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Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems

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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "B: Energy and Environment".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2020) | Viewed by 68158

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Neven Duić

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Guest Editor

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb, Lučićeva 5, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Interests: energy planning of energy systems with a high penetration of renewables; sustainable communities; energy policy; energy economics; mitigation of climate change; energy efficiency and combustion engineering
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Prof. Dr. Francesco Calise

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Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, 80125 Naples, Italy
Interests: fuel cells; advanced optimization techniques; solar thermal systems; concentrating photovoltaic/thermal photovoltaic systems; energy saving in buildings; solar heating and cooling; organic Rankine cycles; geothermal energy; dynamic simulations of energy systems; renewable polygeneration systems
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Prof. Dr. Mário Costa †

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Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, 1000-001 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: conventional and alternative fuels; particulate and aerosol formation and abatement; heterogeneous processes; advances in diagnostic methods in combustion; gas turbines; small- and large-scale stationary combustion and power generation; new concepts
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Prof. Dr. Qiuwang Wang

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Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering (Ministry of Education), Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Interests: heat transfer enhancement and its applications to engineering problems; high-temperature heat transfer and fluid flow; transport phenomena in porous media; numerical simulation, prediction, and optimization
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Prof. Dr. Poul Alberg Østergaard

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Department of Planning, Aalborg University, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark
Interests: energy systems; energy scenarios; renewable energy system integration; energy and development; environmental impacts from energy development
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

One of the main issues of the coming decades is how to improve efficiencies by integrating various life-supporting systems, using waste from one as resource in another at the exact moment when it is beneficial to all, integrating electricity, heating, cooling, transport, water, buildings, waste, wastewater, industry, forestry, and agriculture systems. With sustainability also being the perfect field for interdisciplinary and multicultural evaluation of complex system, the SDEWES Conferences have become a significant venue for researchers in those areas to meet, discuss, share, and disseminate new ideas.

Energy has been and continues to be the key factor in human development; however, it is also one of the main—if not the sole—human environmental fingerprints. Even with the significant attention that has been given to the importance and merits of sustainable energy supply over the last decades, there are still great gaps to be filled in respect of how to design and implement technically optimal energy systems at the lowest costs.

This Special Issue aims to provide an important contribution by presenting the state-of-the-art in sustainable energy supply solutions ranging from the technical analyses of energy components on both the supply and demand side to energy scenarios and pathways. This Special Issue particularly welcomes SDEWES papers that address the energy system without traditional sector boundaries between electricity, heating, cooling, transportation, and industrial demands and rather considers the integration and synergies between these sectors.

The 14th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water, and Environment Systems—SDEWES Conference will be held in Dubrovnik in October, dedicated to the improvement and dissemination of knowledge on methods, policies, and technologies for increasing the sustainability of development by decoupling growth from natural resources and replacing them with knowledge-based economy, taking into account its economic, environmental, and social pillars.

Prof. Dr. Neven Duić
Prof. Dr. Francesco Calise
Prof. Dr. Mário Costa
Prof. Dr. Qiuwang Wang
Prof. Dr. Poul Alberg Østergaard
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

sustainability comparisons and measurements
smart energy systems
energy policy
water–energy nexus
energy system analysis
renewable energy resources
primary energy resources
renewable electricity generation systems
thermal power plants
district heating and/or cooling
advanced sustainable energy conversion systems
renewable heat systems
biofuels and biorefineries
alternative fuels
hybrid and electric vehicles
water treatment for drinking water
modelling for pollution avoidance and energy efficiency
cogeneration, trigeneration, polygeneration
energy storage
electricity transmission and distribution
gas security of supply
energy efficiency in industry and mining
energy efficient appliances
energy efficiency in buildings
energy markets

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29 pages, 2495 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceReview

Recent Advances in Technology, Strategy and Application of Sustainable Energy Systems

by Wenxiao Chu, Francesco Calise, Neven Duić, Poul Alberg Østergaard, Maria Vicidomini and Qiuwang Wang

Energies 2020, 13(19), 5229; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13195229 - 8 Oct 2020

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 9984

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had strong impacts on national and international freight, construction and tourism industry, supply chains, and has resulted in a rapid decline in the demand for traditional energy sources. In fact, research has outlined that urban areas depend on global supply chains for their day-to-day basic functions, including energy supplies, food and safe access to potable water. The disruption of global supply chains can leave many urban areas in a very vulnerable position, in which their citizens may struggle to obtain their basic supplies, as the COVID-19 crisis has recently shown. Therefore, solutions aiming to enhance local food, water and energy production systems, even in urban environments, have to be pursued. The COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted in the scientific community the problem of people’s exposure to outdoor and indoor pollution, confirmed as a key element for the increase both in the transmission and severity of the contagion, on top of involving health risks on their own. In this context, most nations are going to adopt new preferential policies to stimulate the development of relevant sustainable energy industries, based on the electrification of the systems supplied by renewable energy sources as confirmed by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Thus, while there is ongoing research focusing on a COVID 19 vaccine, there is also a need for researchers to work cooperatively on novel strategies for world economic recovery incorporating renewable energy policy, technology and management. In this framework, the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) conference provides a good platform for researchers and other experts to exchange their academic thoughts, promoting the development and improvements on the renewable energy technologies as well as their role in systems and in the transition towards sustainable energy systems. The 14th SDEWES Conference was held in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It brought together around 570 researchers from 55 countries in the field of sustainable development. The present Special Issue of Energies, specifically dedicated to the 14th SDEWES Conference, focuses on four main fields: energy policy for sustainable development, biomass energy application, building energy saving, and power plant and electric systems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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25 pages, 3610 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exergy Analysis of Gas Switching Chemical Looping IGCC Plants

by Carlos Arnaiz del Pozo, Ángel Jiménez Álvaro, Jan Hendrik Cloete, Schalk Cloete and Shahriar Amini

Energies 2020, 13(3), 544; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13030544 - 22 Jan 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3090

Abstract

Integrated gasification combined cycles (IGCC) are promising power production systems from solid fuels due to their high efficiency and good environmental performance. Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is an effective route to reduce the energy penalty associated with CO₂ capture. This concept comprises a metal oxygen carrier circulated between a reduction reactor, where syngas is combusted, and an oxidation reactor, where O₂ is withdrawn from an air stream. Parallel to CLC, oxygen carriers that are capable of releasing free O₂ in the reduction reactor, i.e., chemical looping oxygen production (CLOP), have been developed. This offers interesting integration opportunities in IGCC plants, replacing energy demanding air separation units (ASU) with CLOP. Gas switching (GS) reactor cluster technology consists of a set of reactors operating in reduction and oxidation stages alternatively, providing an averaged constant flow rate to the gas turbine and a CO₂ stream readily available for purification and compression, and avoiding the transport of solids across reactors, which facilitates the scale up of this technology at pressurized conditions. In this work, exergy analyses of a gas switching combustion (GSC) IGCC plant and a GSOP–GSC IGCC plant are performed and consistently benchmarked against an unabated IGCC and a precombustion CO₂ capture IGCC plant. Through the exergy analysis methodology, an accurate assessment of the irreversible loss distribution in the different power plant sections from a second-law perspective is provided, and new improvement pathways to utilize the exergy contained in the GSC reduction gases outlet are identified. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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16 pages, 3273 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Effect of Shank-Space on the Thermal Performance of Shallow Vertical U-Tube Ground Heat Exchangers

by Christopher Vella, Simon Paul Borg and Daniel Micallef

Energies 2020, 13(3), 602; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13030602 - 29 Jan 2020

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3126

Abstract

One parameter that may affect the performance of a ground source heat pump is the shank-space, the center-to-center distance between the two branches of a vertical U-tube used in a ground heat exchanger. A 3D steady-state computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a U-tube ground heat exchanger was used to investigate the influence of varying shank-space on the thermal performance of two isolated vertical shallow U-tubes, one 20 m deep and the other 40 m deep, given that most existing research focuses on systems making use of deeper boreholes. The models adopt an innovative approach, whereby the U-junction at the bottom of the U-tube is eliminated, thus facilitating the computational process. The results obtained show that, although the temperature drop across the U-tube varies for different shank-spaces and is lowest and highest for the closest and the widest shank-spaces, respectively, this temperature drop is not linear with increases in shank-space, and the thermal performance improvement drastically diminishes with increasing shank-space. This indicates that, for shallow U-tubes, the temperature drop is more dependent on the length of the pipework. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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10 pages, 1640 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fuel Conservation for Launch Vehicles: Falcon Heavy Case Study

by Primož Jozič, Aleksander Zidanšek and Robert Repnik

Energies 2020, 13(3), 660; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13030660 - 4 Feb 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 7166

Abstract

Space exploration has recently been growing at an increasing pace and has caused a significant burden to the environment, in particular, during the launch of rockets, when a large amount of fuel is burned and the exhaust gases are released in the air. For this case study, we selected the SpaceX Falcon Heavy reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is one of the most promising rockets for the low-cost lifting of heavy payloads into orbit and beyond. We evaluated several strategies for optimisation of fuel consumption and for minimisation of environmental impact during launch through the atmosphere for the case of its first launch on February 6, 2018, when the rocket carried a red Tesla Roadster with a “Starman” in the direction toward Mars. In addition to the flight plan and Newtonian equations of motion, we have taken into account the thermodynamic properties of the rocket engines. Results are similar but slightly different if one minimises the total fuel consumption for the desired flight plan or if one minimises the environmental pollution during the initial stage of the launch through the atmosphere. The same methodology can be extended for launches in other directions including the Earth orbit and the Moon. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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17 pages, 1914 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Surviving the Energy Transition: Development of a Proposal for Evaluating Sustainable Business Models for Incumbents in Germany’s Electricity Market

by Oliver Wagner, Thomas Adisorn, Lena Tholen and Dagmar Kiyar

Energies 2020, 13(3), 730; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13030730 - 7 Feb 2020

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4297

Abstract

In the light of Germany’s chosen path towards the energy transition, the regulatory framework has changed considerably. New players have succeeded in entering the market, and renewable energies have become increasingly competitive. Greater electrification of the transport and heating sectors will be needed in the future to achieve national climate targets. Against this background, Germany’s big energy companies need to be sure that their sales will increase. However, they were unable to anticipate this development, and made strategic mistakes in the past. The development of sustainable business models in line with the energy transition failed to materialize. Now it is becoming increasingly clear that companies must create new business models to survive in the long term. These business models have to keep with the tradition, whilst meeting the needs of low-carbon power supplies. In this paper, we will examine the past and future challenges of the four energy companies and develop a proposal for evaluating sustainable business models. For this purpose, we use the multi-level perspective to categorize developments in the electricity market over the last 50 years, and then apply a multi-criteria analysis to derive five suitable business models from the results. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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25 pages, 6004 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Wind Electric-Driven Combined Heating, Cooling, and Electricity System for an Office Building in Two Italian Cities

by Carlo Roselli, Maurizio Sasso and Francesco Tariello

Energies 2020, 13(4), 895; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13040895 - 18 Feb 2020

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3159

Abstract

Electric air-conditioning systems driven by electricity from a wind turbine can be defined as wind electric and cooling systems according to the definition of solar-activated air-conditioners. They can potentially contribute to reduce primary energy demand and CO₂ emission in the civil sector. In this paper, mini wind turbines are considered coupled with a ground source heat pump in order to serve an office building for air-conditioning and supply the electricity surplus for the pure electric load of the user. Different plant configurations are considered. First of all, assessments with two kinds of wind turbines (5–5.5 kW), vertical and horizontal axis, are performed, also considering the coupling with one and two identical wind generators. Secondly, to better use on-site electricity, a parametric study is proposed taking into account different battery storage system sizes (3.2–9.6 kWh). Finally, the plant is simulated in two locations: Naples and Cagliari. Simulation results demonstrate that the source availability mainly affects the system performance. In Cagliari, the primary energy reduction per kWh of final energy demand (for pure electric load, space heating, and cooling) is equal to 1.24, 54.8% more than in Naples. In addition, the storage system limits the interaction with the power grid, lowering the exported electricity from about 50% to about 27% for Naples and from 63% to 50% for Cagliari. The fraction of the load met by renewable energy accounts for up to 25% for Naples and 48% for Cagliari. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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21 pages, 1179 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Scientific Attention to Sustainability and SDGs: Meta-Analysis of Academic Papers

by Kimitaka Asatani, Haruo Takeda, Hiroko Yamano and Ichiro Sakata

Energies 2020, 13(4), 975; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13040975 - 21 Feb 2020

Cited by 25 | Viewed by 6219

Abstract

Scientific research plays an important role in the achievement of a sustainable society. However, grasping the trends in sustainability research is difficult because studies are not devised and conducted in a top-down manner with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To understand the bottom-up research activities, we analyzed over 300,000 publications concerned with sustainability by using citation network analysis and natural language processing. The results suggest that sustainability science’s diverse and dynamic changes have been occurring over the last few years; several new topics, such as nanocellulose and global health, have begun to attract widespread scientific attention. We further examined the relationship between sustainability research subjects and SDGs and found significant correspondence between the two. Moreover, we extracted SDG topics that were discussed following a convergent approach in academic studies, such as “inclusive society” and “early childhood development”, by observing the convergence of terms in the citation network. These results are valuable for government officials, private companies, and academic researchers, empowering them to understand current academic progress along with research attention devoted to SDGs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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15 pages, 2524 KiB

Open AccessArticle

District Heating Tariffs, Economic Optimisation and Local Strategies during Radical Technological Change

by Søren Djørup, Karl Sperling, Steffen Nielsen, Poul Alborg Østergaard, Jakob Zinck Thellufsen, Peter Sorknæs, Henrik Lund and David Drysdale

Energies 2020, 13(5), 1172; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13051172 - 4 Mar 2020

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 5133

Abstract

This paper addresses economic aspects of heat savings in the context of strategic heat planning. The analysis uses the city of Aalborg, Denmark, as a case where municipalisation through a recent acquisition of a coal-fired cogeneration of heat and power (CHP) plant has made an update of a municipal strategic energy plan necessary. Combining datasets on buildings and insulation techniques with economic methods, we investigate how the local district heating tariff can be adapted to improve the conditions for heat savings and support the transition to lower supply temperatures in line with the requirements of future fourth generation district heating systems. The paper concludes that implementing a fully variable heat tariff scheme improves the financial incentive for heat savings, while also making the system development less vulnerable to fluctuations and shortages in capital markets. The paper supplements existing literature on heat savings with novelty in its approach and in its systematic investigation of the interplay between tariff policies and interest rates. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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15 pages, 5618 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Flow Allocation in Meshed AC-DC Electricity Grids

by Fabian Hofmann, Markus Schlott, Alexander Kies and Horst Stöcker

Energies 2020, 13(5), 1233; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13051233 - 6 Mar 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2807

Abstract

In power systems, flow allocation (FA) methods enable to allocate the usage and costs of the transmission grid to each single market participant. Based on predefined assumptions, the power flow is split into isolated generator-specific or producer-specific sub-flows. Two prominent FA methods, Marginal Participation (MP) and Equivalent Bilateral Exchanges (EBEs), build upon the linearized power flow and thus on the Power Transfer Distribution Factors (PTDFs). Despite their intuitive and computationally efficient concepts, they are restricted to networks with passive transmission elements only. As soon as a significant number of controllable transmission elements, such as high-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines, operate in the system, they lose their applicability. This work reformulates the two methods in terms of Virtual Injection Patterns (VIPs), which allows one to efficiently introduce a shift parameter q to tune contributions of net sources and net sinks in the network. In this work, major properties and differences in the methods are pointed out, and it is shown how the MP and EBE algorithms can be applied to generic meshed AC-DC electricity grids: by introducing a pseudo-impedance

\bar{ω}

, which reflects the operational state of controllable elements and allows one to extend the PTDF matrix under the assumption of knowing the current flow in the system. Basic properties from graph theory are used to solve for the pseudo-impedance in dependence of the position within the network. This directly enables, e.g., HVDC lines to be considered in the MP and EBE algorithms. The extended methods are applied to a low-carbon European network model (PyPSA-EUR) with a spatial resolution of 181 nodes and an 18% transmission expansion compared to today’s total transmission capacity volume. The allocations of MP and EBE show that countries with high wind potentials profit most from the transmission grid expansion. Based on the average usage of transmission system expansion, a method of distributing operational and capital expenditures is proposed. In addition, it is shown how injections from renewable resources strongly drive country-to-country allocations and thus cross-border electricity flows. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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35 pages, 2517 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Numerical Pinch Analysis Methodology for Optimal Sizing of a Centralized Trigeneration System with Variable Energy Demands

by Khairulnadzmi Jamaluddin, Sharifah Rafidah Wan Alwi, Khaidzir Hamzah and Jiří Jaromír Klemeš

Energies 2020, 13(8), 2038; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13082038 - 19 Apr 2020

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3220

Abstract

The energy and power sectors are critical sectors, especially as energy demands rise every year. Increasing energy demand will lead to an increase in fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions. Improving the thermal efficiency of conventional power systems is one way to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. The previous study has developed a new methodology called Trigeneration System Cascade Analysis (TriGenSCA) to optimise the sizing of power, heating, and cooling in a trigeneration system for a Total Site system. However, the method only considered a single period on heating and cooling demands. In industrial applications, there are also batches, apart from continuous plants. The multi-period is added in the analysis to meet the time constraints in batch plants. This paper proposes the development of an optimal trigeneration system based on the Pinch Analysis (PA) methodology by minimizing cooling, heating, and power requirements, taking into account energy variations in the total site energy system. The procedure involves seven steps, which include data extraction, identification of time slices, Problem Table Algorithm, Multiple Utility Problem Table Algorithm, Total Site Problem Table Algorithm, TriGenSCA, and Trigeneration Storage Cascade Table (TriGenSCT). An illustrative case study is constructed by considering the trigeneration Pressurized Water Reactor Nuclear Power Plant (PWR NPP) and four industrial plants in a Total Site system. Based on the case study, the base fuel of the trigeneration PWR NPP requires 14 t of Uranium-235 to an average demand load of 93 GWh/d. The results of trigeneration PWR NPP with and without the integration of the Total Site system is compared and proven that trigeneration PWR NPP with integration is a suitable technology that can save up to 0.2% of the equivalent annual cost and 1.4% of energy compared to trigeneration PWR NPP without integration. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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24 pages, 6634 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Evaluation of the Effects of the Potato Starch on the Biogas Produced from the Anaerobic Digestion of Potato Wastes

by R. Alrefai, A.M. Alrefai, K.Y. Benyounis and J. Stokes

Energies 2020, 13(9), 2399; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13092399 - 11 May 2020

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3620

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has undergone many developments since its first appearance. Despite that, there are still some environmental and economical obstacles that are limiting its sustainability. On the other hand, different types of starch have proven their effectiveness in some different applications. Food processing industries are considered one of the largest generators of waste in the environment. With an aid of the response surface methodology (RSM), the proposed study aimed to find an optimised way to overcome the obstacles by studying the impacts of the starch isolated from the potato peels on the biogas produced from the AD of potato peels before and after starch separation. The study found that potato peels represented approximately 12.5% of the potato total weight. The starch has only a slight influence on the quantity of the biogas produced and much lower influences on its quality. This finding suggests further investigation is required on the production of starch bio-based products simultaneously with the biogas and bio-slurry, which may mitigate environmental influences and economical obstacles of AD and make it more commercially attractive. The study showed also that the highest energy gain by the g-VS/0.2 L of potato peels was 62.9% at 35 °C, 1.62 g-VS/0.2 L organic concentration and 50% sludge concentration, which yielded a maximum CH₄ of 72.4%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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24 pages, 8990 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Energy and Cost Analysis of Building Envelope Components Using BIM: A Systematic Approach

by Zoran Pučko, Damjan Maučec and Nataša Šuman

Energies 2020, 13(10), 2643; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13102643 - 22 May 2020

Cited by 34 | Viewed by 5446

Abstract

The selection of cost-effective components of the building envelope plays a significant role in a sustainable building design solution. Therefore, in terms of effective decision-making, it is important to have a complete insight into construction and running costs throughout the lifespan of the building. A systematic building information modelling (BIM) approach as a new trend in the innovative approaches in the construction (AECO) industry provides appropriate support for improvement of environmental assessments. Our study presents a new approach to automated/semi-automated comprehensive energy and the whole life-cycle cost analysis of building envelope components using BIM, and, as such, it represents a novelty for Advanced Construction Project Management. It focuses on the sequence of steps required for evaluation of energy and economic assessment, from the basic 3D BIM model, through the energy and cost analysis, to the final evaluation and decision-making. The energy balance was calculated with dynamic simulation, the results of which formed the basis for the cost analysis. Economic assessment of construction and operating costs was performed by implementation of the cost-optimal methodology. Our proposed approach contributes to the environmental assessment of building envelope components throughout the life cycle and includes the economic valuation. The applicability of the systematic approach in our case study considered 24 different variants of building envelope components at three different U-values, namely U₀ = 0.28 W/m²K for external wall, U₀ = 0.20 W/m²K for roof, U₁ = 0.15 W/m²K and U₂ = 0.10 W/m²K. Sophisticated project BIM management software was used for the economic evaluation of all elements of the life-cycle costs (LCC). In summary, the main contribution of this approach is provision of a comprehensive and simple insight into all costs in a transparent way, because a 5D BIM model allows for optimal decision-making on appropriate energy and cost-efficient envelope components. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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22 pages, 7333 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Impact of Starch from Cassava Peel on Biogas Produced through the Anaerobic Digestion Process

by Alla Mohammed Alrefai, Raid Alrefai, Khaled Younis Benyounis and Joseph Stokes

Energies 2020, 13(11), 2713; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13112713 - 28 May 2020

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4289

Abstract

Cassava is a form of food that is rich in starch abundant in many countries. Several bio-products can be extracted from its starch and used as an alternative for oil-based products. This study primarily aims to investigate the influence of the starch isolated from cassava peel on the quantity and quality of the biogas produced via anaerobic digestion. Beating pre-treatment was applied for the first time to isolate the starch and mechanically pre-treat the substrate. The influence of temperature, volatile solid and sludge quantity investigations were analysed with the aid of Design of Experiments (DOE). An optimisation process was applied in calculating the energy balance at the optimal results and this was needed in evaluating the impact of the starch on the biogas produced. The study revealed that the influence of the starch on the biogas quality is quite low and, as such, negligible. The largest biogas volume as obtained was 3830 cc at 37 °C, 4.2 g-VS and 50% sludge quantity, while at the same time the maximum CH₄ g⁻¹-VS was 850 cc g⁻¹-VS at 37 °C, 1.1 g-VS and 50% sludge quantity. The optimal results show the energy gain could be achieved based on the set criteria. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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15 pages, 1024 KiB

Open AccessArticle

International Energy Security Risk Index—Analysis of the Methodological Settings

by Iztok Podbregar, Goran Šimić, Mirjana Radovanović, Sanja Filipović and Polona Šprajc

Energies 2020, 13(12), 3234; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13123234 - 22 Jun 2020

Cited by 29 | Viewed by 4841

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze model settings of the International Energy Security Risk Index developed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The study was performed using stepwise regression, principal component analysis, and Promax oblique rotation. The conclusion of the regression analysis shows that Crude Oil Price and Global Coal Reserves are sufficient to explain 90% of the variance of the Index. However, if a model that explains 100% of the variance of the Index is chosen and other variables are added, Global Coal Reserves loses importance due to the presence of other parameters in which it is contained. Regardless of the chosen model of analysis, it is evident that there is room for revising the Index and removing variables that do not contribute to its precision. The research showed that the main disadvantage of the variables that make up the Index rests with the fact that the variables are of different degrees of generality, that is, one parameter is contained in other parameters (unclear which other). The research covers data for 25 countries over a 26-year period, with the first year of the research being 1980 and the last 2016 (the latest available report). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from SDEWES 2019 conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems)

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