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Conventional power systems have been heavily dependent on fossil fuel to meet the increasing energy demand due to exponential population growth and diverse technological advancements. This paper presents an optimal energy model and power management of an off-grid distributed energy system (DES) capable of providing sustainable and economic power supply to electrical loads. The paper models and co-optimizes multi-energy generations as a central objective for reliable and economic power supply to electrical loads while simultaneously satisfying a set of system and operational parameters. In addition, mixed integer nonlinear programing (MINLP) optimization technique is exploited to maximize power system generation between interconnected energy sources and dynamic electrical load with highest reliability and minimum operational and emission costs. Due to frequent battery cycling operation in the DES, rainflow algorithm is applied to the optimization result to estimate the depth of discharge (DOD) and subsequently count the number of cycles. The validity and performance of the power management strategy is evaluated with an aggregate load demand scenario of sixty households as a benchmark in a MATLAB program. The simulation results indicate the capability and effectiveness of optimal DES model through an enhanced MINLP optimization program in terms of significant operational costs and emission reduction of the diesel generator (DG). Specifically, the deployment of DES minimizes the daily operational cost by 71.53%. The results further indicate a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions, with 22.76% reduction for the residential community load scenario in contrast to the exclusive DG system. This study provides a framework on the economic feasibility and effective planning of green energy systems (GESs) with efficient optimization techniques with capability for further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A short-term electric power and heat generation augmentation planning (EPHGAP) is portrayed and evaluated here. The objective of EPHGAP is to find out the most cost-effective and dependable expansion plan for meeting the forecasted electrical power demand and heat demand over a long-range horizon while fulfilling a large number of technical, cost-effective, reliability, and social constraints. The EPHGAP problem is a big-dimensional highly constrained mixed integer nonlinear programing (MINLP) problem. The general algebraic modeling system (GAMS) environment has been used to implement the proposed formulation, and the EPHGAP problem is solved by using Basic Open-source Nonlinear Mixed Integer (BONMIN) solver. An archetypal test system with existing thermal power plants, cascaded hydropower plants, cogeneration units, heat-only units and candidate cogeneration units, and cascaded hydro plants is considered to evaluate the proposed methodology. Simulation outcomes of the test system have been matched up to those acquired by differential evolution and particle swarm optimization. It has been observed from the comparison that the recommended BONMIN solver has the capability to bestow with superior quality solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern biotechnologies enable the production of chemicals using engineered microorganisms. However, the cost of downstream recovery and purification steps is high, which means that the feasibility of bio-based chemicals production depends heavily on the synthesis of cost-effective separation networks. To this end, we develop a superstructure-based framework for bio-separation network synthesis. Based on general separation principles and insights obtained from industrial processes for specific products, we first identify four separation stages: cell treatment, product phase isolation, concentration and purification, and refinement. For each stage, we systematically implement a set of connectivity rules to develop stage-superstructures, all of which are then integrated to generate a general superstructure that accounts for all types of chemicals that can be produced using microorganisms. We further develop a superstructure reduction method to solve specific instances, based on product attributes, technology availability, case-specific considerations, and final product stream specifications. A general optimization model, including short-cut models for all technologies, is formulated. The proposed framework enables preliminary synthesis and analysis of bio-separation networks, and thus estimation of separation costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some mature power systems located in densely populated areas, an increase in demand and supply is resulting in very high short-circuit levels that are either too close to or over the safe breaker operating limits. Fault current limiters (FCLs) built with advanced materials and methods are a potent solution in this situation wherein an in-line FCL offers a very low impedance and power loss under normal operating conditions, but a high impedance and hence a lower short-circuit current during faults. From a planning perspective for complex meshed networks where faults are concurrently fed from several sources, it is important to optimally locate and size FCLs, which is a difficult mixed integer nonlinear optimization challenge as commonly used location sensitivity index methods and heuristic search techniques seem inadequate. In this paper, an iterative mixed integer nonlinear optimization method is proposed to optimally locate and size FCLs in a power system by searching the entire solution space such that costs are the least and fault currents are curtailed to levels within breakers' limits, without prior knowledge of the best locations irrespective of the size of the system. The IEEE 9-bus, IEEE 30-bus, and a real North American 395-bus transmission system were chosen to test and demonstrate the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We propose two optimization models for designing two liquid extraction systems: simple multistage liquid extractors and extractors with extract reflux. Both models are motivated by the concepts of the modified McCabe-Thiele graphical method for multistage extractor design. The operating and equilibrium curves in the McCabe-Thiele method are represented by material balances and piece-wise linearized thermodynamics properties. The use of piece-wise approximations improves computational tractability of both optimization models. In addition, we consider some extensions such as dilute systems, insoluble solvents, and non-ideal stages. The applicability of the proposed models is demonstrated with four illustrative examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]