Search results for "Energy engineering"
showing 10 items of 1099 documents
'Where Have I Heard It?' Assessing the Recall of Traffic Safety Campaigns in the Dominican Republic
2021
Although traffic crashes are the eighth leading cause of death in the world, and are linked to vehicle and infrastructure-related factors, crash-related fatality rates are much higher in lowincome countries. Particularly, the Dominican Republic is the country with the highest accident rate in the whole American continent. Therefore, in the past few years, public agencies have been developing different measures aimed at reducing traffic fatalities, including road safety campaigns. The aim of the present study was to assess the recalling of such campaigns among the Dominican population, which may serve as an additional indicator to evaluate their effectiveness in this and other countries of t…
Electric Mobility in Portugal: Current Situation and Forecasts for Fuel Cell Vehicles
2021
In recent years, the growing concern for air quality has led to the development of sustainable vehicles to replace conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Currently, the most widespread technology in Europe and Portugal is that of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) or plug‐in HEV (PHEV) electric cars, but hydrogen‐based transport has also shown significant growth in the commercialization of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV) and in the development of new infrastructural schemes. In the current panorama of EV, particular attention should be paid to hydrogen technology, i.e., FCEVs, which is potentially a valid alternative to BEVs and can also be hybrid (FCHEV) and plug‐in hybrid…
Life Cycle Environmental Assessment of Energy Valorization of the Residual Agro-Food Industry
2021
This study assesses the potential environmental impacts related to the energy valorization of agro-food industry waste thought the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (ISO 14040). The system examined consists of a real anaerobic digester coupled with a combined anaerobic digester and heat and power plant (AD-CHP) operating in Sicily. The analysis accounts for all the impacts occurring from the delivery of the biomass to the AD-CHP plant up to the electricity generation in the CHP. The main outcomes of the study include the eco-profile of the energy system providing electricity and the assessment of the contribution of each life cycle phase aimed at identifying the potential improvement area. …
Energy consumption model of aerial urban logistic infrastructures
2021
In the last decade, logistic systems based on small aerial vehicles (drones) have become attractive for urban delivery operations as a sustainable alternative to ground vehicles because they are not affected by the congestion of the road network, thus allowing for faster and more reliable services. Aerial logistic systems, however, require a substantially different approach to operations management and need specifically designed supportive infrastructures. While the research on urban aerial delivery mostly focuses on the optimization vehicle operations, the appropriate design of supportive infrastructures is seldom considered. This paper focuses on the energy efficiency of aerial logistic s…
Critical Assessment of Feed-In Tariffs and Solar Photovoltaic Development in Vietnam
2022
Vietnam became the world’s third largest market for solar photovoltaic energy in 2020. Especially after the Vietnamese government issued feed-in tariffs for grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems, the installed capacity of solar photovoltaic applications exploded in 2019. From studies carried out in the relevant literature, it can be said that support policies are highly important for the initial development of the renewable energy industry in most countries. This is especially true in emerging countries such as Vietnam. This paper reviews the feed-in tariffs issued and deployed in different regions of Vietnam for grid-connected solar photovoltaic applications. Moreover, the paper takes …
Hydraulic Characterization of the Full Scale Mock-Up of the DEMO Divertor Outer Vertical Target
2021
In the frame of the pre-conceptual design activities of the DEMO work package DIV-1 “Divertor Cassette Design and Integration” of the EUROfusion program, a mock-up of the divertor outer vertical target (OVT) was built, mainly in order to: (i) demonstrate the technical feasibility of manufacturing procedures; (ii) verify the hydraulic design and its capability to ensure a uniform and proper cooling for the plasma facing units (PFUs) with an acceptable pressure drop; and (iii) experimentally validate the computational fluid-dynamic (CFD) model developed by the University of Palermo. In this context, a research campaign was jointly carried out by the University of Palermo and ENEA to experimen…
Review of the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction—A Basic Approach
2021
An increasing emphasis on energy storage has resulted in a surge of R&D efforts into producing catalyst materials for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) with emphasis on decreasing the usage of platinum group metals (PGMs). Alkaline water electrolysis holds promise for satisfying future energy storage demands, however the intrinsic potential of this technology is impeded by sluggish reaction kinetics. Here, we summarize the latest efforts within alkaline HER electrocatalyst design, where these efforts are divided between three catalyst design strategies inspired by the three prevailing theories describing the pH-dependence of the HER activity. Modifying the electronic structure of a …
Switching Frequency Effects on the Efficiency and Harmonic Distortion in a Three-Phase Five-Level CHBMI Prototype with Multicarrier PWM Schemes: Expe…
2022
The current climatic scenario requires the use of innovative solutions to increase the production of electricity from renewable energy sources. Multilevel Power Inverters are a promising solution to improve the penetration of renewable energy sources into the electrical grid. Moreover, the performance of MPIs is a function of the modulation strategy employed and of its features (modulation index and switching frequency). This paper presents an extended and experimental analysis of three-phase five-level Cascaded H-Bridges Multilevel Inverter performance in terms of efficiency and harmonic content considering several MC PWM modulation strategies. In detail, the CHBMI performance is analyzed …
Sedimentation Tanks for Treating Rainwater: CFD Simulations and PIV Experiments
2021
The removal of solids is the most important step when treating rainwater. The article evaluates two designs of sedimentation tanks that can be used for the continuous separation of fine particles from water: OS—standard sedimentation tanks, and OW—swirl sedimentation tanks. The tanks were studied by conducting computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling and particle image velocimetry (PIV) experiments. The settling process in sedimentation tank was carried out at varying operating flow rates. A tank with a modified structure was used for the tests, where water was supplied by a nozzle placed at an angle. This solution made it possible to obtain a rotational flow that transported the suspend…
Sea Wave Energy. A Review of the Current Technologies and Perspectives
2021
The proposal of new technologies capable of producing electrical energy from renewable sources has driven research into seas and oceans. Research finds this field very promising in the future of renewable energies, especially in areas where there are specific climatic and morphological characteristics to exploit large amounts of energy from the sea. In general, this kind of energy is referred to as six energy resources: waves, tidal range, tidal current, ocean current, ocean thermal energy conversion, and saline gradient. This review has the aim to list several wave-energy converter power plants and to analyze their years of operation. In this way, a focus is created to understand how many …