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In this work, the new energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions that would be associated with heavy truck electrification in Ontario is evaluated. A new equation is derived to calculate the pollution-producing electricity generation based on the breakdown of the Ontario generation mosaic. Using this as a basis, for 4 scenarios of 5 %, 25 %, 50 % and 75 % of heavy-duty truck electrification, the Marginal Emission Factor (MEF) is calculated. This evaluation suggests that Ontario's peak demand in 2040 for the least and the most heavy-duty truck electrification scenarios can be up to 27.5 GW and 30.4 GW, respectively, compared to a baseline of 26.8 GW when assuming no heavy truck electrification condition. It is also forecasted that if the extra demand for electric trucks is supplied by clean renewable resources, the GHG emission reduction for 2040 can be as high as 0.9 MT, 4.3 MT, 8.6 MT and 12.9 MT GHG, respectively.

Abstract Threats to water supply systems have increased in number and intensity. Natural disasters such as earthquakes have caused different types of damage to water distribution networks (WDN), particularly for those with aged infrastructure. This paper investigates the resilience of an existing water distribution network under seismic hazard. An earthquake generation model coupled with a probabilistic flow-based pressure driven demand hydraulic model is investigated and applied to an existing WDN. A total of 27 earthquake scenarios and 2 repair strategies were simulated. The analysis examined hydraulic resilience metrics such as pressure, leak demand, water serviceability, and population impacted. The results show that nodal pressure drops below nominal pressure and reaches zero in some earthquake scenarios. Leak demand could reach to more than 10 m3/s within hours following an earthquake. Water serviceability drops to a low of 40% and population impacted reaches up to 90% for a 6.5 M earthquake, for example. This study highlights and quantifies vulnerabilities within the simulated WDN. The tools outlined here illustrate an approach that can: (1) ultimately help to better inform utility water safety plans, and (2) prepare proactive strategies to mitigate/repair before a hazard of this nature occurs.

Selection of the best component arrangement and sizing measurement for hybrid energy systems (HES) is vital to provide a reliable, consistent, and cost-effective energy supply. This study investigates a techno-economic feasibility analysis of stand-alone HES on Western side of Pelee Island, Canada, whose load is 2426 kWh/day. Several hybridization cases, including diesel (DG), wind (WT), and solar (PV) energy generation, coupled with converters (CNV) and four different battery-electric storage technologies, are explored for technical and economic suitability. The battery architectures involve Scenario I: 1 kWh Lead Acid (LA), Scenario II: 1 kWh Li-Ion, Scenario III: 100 kWh Li-Ion, and Scenario IV: 2.5 kWh PowerSafe (SBS). The results favored the Scenario II solution: 152 kW PV module, 200 kW DG, 190 kW CNV when integrated with 853 kWh Li-Ion battery which has the lowest NPC and LCOE by $3.67M and 0.321$/kWh, respectively. Fuel price and solar irradiance of LA-based systems are more sensitive to renewable fraction and less sensitive to LCOE.1 kWh Li-Ion battery-based hybrid options maintain their lowest LCOE and NPC over variation of fuel price, irradiance, and required load. Unmet load comparison reveals that PV/WT/DG/100 kWh Li-Ion and PV/WT/2.5 kWh SBS, respectively, are the most and least reliable hybrid cases. When comparing storage throughput, it is expected that 100 kWh Li-Ion batteries would be more efficient and have a longer service life than 2.5 kWh SBS batteries.

Some estimates show long-haul transport trucks contribute as much as 10% of all Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Long-haul electric vehicles (LHEVs) or “electric big rigs” offer a potentially compelling option to mitigate these emissions. However, LHEV charging is expected to burden the power grid significantly more than charging smaller passenger electric vehicles. To date, there is very little research on the impact of charging such vehicles on power grids. The following study leverages conventional long-haul truck GPS data to develop an archetypal routing network (ARN) model that can help identify candidate charging infrastructure locations in Ontario, Canada. Results suggest that based on historical LHEV travel patterns, most candidate charging station locations fall along critical road links in Ontario like Highway 401 and Highway 400. Subsequently, the additional electricity demand of these stations is estimated and compared with Ontario’s current electricity demand. Though the charging stations’ aggregate daily demand is smaller than Ontario’s overall demand, some of these stations’ hourly electricity demand during peak hours are great enough to put significant pressure on local infrastructures.

Governments have implemented different interventions and response models to combat the spread of COVID-19. The necessary intensity and frequency of control measures require us to project the number of infected cases. Three short-term forecasting models were proposed to predict the total number of infected cases in Canada for a number of days ahead. The proposed models were evaluated on how their performance degrades with increased forecast horizon, and improves with increased historical data by which to estimate them. For the data analyzed, our results show that 7 to 10 weeks of historical data points are enough to produce good fits for a two-weeks predictive model of infected case numbers with a NRMSE of 1% to 2%. The preferred model is an important quick-deployment tool to support data-informed short-term pandemic related decision-making at all levels of governance.

As an emerging flexible-scale energy storage technology, underwater compressed gas energy storage (UW-CGES) is regarded as a promising energy storage option for offshore platforms, offshore renewable energy farms, islands, coastal cities, etc. Liquid accumulation often occurs in underwater gas transmission pipelines, which is a challenge to overcome. In this study, an experimental investigation is carried out on the pressure distribution characteristics of liquid accumulation flow in hilly terrain under the condition of Zero Net Liquid Flow. A slug flow pressure model with different inclination angles at four times is established and verified, and its error range is within ±20%. Analysis revealed that reduction and growth in pressure difference are related to the outflow of slug in an inclined pipe. A high-speed camera is used to capture the movement of liquid accumulation under Zero Net Liquid Flow (ZNLF) and record the associated dynamic parameters. By imaging the motion of liquid accumulation and detecting the pressure changes in the pipeline at various times, the pressure fluctuation in the pipeline at the slug flow cause is studied. Outcomes from this work can be leveraged to help further the development of underwater compressed gas energy storage technology.

Underwater compressed air energy storage was developed from its terrestrial counterpart. It has also evolved to underwater compressed natural gas and hydrogen energy storage in recent years. UWCGES is a promising energy storage technology for the marine environment and subsequently of recent significant interest attention. However, it is still immature. In this study, the latest progress in both academic and industrial fields is summarized. Additionally, challenges facing this emerging technology are analyzed. The pros and cons of UWCGES are provided and are differentiated from the terrestrial variant. Technical, economic, environmental, and policy challenges are examined. In particular, the critical issues for developing artificial large and ultra-large underwater gas storage accumulators and effective underwater gas transportation are comprehensively analyzed. Finally, the demand for marine energy storage technology is briefly summarized, and the potential application scenarios and application modes of underwater compressed gas energy storage technology are prospected. This study aims to highlight the current state of the UWCGES sector and provide some guidance and reference for theoretical research and industrial development.

In the Ontario greenhouse sector the misalignment of available solar radiation during the summer months and large heating demand during the winter months makes solar thermal collector systems an unviable option without some form of seasonal energy storage. Information obtained from Ontario greenhouse operators has shown that over 20% of annual natural gas usage occurs during the summer months for greenhouse pre-heating prior to sunrise. A transient model of the greenhouse microclimate and indoor conditioning systems is carried out using TRNSYS software and validated with actual natural gas usage data. A large-scale solar thermal collector system is then incorporated and found to reduce the annual heating energy demand by approximately 35%. The inclusion of the collector system correlates to a reduction of about 120 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions per acre of greenhouse per year. System payback period is discussed considering the benefits of a future Ontario carbon tax.

There is growing interest in multi-purpose offshore floating platforms that: harvest energy from the sun, wind, water, and waves; desalinize water; host agriculture and aquaculture; and house residents. While there are some basic commonalities with well established, oil and gas platforms, lighter variants are functionally different with little wind research coverage. Here, we investigate a floating, multi-purpose, light duty platform under 1:150 scaled straight atmospheric boundary layer wind (ABL), tornado like vortices (TLV), and downburst (DB) conditions. The experiments examined the movement of a 1:150 geometrically scaled platform with six degrees of freedom and two mooring Configurations. Four Configurations are studied, (1) Loosely moored platform, (2) Tightly moored platform, (3) Platform with ballast, and (4) Platform with ballast and weight on the deck. DB winds produced the greatest movement, followed by the TLV winds. Little movement was seen under the ABL winds. Loosely moored platforms moved more than tightly moored.

Reassessment of the fatigue life for wind turbine structural components is typically performed using deterministic methods with the same partial safety factors as used for the original design. However, in relation to life extension, the conditions are generally different from the assumptions used for calibration of partial safety factors; and using a deterministic assessment method with these partial safety factors might not lead to optimal decisions. In this paper, the deterministic assessment method is compared to probabilistic and risk-based approaches, and the economic feasibility is assessed for a case wind farm. Using the models also used for calibration of partial safety factors in IEC61400-1 ed. 4, it is found that the probabilistic assessment generally leads to longer additional fatigue life than the deterministic assessment method. The longer duration of the extended life can make life extension feasible in more situations. The risk-based model is applied to include the risk of failure directly in the economic feasibility assessment and it is found that the reliability can be much lower than the target for new turbines, without compromising the economic feasibility.

Forecasting crop water demand is a critical part of any greenhouse’s day-to-day operations. This study focuses on a region located in Essex County, Ontario Canada where water demand is dominated by commercial greenhouse operations (78% of capacity). Development of complex and elaborate forecasting methods such as artificial neural networks (ANN) can be costly to develop and implement, especially with the limited resources available to greenhouses. This study proposes simplified forecasting methods that would be used in conjunction with a more complex base model architecture. These simplified methods use one crop water usage as an indicator of another’s, and is titled crop-to-crop forecasting (C2C). In this study, tomatoes and peppers were evaluated, and three C2C models were developed along with an ANN base model to provide a basis for evaluation. The models were created using a dataset containing hourly watering data along with climatic and temporal data for the period between June 2015 and August 2016. The three C2C architectures used were linear regression (LR), quotient method (QM), and feed-forward neural network (FFNN), compared with the (ANN) model, which is a feed-forward neural network with extra inputs (FFNN-EI). Each model was evaluated using the root mean squared error (RMSE) and the normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE). The results show that all C2C methods have higher RMSE and NRMSE than that of the base model, with an average RMSE increase of 12% for peppers and 29% for tomatoes.

Due to calcium and phosphorus solubility problems in parenteral nutrition solutions, it is difficult to provide the premature infant with enough of these two minerals for adequate bone mineralization. In order to determine the maximum amounts of both Ca and P soluble in neonatal parenteral nutrition solutions, we employed the following procedure: (1) using concentrations of dextrose 10 to 25% and amino acid 0.5 to 4.0% with standard electrolyte and vitamin concentrations, Ca and P additions were sequentially made to determine the critical concentrations at which precipitates formed; (2) the pH of each test solution was determined; (3) all test solutions were incubated for 30 hr at room temperature; (4) following incubation, all tests were visually observed for calcium-phosphate crystals; (5) the solutions not obviously precipitated were filtered using black Millipore filters to determine the presence of any microprecipitates. Multiple graphs of Ca and P solubility in various dextrose/amino acid solutions were prepared from data generated by the study. The Ca and P interaction is primarily pH sensitive. Factors affecting the solution pH include both dextrose and amino acid concentrations. Our study showed that increases in amino acid concentrations enabled us to increase both Ca and P in the solutions.

A method for bacterial surveillance of small-volume sterile products in hospitals was developed and tested. The criteria for the method of quality control were to: (1) assure detection of contamination associated with touch, which could occur during the filling process; (2) be economically feasible; (3) be simple and easy to implement; and (4) be versatile in adapting to small-volume sterile packages with and without needles. Ten percent of each lot of prepackaged unit dose syringes is tested by filtration through a sterile micropore filter. The filter unit is incubated after fluid thioglycollate medium has been added. If turbidity or color change is found, further testing with blood agar and gram staining is performed to identify the organism. The effectiveness of the method was tested by adding E. coli to one lot within each of several lots tested of six products. The inoculated samples were stored under refrigeration for three days before testing. With one exception, the E. coli was detected in the samples. Growth did not occur in any of the noninoculated units. The apparent false negative result was believed to be caused by the bacteriostatic agent killing the organism during the three-day storage period.

The effect on pulmonary infection rate of using respiratory therapy medications packaged in unit dose syringes versus multiple-dose vials was studied. Study data were collected on 141 patients during a three-month period; 78 patients were treated with respiratory medications packaged exclusively in unit dose syringes, and the balance received medications from multiple-dose vials. Based on information collected from patient charts, the presence of definite or probable pulmonary infections was determined. Of the 83 patients who did not have pulmonary infections prior to therapy, 23% developed one; there was no significant difference in the incidence of infection according to type of medication packaging. Nor did packaging have a significant effect on the incidence of infection among the 39 patients who were predisposed to infection. Finally, method of packaging had no significant effect among the 58 patients who had an infection before therapy started. It is suggested that the decision to employ unit dose packaging for respiratory therapy medications must be based on factors other than the incidence of infection.