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Thermoelectric generator (TEG) is one of the promising methods to convert low-grade energy into power supply. Considering the benefits of radiative cooling, evaporative cooling, and phase change cooling, it is highly desirable to integrate the three cooling methods for the thermal management of TEGs. In this work, a tandem radiation/evaporation/phase change cooler is developed with solar energy as heat source to improve the temperature difference between cold and hot ends, thus enhancing the output power of TEGs. Compared to air coolers and radiative coolers, the designed tandem coolers presented the superior cooling performance for the outdoor thermal management of TECs with a maximum temperature difference of ∼140 °C. With the cooling benefits, the daytime power generation can reach ∼1.75 kJ/m2 with an improvement of ∼12.2 % compared to air coolers, indicating the huge potential in supplying power for small portable equipment. [Display omitted] • A tandem trilayer cooler for thermal management of TECs is developed. • The superior cooling performance of trilayer cooler on TEGs is demonstrated. • The trilayer coolers exhibit remarkable mechanical properties and thermal stability. • The output power of the trilayer cooler improved by 12.2 % compared to an air cooler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Photovoltaic noise barriers (PVNBs)-energy storage (ES)-charge station (CS, PVNB-ES-CS) was proposed. • PVNBs in Guangzhou can provide 5% of EV charging demand. • Electric vehicle (EV) charging can consume up to 58% of PVNBs generation. • PVNBs can supply up to 125 EVCSs at least 30% of the power demand. Photovoltaic noise barriers (PVNBs) offer a dual advantage of reducing traffic noise pollution and providing renewable electricity to cities. However, how the effective integration of PVNB-generated power into urban energy networks remains a critical area lacking research. To bridge this gap, this study proposes PVNBs-energy storage (ES)-charging station (CS; PVNBs-ES-CS) strategy. It can facilitate the actual consumption of PVNBs power and the mitigation the burden on the grid posed by electric vehicles (EVs) charging demands. The case study conducted in Guangzhou, China, reveals that PVNBs can support up to 5% of the total power demand for EVCSs. Under the PVNBs power maximization consumption scenario, PVNBs can meet up to 30% of the power demands from 60 EVCSs, with 58% of PVNBs generated power being consumed. In the PVNBs-ES-CS future utilization scenario, up to 30% of the power demand of 125 EVCSs can be met, and 36% of the power of PVNBs can be consumed. The combination of PVNBs and EVCSs offers a practical solution for incorporating renewable energy sources into urban energy networks. This application mode can be applied in various cities with EV demands and PVNB power generation data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In the present paper, a revision of the layout of an innovative open center self-balancing tidal turbine is presented. Initially, the design was characterized by a central deflector, responsible for the machine equilibrium, hosted in the central part of the machine; the presence of this device, however, affected the size of the opening. Moreover, the turbine was conceived as connected to a steel rope subject to tensile stress. These peculiarities brought some critical issues due to the excessive length of the rope and to the size of the deflector, which constrained the diameters ratio. The new design involves the possibility of reducing the anchoring line length by substituting the rope with a series of tubular elements connected by alternate heavy and light nodes. The heavy nodes can gather the anchoring line when the tides stops acting. Moreover, the light nodes are floating deflectors, which develop the same action of the central deflector, whose size, in this configuration, does not affect the equilibrium. In the new machine configuration, the main deflector is located out of the center so that it can counterbalance the torque exerted by the rotor during its rotation. Finally, by means of CFD simulations, some criteria for assessing the best diameter ratio are defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In comparison with current financing mechanisms for renewable energy systems, crowd-funding financing mechanism offers a new potential source of financing with recent use of social media. Crowd-funding financing mechanism can also increases the social supports for renewable energy systems as users and investors turn to be more actively engaged in energy systems. As a new potential source of financing, crowd-funding mechanism has different forms, including donation, lending, equity and product reward approaches. In this paper, discrete choice model was used to explore whether crowd-funding financing with a novel sociotechnical product reward practice, has the attractions for potential customers to pay for a more sustainable milk product with distributed photovoltaic (PV) system. We empirically investigated the reward-base crowd funding with the specific integrated photovoltaic water pumping (PVWP) system in dairy milk production in China. 48 in-depth interviews were adopted for qualitative analysis of determinants of customer milk purchase decision. The ordered probit regression was employed with 357 online surveys to systematically estimate the purchase intention for the online-crowd-funding sustainable milk. Customer behaviours, environmental consciousness, and the individual socio-demographic factors were tested as potential explanatory variables. In the survey and depth interview samples, we found interviewees as potential customers showed strong purchase intentions to the crowd funding dairy milk for noticing milk quality and nutritious improvement, emission reduction and environmental benefits by the integrated PVWP system. In our findings of the regression results, the females, customers with young children or planning to have children were found with higher willing to purchase than other customers for crowd funding the sustainable dairy milk. The familiarity and popularity with online shopping and pre-sale purchase in China made customers more open and active towards pre-pay and crowd-funding mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This work presented experimental investigations on the thermal energy storage performance of the shell and tube unit with composite phase change materials (PCM). A cylindrical heat storage tank filled with open-cell copper foam was proposed and its melting process characteristics were studied. A designed test system was established to record the PCM real-time temperature data. The results showed that, compared with traditional smooth-tube phase-change heat exchangers, the composite PCM unit accelerated the bottom paraffin melting. The temperature disparity among different height reduced, which resulted in better internal temperature uniformity. Due to the expanded heat transfer area, improved heat transfer coefficient and weakened natural convection, the bottom phase-change materials in the composite-PCM heat-storage unit melt faster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract There are several restrictions and limitations on the emissions and disposal of materials and pollutants related to wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) emphasizing improvement of current processes and development of new methods. Process integration is one way to use all fractions of waste for improved efficiency. WWTPs produces sludge which is usually anaerobically digested to produce biogas and a byproduct called digestate. Digestate is an organic material that contains macro and micronutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium and also contains heavy metals. Digestate is mainly used for agricultural applications because of the presence of nutrients. However, digestate also contains energy in the form of carbon and hydrogen which can be harnessed through various processes and integrated with nitrogen recovery process. This study aims to recover the energy and nutrients from digestate through thermochemical treatment processes. Combustion, pyrolysis, and gasification are assessed and compared in this work. An ammonia stripping method is assumed to recover nitrogen from digestate. The thermochemical processes are heat integrated with ammonia stripping through modeling and simulation. Results show that almost half of the energy present in digested sludge is required for its drying. Moreover, nitrogen recovery also requires much energy. The combustion and gasification of digested sludge give better results than pyrolysis. The heat integration becomes feasible when the auxiliary biogas is also burned along with products from the thermochemical treatment of sludge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The anaerobic digestion of biodegradable fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a widely used process for biogas production. However, the biodegradable fraction of MSW also contains lignocellulosic waste which hinders the biogas production if added to the digester in higher quantity. So it needs to be separated from biodegradable waste and sent for alternate treatment, e.g., incineration, landfilling or compositing. Pyrolysis of lignocellulosic waste to produce biochar, syngas, and bio oil is an alternate treatment to consider. Furthermore, there is a reported correlation between the addition of biochar in the digester and higher biogas production. Previously, we coupled the pyrolysis of lignocellulosic waste with anaerobic digestion plant. Pyrolysis produces the biochar and vapors. Biochar was added in the digester to enhance the biomethane production. The vapors produced in the pyrolysis process were converted to biomethane through the catalytic methanation process. The combination gives the overall efficiency of 67%. In this work, we modified the process concept to increase the integration level of these processes. The main issue with the pyrolysis process is its heat required to operate, while some of its downstream processes also generate excess heat. In this study, the pyrolysis of lignocellulosic waste is integrated with an operating combined heat and power (CHP) plant, by using its existing infrastructure for heat transport among different pyrolysis operations. The combustor of the CHP plant provides the heat for drying and pyrolysis while the excess heat is transferred back to the combustor. The biochar produced from pyrolysis is transported back to the digester as an adsorbent. The process simulation results show that the combined efficiency of pyrolysis with CHP plant reached 80%. If the biochar is sent back to the anaerobic digester, the synergetic efficiency of all three processes, i.e., pyrolysis-CHP and anaerobic digestion was obtained at 79.7% as compared with the 67% efficiency when the pyrolysis was only integrated with the anaerobic digestion process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this article, integration of photovoltaics (PV) into a coal-fired power plant was proposed. The performance including economic analysis and environmental impact was conducted by a case study in the northwest area of China. The results show that the PV system can replace part of auxiliary power consumption using renewable electricity to reduce internal power consumption and the emissions. Due to the feature of the integration into a power plant, the curtailment of solar PV electricity does not occur compared to stand-alone PV system. The investment cost, operation and maintenance (O&M) expenditure were feasible compared with other PV power generation plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The paper introduced a smart renewable energy based microgrid system which is composed of three subsystems: solar photovoltaic subsystem, air source heat pump subsystem and energy storage subsystem. This microgrid system was applied to the demonstration project located in Xining City, Qinghai Province, China. The energy performance of the smart renewable energy based microgrid system was evaluated and compared with that of traditional energy supply system which totally depends on the electricity grid and natural gas. The comparison study demonstrates that the proposed hybrid energy supply system is superior to traditional system, significantly decreasing additional energy consumption for buildings and reducing pollutant emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This study investigates the operational performances of a grid-connected microgrid with integrated solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage. The study is based upon the techno-economic specifications and theoretical performance of the distributed energy resource and storage systems, as well as on measured consumer load data and electrical utility retail and distribution data for representative residential and commercial loads for the city of Västerås, Sweden. The open-source Matlab®-based simulation tool, OptiCE, is used for performing simulations and optimization. To support the attainment of one of the objectives, peak shaving of the consumer load, a battery operational strategy algorithm has been developed to balance peak shaving and PV self-consumption. Comparisons among three types of battery, lead-acid, lithium-ion and vanadium-redox flow, are also performed. A 117 kW p photovoltaic system paired with a lithium-ion battery of 41.1 kWh capacity is the optimal solution found for the considered commercial load. The calculated battery capacity represents the best trade-off for the set multi-objective optimization problem. The simulation of this system predicts the possibility to shave the customer load profile peaks up to 20% for the month of April. The corresponding self-consumption ratio is 88%. Differences in the relationship between the load profiles and the system performance have been qualitatively noted. Furthermore, the simulation results for lead-acid, lithium-ion and vanadium-redox flow battery systems reveal that lithium-ion batteries delivers the best trade-off between total annualized cost and peak shaving performance for both residential and commercial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Floating wind turbine has become the most promising technology for deep-sea wind power generation. Therefore, some means to reduce the structural load for stabilizing the wind turbine has been developing. In this paper, a semi-active structural control is realized by replacing the damper in passive TMD with the magnetorheological (MR) damper. The damping force of the MR damper can be changed by altering the voltage applied to it. A simple and convenient control method is designed, which includes adaptive control force design and retrogression controller. The simulation results show that the semi-active control method has a good damping effect, which mitigates much of the structural load with respect to the passive structural control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Outdoor thermal comfort has been receiving more and more attentions due to the increased demand of outdoor activities during last decades. People require good thermal comfort when they are exposed to the outdoor thermal environment. However, the natural environment is severely suffering from the pollution of air, water as well as the extremely hot weather. Therefore, construction of ecological living environment is of great importance. To evaluate and improve the built environment, a campus area located in Northwest China was selected. Numerical simulations based on the software ENVI-met V4.0 were conducted and the effect of growing plants upon the outdoor thermal comfort was analyzed. Numerical results were compared using different thermal Indexes: Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) and Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). Results demonstrated that UTCI gave a lower prediction than that of PET and was more suitable for evaluating the outdoor thermal comfort. Growing trees can significantly reduce the uncomfortable hours during hot summer but the improvement will reach the limitation after growing amount of trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The water-energy nexus has been introduced into urban water supply systems (WSSs) to improve the current plight of scarce resources and greenhouse effect in recent years. Urban water-energy integrated management is limited by the characteristics and reality of each city. In this paper, we characterize the comprehensive influence factors of energy use in China urban WSSs including geographic differences and city forms. The results indicate that the pressure of pipeline network and plain area ratio restricted by geomorphology would significantly impact the energy consumption during conveyance and distribution stage. For the city form aspect, the total volume of urban water supply and the leakage rate of pipeline networks play important roles in energy consumption of urban WSSs in China. In this study, the specific electricity consumption in WSSs was quantified, and several factors affected by city features which show strong correlation with energy use were determined. The results are of great significance to the energy saving in water supply systems in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are considered as energy-intensive facilities. Against the background of stricter policy requirements and discharge standard, thousands of municipal WWTPs are experiencing upgrading and reconstruction in China. However, the accompanying energy consumption cannot be ignored. Based on the statistical analysis of energy consumption and relevant factors from data of more than six thousand WWTPs over China, in this paper we analyzed the most influential factors related to energy consumption, which include treatment technology, wastewater amount, removed pollutants, social and economic characteristics, etc. Furthermore, we set up systematic method of energy performance assessment for WWTPs and explored the potential of energy saving in WWTPs. Results showed that processing capacity, organic pollutant concentration, discharge standard and economic factors have major effects on energy efficiency. Although sludge treatment and disposal normally consume intensive energy, it is possible to recover energy from biomass in the sludge. The results indicate that there is huge potential for energy saving and recovery in WWTPs, and we propose a conceptual roadmap for energy efficiency improving in WWTPs in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Thermal energy storage (TES) can effectively recover thermal energy from low-temperature waste heat and it has now been received increasing attentions in practical engineering applications. Nevertheless, the relatively low thermal conductivity of engineering available phase change materials (PCMs) greatly limits the energy efficiency of TES applications. To enhance the phase change process, open-cell metal foam with a porosity of 0.94 and pore density of 15 PPI (pore per inch) was employed to be inserted either in heat transfer fluid (HTF) or in phase change material (PCM). A two-dimensional axis-symmetric problem was numerically solved and was validated through comparing temperature history at selected points. Results demonstrated that the involvement of open-cell metal foam can effectively enhance the phase change heat transfer, greatly reducing the full melting time. By comparing the four cases (without metal foam, inserting metal foam into HTF, PCM and both domains), the case that both HTF and PCM domains were embedded with porous media can provide the best heat transfer enhancement, from which practical applications with thermal engineering may benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial park shoulders heavy responsibilities for economic development, and in the meantime, acts the role as energy consumer and carbon emitter. Under the background of holding the average global temperature increase limited in 2 °C compared to the pre-industrial level, which was proposed in the Paris Agreement, the development of zero carbon emission at the industrial park level is of great importance. This study investigated how to realize zero carbon emission at an industrial park level. In addition, a practical case study of the Southern China Traditional Chinese Medicine Industrial Park located in the Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province of China was conducted. Scenario analyses were projected to realize zero carbon emission in this industrial park and the results show that zero carbon emission can be realized under all the three scenarios. Economic assessments found that purchasing carbon offsets get the minimum cost effectiveness under current market situation. However, purchasing carbon offset may not be the best choice from the aspect of absolute reduction. Sensitivity analyses illustrate that the cost effectiveness of carbon reduction is remarkably influenced by the carbon price and solar energy cost reduction ratio. Meanwhile, applying large-scale renewable energy and producing more carbon offset can harvest more economic and carbon reduction benefits when the current solar energy cost has been reduced by 90%. Moreover, challenges of building zero-carbon industrial park as well as the corresponding solution schemes were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a novel ammonia-based CO 2 capture process hybrid ammonia absorption refrigeration to recovery escaped ammonia in the desorption process. The evaporated ammonia was separated with CO 2 via gas-liquid phase, and throttled to produce cooling load. The phase envelope of the CO 2 and NH 3 mixture was investigated to guide the design of the parameters. A preliminary thermodynamic performance was presented to evaluated the performance. The results showed that the regenerator can regenerate CO 2 with a ratio of 90% and this process can produce a cooling load of 113.3 MW. The parameter study indicated that it is competitive with the chilled ammonia process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, solar photovoltaic (PV) system combined with energy storage systems is playing increasing significant role in residential buildings in Sweden. At the same time it brings reliability problems because of the intermittency of electricity production and exceptionally distributed reservoir which is followed by the peak-valley electricity prices and power grid fluctuations. There is an increasing need for new business model and economic paradigm for a third-party/ aggregator to bridge the gap between Power Grid and end-users. Providing the valuable electricity services at scale and breaking regulatory arbitrage, aggregators help to deliver desired levels of residents’ engagements, value-added services and feasible level of unbundling of electricity market. This paper analyzes how the aggregators grab the indisputable business opportunity to interact between residents and Power Grid from the perspective of physical electricity flows and benefits share of peak-shaving. We employ a real case in Eskilstuna in Sweden to design new conceptual business model and validate using data. And the result indicates the compatibility of the aggregator service and its business model. It further sheds light on the pricing model of generated electricity by PV system, and benefits share ratio design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presented experimental investigations on the thermal performance of a thermal energy storage (TES) unit with coil tubes. A designed test rig was built and the melting heat transfer characteristics (melting front and temperature distribution) inside the TES unit were examined. The effects of charging flow rate on the overall phase change process were examined. The results showed that natural convection accelerated the thermal energy transport in the melt phase in the top region, but weakened the heat transfer in the bottom region; this resulted in the unmelt PCM at the bottom. The melting heat transfer was overall enhanced by the increase in inlet flow rate, indicating that the full charging time can be shortened by a larger flow rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO 2 makes a major contribution to the climate change, and biomass renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be deployed to mitigate the CO 2 emission. Cryogenic process for biogas upgrading combined with carbon capture is one of the most promising technologies. This paper reviewed the state-of-the-art of cryogenic systems for biogas upgrading combined with carbon capture, and introduced the status and progress of property impacts on the cryogenic systems with emphasize on phase equilibrium. The existing cryogenic systems can be classified as flash liquefaction system, distillation system, and liquefaction combined with desublimation system. The flash liquefaction system produces biomethane and CO 2 in lower purity than the other two systems. Thermodynamic optimization on the flash liquefaction system and liquefaction combined with desublimation system should be done further, and comprehensive comparison between three cryogenic systems needs to be carried out. As to the phase equilibrium, PR EOS is safe to be used in predicting VLE and SVLE with an independent thermodynamic model describing the fugacity of the solid phase. However, the impacts of binary mixing parameter, different EOS models and mixing rules, on the performance of the cryogenic system need to be identified in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional energy storage systems have a common feature: the generating of secondary energy (e.g. electricity) and regenerating of stored energy (e.g. gravitational potential, and mechanical energy) are separate rather than deeply integrated. Such systems have to tolerate the energy loss caused by the second conversion from primary energy to secondary energy. This paper is concerned with the system dynamics of oxyfuel power plants with liquid oxygen energy storage, which integrates the generation of secondary energy (electricity) and regeneration of stored energy into one process and therefore avoids the energy loss caused by the independent process of regeneration of stored energy. The liquid oxygen storage and the power load of the air separation unit are self-adaptively controlled based on current-day power demand, day-ahead electricity price and real-time oxygen storage information. Such an oxyfuel power plant cannot only bid in the day-ahead market with base load power but also has potential to provide peak load power through reducing the load of the air separation unit in peak time. By introducing reasoning rules with fuzzy control, the oxygen storage system has potential to be further extended by integrating renewable energy resources into the system to create a cryogenic energy storage hub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective technology for capturing CO 2 at the low concentration is chemical absorption, due to the high reactivity between CO 2 and aqueous amine solutions. To capture CO 2 , the process involves complex reactive separations. The accurate calculation of hydrodynamic properties, and mass and energy transfer are of importance for the design of the absorber and desorber columns. This paper performs the rate-based simulations of CO 2 absorption by Monoethanolamine in Aspen Plus. In the calculation of the mass transfer coefficients, different mass transfer models were implemented. In comparison with the desorber, the impacts of mass transfer models were more significant in the simulation of the absorber. For both columns, the impacts of the mass transfer models on the concentration profiles were more significant than those on the temperature profiles. For the absorber, the maximum deviations occur at the bottom of the column for both the concentration and the temperature profiles. Different from the absorber, for the desorber, the maximum deviations occur close to the top of the column. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presented an experimental investigation on solidification behavior of fluid saturated in highly porous open-cell copper foams. Particular attention has been made on the effect of pore parameters (pore density and porosity) on the solidification behavior. A purposely-designed apparatus was built for experimental observations. Results showed that the copper foam had a great effect on solidification and the full solidification time can be saved up to 50%, especially preventing the decrease in solidification rate during the later stage of phase change. The smaller the porosity is, the faster the solidification rate will be. Pore density was found to have little influence upon the solidification rate. In addition, the local natural convection does exist but it has a slight effect on solidification, leading to the slant of the solid-liquid interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofuels are a good substitute for the transport sector petroleum fuels to minimize carbon footprint and greenhouse gases emissions. Di-Methyl Ether (DME) is one such alternative with properties similar to liquefied petroleum gas but with lower SOx, NOx, and particulate emissions. In this work, a polygeneration process, integrating an existing combined heat and power (CHP) plant with biomass gasification to synthesize DME, is proposed and modelled. Process integration is based on a hypothesis that the CHP plant provides the necessary heat to run the co-located gasification plant for DME synthesis and the waste heat from the gasification process is recovered and transferred to the CHP plant. The feed for gasification is taken as refuse derived fuel (RDF) instead of conventional wood derived biomass. The process integration leads to higher overall combined efficiency (up to 71%) which is greater than stand-alone efficiencies (up to 63%) but lower than stand-alone CHP plant efficiency (73.2%). The further technical evaluation shows that the efficiency of the polygeneration process is depends heavily on the gasifier capacity integrated with the existing CHP plant and also on the conversion route selected for DME synthesis i.e. recycling of unconverted syngas to the DME reactor or transferring it to the boiler of the CHP plant. The simulation results also indicate that once-through conversion yields less DME than recycling, but at the same time, once-through conversion affects the district heat and electric power production of the CHP plant lesser than by using the recycling route. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) is considered as a promising strategy for reducing CO 2 emissions. However, the further development of CO 2 adsorption materials with high selectivity and high adsorption capacity is the top priority of this technology. In this study, we used the μ-OH sites of the MIL-125 metal–organic framework (MOF) to modify it with aminosilane to synthesize a new MOF adsorbent (SAP-MIL-125) with improved CO 2 adsorption capacity at room temperature. Although there are no open metal sites on the MIL-125 surface, it is possible to load aminosilanes onto it. Under the same adsorption conditions, the CO 2 adsorption by SAP-MIL-125 was significantly improved compared to that of the original MIL-125. Adsorption isotherm and kinetics models were used to clarify that the adsorption mechanism of CO 2 on SAP-MIL-125 was non-homogeneous layer chemisorption. SAP-MIL-125 has excellent selectivity toward CO 2 (compared to N 2) and good stability over five adsorption–desorption cycles. The adsorption of CO 2 by SAP-MIL-125 is a spontaneous exothermic process. An in-depth investigation of the adsorption mechanism suggests that the acid–base interactions of carbamates is the mechanism of CO 2 adsorption. Density functional theory and frontier molecular orbital calculations showed that the main adsorption sites for the modified adsorbent were nitrogen-containing groups on the surface of aminosilanes, with the primary amines having the highest affinity for CO 2. In conclusion, a novel material modification method for MOFs is provided, which was used to fabricate a CO 2 adsorbent with great potential for development. [Display omitted] • A novel adsorbent SAP-MIL-125 was used to adsorb CO2 at ambient temperature and pressure. • Novel adsorbent obtained by using μ-OH modification on MIL-125 surface without open metal sites. • The adsorbent shows excellent reusability and selectivity for CO2. • Adsorption mechanism is acid-base effect based on FT-IR and DFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study is to investigate the viability of waste gasification based off-grid electricity generation utilizing mixed biomass composts (mixture of rice hulls with cow/poultry manure compost). The economic viability is studied on the different scenarios with considerations of (1) levels of electricity demand and utilization, (2) costs of variable biomass mix, (3) combined domestic and cottage industry business model, and (4) influence of governmental investments. The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is used as an indicator to measure the competitiveness of gasification based off-grid electricity generation. The plant loading and the capacity factor have been used to assess the impacts of different scenarios. A sensitivity analysis of key parameters based on variations in annual operational hours, plant efficiency, plant cost and biomass supply cost is conducted. Based on levels of electricity demand and utilization, the LCOE ranged between 40 US cents/kW h and 29 US cents/kW h based on the plant loading and the capacity factor. The business revenue would not change considerably despite better plant utilization and reduced levelized cost of electricity if all the consumers, both basic or medium, are charged with the flat tariff. The part load operation will be costly despite considerably low capital investment per kW in comparison with PV or solar based plants. There is a large potential of off-grid electricity generation but the estimated off-grid electricity price is found to be higher in all scenarios than average grid-based electricity tariff. Moreover, the challenges for the implementation of the real off-grid electricity generation plant are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive molecular simulations have been carried out to compute local structures and transport properties of different components of binary NaCl-KCl over a wide operating temperature range. The partial radial distribution functions, coordination number curves and angular distribution functions were calculated to analyze the influence of temperature and component on local structures of molten Alkali Chlorides. Transport properties were calculated by using reverse non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (RNEMD) simulations including densities, shear viscosity and thermal conductivity. The results show that ion clusters are considered to be formed and the distance of ion clusters become larger with increasing temperature which has great influence on macro-properties. The calculated properties have a good agreement with the experimental data, and similar method could be used to computationally calculate the properties of various molten salts and their mixtures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]