Search results for "efficiency"

Green roofs for smart cities: experimental determination of the “fractional vegetation coverage” of six vegetated species

2015

Towards a de-carbonization of European countries, green roofs are becoming popular, due not only to aesthetic reasons but also to energy and environmental issues. Indeed, especially in summer periods, the building cooling demand might be sensibly cut thanks to such passive components often chosen for planning smart cities. To properly model the energy performances of buildings equipped with these components, a particular attention must be paid to radiative exchanges occurring among soil surface, leaves and outdoor surroundings. These thermal exchanges depend on parameters, like the “fractional vegetation coverage” whose literature data do not seem particularly suitable for the simulation ne…

Improvement of energy efficiency and quality of street lighting in South Italy as an action of Sustainable Energy Action Plans. The case study of Com…

2014

Existing street lighting systems in most of Sicilian cities are often inappropriate due to the obsolescence of light sources and luminaires and of unsuitable light control systems unable to provide efficient on-off and dimming strategies. Improvement of energy efficiency in street lighting systems can be one of the key actions adopted by Public Administration in developing Sustainable Energy Action Plan in the framework of the “Covenant of Majors” activities. As a task of FACTOR 20 project a set of planning options have been analysed and proposed for Sicilian cities. Particularly, street lighting efficiency projects have been studied for representative case studies. A detailed survey of the…

Implementing the sustainable energy (and climate) action plans: quasi-steady state or dynamic building modeling approach?

2020

Actions contemplated in Sustainable Energy (and Climate) Action Plans (SEAPs), which municipalities adhering to the EU initiative called “The Covenant of Mayors” are required to prepare, regard many sectors, among which are buildings. To implement such plans, it is necessary to make use of methods for predicting energy use in buildings. Technicians involved in this tend to adopt easy-touse simulation models because of the common mid-level expertise of the offices involved. However, such simplified methods could result in a less accurate evaluation of the energy demand of buildings. In this paper the suitability of the quasi-steady state and the dynamic approach, in the frame of these new ur…

Colours and building thermal balance: the impact of coating colour on energy loads

2013

Combining new materials and solution processes for high-efficiency organic electronics.

2011

Modellazione matematica di una Acid/Base Flow Battery: un dispositivo innovativo di accumulo di energia elettrica basato su gradienti di salinità e d…

2019

La Acid/Base Flow Battery (AB-FB) è una batteria innovativa che rappresenta un metodo sostenibile di immagazzinare energia elettrica. Questa batteria può, in linea teorica, garantire una densità di energia pari a 11 kWh/m3 che è un valore maggiore rispetto a quello fornito dalle tecnologie attualmente più utilizzate nel mondo quali quelle che sfruttano l’energia idroelettrica, l’energia osmotica o ancora l’aria compressa. La batteria AB-FB accumula energia sottoforma di gradienti di salinità e di pH. In particolare, essa funziona grazie ad una unità chiamata “stack” al cui interno ospita una serie di canali che permettono il passaggio di soluzioni elettrolitiche a diversi pH e concentrazion…

CHP retrofit for a large Med-Tvc Desalination Plant: High efficiency assessment for different design options under the current legislative EU framewo…

2015

Integrated power plants in "dual purpose" configuration may represent a viable option for energy cost abatement of desalted water produced by MED-TVC (Multiple Effect Distillation along with Thermal Vapour Compression). In this paper an existing large MED-TVC plant with a 36,000 m(3)/day capacity is studied: a plant retrofit is designed, based on a steam power plant with condensation and steam extraction used to drive the steam ejector. As the plant operates in CHP (Combined Heat and Power) mode, the possibility to assess the integrated "CHP + MED-TVC" as high efficiency cogeneration according to Directive 2004/8/EC is discussed. Based on a model developed in Engineering Equation Solver, a …

Exergy Analysis of Reverse Electrodialysis Heat Engine with Multi-Effect Distillation Regeneration Stage

2018

The increasing worldwide energy demand is rising the interest on alternative power production technologies based on renewable and emission-free energy sources. In this regard, the closed-loop reverse electrodialysis heat engine (RED-HE) is one of the most promising technologies currently under investigation. This technology produces electric power by harvesting the salinity gradient energy released from the controlled mixing of two artificial salt solutions with different concentrations. Low-grade heat (T < 100 °C), derived from any industrial process is used in a multi-effect distillation (MED) unit to restore the initial salinity gradient of the solutions. In this work, a comprehensive…

Experimental investigation on high-efficiency control algorithms for three-phase induction motors

2020

This paper presents an experimental investigation regarding the power losses variations occurring in three-phase induction motors (IMs) as a function of the magnetization level of the machine. More in detail, the power losses identification is obtained by changing in real-time the working operating conditions of the IM drive and the IM reference flux. The sets of measurements are carried out by setting up a test bench and the obtained results confirm that the power losses occurring in induction motors can be minimized by adequately setting the direct axis current component for each IM working condition. This research represents the starting point for the conception of advanced real-time los…

A Network Tomography Approach for Traffic Monitoring in Smart Cities

2018

Traffic monitoring is a key enabler for several planning and management activities of a Smart City. However, traditional techniques are often not cost efficient, flexible, and scalable. This paper proposes an approach to traffic monitoring that does not rely on probe vehicles, nor requires vehicle localization through GPS. Conversely, it exploits just a limited number of cameras placed at road intersections to measure car end-to-end traveling times. We model the problem within the theoretical framework of network tomography, in order to infer the traveling times of all individual road segments in the road network. We specifically deal with the potential presence of noisy measurements, and t…