Search

Cost-effective construction practices generally rely on the selection of sustainable building materials irrespective of their environmental responsiveness and adaptability towards developing a comforting habitat. Present study aims to address the feasibility of developing soil-based building blocks using natural and recyclable materials by following modified adobe method. Unburnt bricks were manufactured from native red soil using optimized proportion of low cost binders and tested for their durability and thermal behaviour under various experimental conditions. An equi-molal binary mixture of cement and lime (15% each) was turned out to be the best combination to provide excellent compressive strength (6.43±0.15 N/mm2). As per the rate of water absorption and stabilization during the curing process, impounded bricks provided better results compared to the mat curing and spray curing. The rate of change in surface temperature of bricks added with lime and cement showed slightly lower values for cooling cycles (0.2°C/min to 0.5°C/min) compared to the heating cycles (0.6°C/min to 1.0°C/min) when exposed to solar radiation. The prepared bricks are found to be economic by reducing the construction cost by 40% on material. Based on the results, the red soil bricks provide an excellent choice as a sustainable building blocks to meet the increasing housing requirements.

Summary This article presents a review of the battery energy storage method or BESS for its acronym in English (Battery Energy Storage System), considering that the era of high capacity storage batteries is approaching and why historically the storage of energy did not appear in the planning or operation of electrical systems. However, this solution is currently setting a global trend for having high levels of efficiency and why it is also being driven by the need to modernize the network in order to increase the use of renewable energies.

The state of the art of the PCM’s reveals enabled characteristics that opens the door for multiple heat transfer and storage phenomena. The PCM absorbs, stores, and releases the energy during its phase change thus it most widely helps in latent heat transfer techniques. Nowadays Nano-fluid and Nano-phase change materials are replacing the general phase change materials because of its high heat transfer and storage capability. Further, varieties of passive heat transfer techniques such as heat exchangers of shell/tube type of various patterns and geometries are utilized to optimize the thermal energy. The artificial neural network is embedded in the system to recognize the pattern for faster processing. In this article, the PCM heat storage and transfer techniques are critically reviewed in comparison with the Cylindrical and Rectangular/Square shells/tubes based on the effect of parameters such as solidification/melting performance, enthalpy, fluid flow pattern in the liquid molten state, types of PCM used, etc. The numerical/analytical and experimentation techniques are categorized based on the results of various researcher and conclusion is established.

Urban air pollution is rapidly becoming an environmental issue of global concern, affecting public health, regional weather, and climate. The air quality crisis in cities is mainly caused by vehicle emissions. A city's air quality is assessed using the Air Quality Index (AQI), which analyses concentrations of air pollutants such as PM10, sulphur dioxide SO2, and nitrogen dioxide NO2. The current study on air pollution was carried out in the SG Halli area of Bangaluru and required air pollutant data was collected from the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (CPCB). With the exception of PM10, the pollutant concentration was within the permissible limits set by the Central Pollution Control Authority (CPCB). Pollutant concentrations were analyzed using meteorological variables such as relative humidity (RH), temperature (T), wind direction (WD), wind speed (WS), and solar radiation (SR). PM10 concentrations are predicted using an auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. PM10 concentrations were well predicted by ARIMA model. On the AQI scale, it can be seen that the atmospheric environment of SG Halli is moderately polluted.