Integrating existing water and wastewater assets to reduce domestic heating emissions

A study was undertaken to explore opportunities for achieving reducing greenhouse gas emissions from UK domestic heating by using existing drinking water and wastewater assets as energy storage and recovery mechanisms, coupled with modest local renewable energy generation. The sensitivity of the solutions to future projections for domestic heating demands and climate change effects was explored. Simulations optimised the available energy supply, potential for storage, heat recovery and heat demand to minimise emissions at a scale that could be adopted in most UK towns. The approach may be able to deliver significant emissions reductions with more limited capital investment than more centralised renewable energy approaches. Results from two UK locations showed that integrated water–energy systems could theoretically reduce emissions by about 50%. Furthermore, the system could satisfy demand for about 70% of the time periods each year. Future scenarios were tested and it was found that the projected annual emissions reduction was similar across all scenarios, suggesting this would be a robust approach.

Characterising municipal solid waste to analyse life-cycle energy demand and emissions

A life cycle assessment of waste management in Pyongyang, Korea was undertaken using a characterisation-based method to analyse cumulative energy demand and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. The study showed that characterising waste fractions by composition, proportion, water content and heating value rather than simply mass was more effective for energy-related analysis in life-cycle assessments. The results indicated that the energy demand and emissions indicators could be used as appropriate proxies of the environmental impacts in life-cycle phases, since they were closely related. The results also revealed that waste incineration could result in energy credit to the national electricity mix, while waste landfill needed to be replaced with sanitary landfill and/or switched to incineration with energy recovery to be more sustainable.

Remote River Energy System: An open source low maintenance turbine design for remote areas

Axial flow hydro-kinetic turbines convert the kinetic energy of a flowing fluid into electrical energy, and can be designed for deployment in a wide range of locations. As relatively recent technology, these designs are often high in cost, complex, and require specialist maintenance and materials. This is not viable for many communities in developing countries, which may subsequently remain reliant on fossil fuels. A remote river energy system has been designed to be built and maintained using minimal equipment, with components that can be readily obtained. A formal design process has been used with design review and feedback stages; design tools included Simulink modelling, FEA, CFD, nodal analysis and flume testing. Only a handful of components such as the turbine blades require specialist machining and maintenance. The results demonstrate how an effective water turbine with a 3kW output can be theoretically produced and maintained without an over-reliance on specialised components and tools, thereby producing a more economically viable water turbine for use in developing countries. Open source distribution of the design drawings will facilitate application of the design and improvements by other stakeholders. The design study presented here is a platform for prototype technology trials to further develop the concept.

Calculation of Weibull Distribution parameters at low wind speed and performance analysis

In this study, the compatibility of the real wind energy potential to the estimated wind energy potential by Weibull Distribution Function (WDF) of a region with low average wind speed potential was examined. The main purpose of this study is to examine the performance of six different methods used to find the coefficients of the WDF and to determine the best performing method for selected region. In this study seven-year hourly wind speed data obtained from the general directorate of meteorology of this region was used. The root mean square error (RMSE) statistical indicator was used to compare the efficiency of all used methods. Another main purpose of this study is to observe the how the performance of the used methods changes over the years. The obtained results showed that the performances of the used methods showed slight changes over the years, but when evaluated in general, it was observed that all method showed acceptable performance. Based on the obtained results, when the seven-year data is evaluated in this selected region, it can be said that the MM method shows the best performance.

The UK Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy Revisited

In the period since 2010 successive UK Governments have produced various decarbonisation strategies for industry. This article scrutinises the most recent version that was published in March 2021: the Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy (IDS). It contrasts the policy content of the IDS with previous industrial roadmaps, action plans and strategies (including the Clean Growth Strategy of 2017). In addition, it compares the proposals in the IDS with the latest recommendations of the UK Government's independent Climate Change Committee, as well as drawing on lessons learned from the techno-economic assessments published by the author and his collaborators for a number of key ‘Foundation Industries’. The latter emit significant shares of UK industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions: the iron and steel (∼25%), chemicals (∼19%), cement (∼8%), pulp and paper (∼6%), and glass (∼3%) sectors. They also produce some 28 million tonnes of materials per year, which are worth £52 billion to the UK economy, and account for ∼10% of UK total CO2 emissions.

Mass Wind Deployment in Egypt: The Transformative Energy Hub among three continents

Wind Energy is occupying more and more space of the energy mix in most of the world. In this work, the challenges for distributed projects in communities and industrial areas are presented for Egypt and a comparison with the mass wind onshore and offshore deployment is unavoidable. In Egypt, there are plans to installed large-scale projects, but the development pace is slow. Furthermore, while the Egypt wind atlas provides ample information to properly plan and deploy wind farms, developers of distributed wind would probably have never analysed small scale sites, which may lead them to make mistakes while siting, and thus a project may end up losing money. Two use cases were selected for analysis: industrial & offshore sites and community/residential sites. It was revealed via a detailed spatial analysis that there are abundant wind resources and potential in high wind – high gain selected areas of almost 40 GW of onshore and offshore wind projects that could make Egypt a unique energy hub between Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Analysis of pipe axial displacements from a monitored pipeline connected to an operating district heating network

The development of a monitored district heating piping system has allowed the study of axial displacement variations in a buried pipeline. This piping system includes four instrumented sections of piping within an in use district heating network. There are also different conditions under testing such as thickness of expansion cushions, temperature ranges and bedding soil types. The pipe axial displacements were on-line monitored by means of extensometers in six positions along each of the four sections of the pipeline. Measured maximum pipe axial displacements were 24 and 25 mm in the corners of the 41 m long monitored pipelines, while estimated values were 23 mm using current recommendation procedures and 27 mm using calibrated commercial computer programs. One temperature unloading-reloading caused displacements to not return to the same values as before, but around 3 mm smaller. Therefore, several unloading-reloading temperature cycles may affect the pipe deformation behaviour in the short and long term.

A novel fuel cell drive system for rail transit vehicles based on dual-source motors

At present, in order to alleviate environmental problems and energy crises, fuel cells are gradually being used in rail transit vehicle (RTV) drive systems. However, in the existing fuel cell drive systems, DC/DC converters are widely used, but there are serious shortcomings in terms of cost, efficiency and market application. To solve these problems, a novel dual-source drive system is innovatively presented in this study. In the dual-source drive system, the multi-mode operating state of the dual source motor was taken into consideration, and based on the independent vector control method (IVCM), the dual-source drive system was modelled and simulated to achieve the motor independent control between power output and power generation as well as the energy exchange between fuel cell and secondary power battery under any working conditions. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed dual source drive system, the electric drive performance test was carried out by the dual source system experimental verification platform. The result of this drive system topology is further improved compared with the same level of DC/DC drive system configuration used for this purpose.