g for RO16. The adsorption of both dyes onto Cell-EDTA followed Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Thermodynamic parameters indicated that the adsorption process was spontaneous, endothermic and feasible. Desorption studies proved that NaOH was an effective desorbing agent of BV10 and RO16. Based on research, Cell-EDTA was more favorable in cationic dye, basic violet 10 than anionic dye, reactive orange 16.