Engineering Commons^™

Smoke, Air, Fire, Energy (Safe) In Rural California: Critical Reflections On An Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, Deepti Chatti, Carisse Geronimo, Cassidy Barrientos, Jana Ganion, Malcolm Moncheur, Peter Alstone Phd, Shawn Bourque, Tanya Garcia, Tesfayohanes Yacob

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article provides a synthesis of the interconnected problems of tenuous energy access, wildfires, and exposures to high air pollution in Indigenous communities in rural California through the lens of ongoing collaborative research being carried out by researchers at Cal Poly Humboldt, Schatz Energy Research Center, Karuk Department of Natural Resources, and the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe. The collaboration is funded by the Strategic Growth Council of the state of California, and we hope is the beginning of a longer term relationship between all partners. We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawing on energy engineering, air pollution science, and …

Two-Dimensional Materials: From Fundamental To Application, Guangyu Zhang, Geng Long, Shenghuang Lin, Lede Xian, Yan Jiang, Hao Wu, Shuopei Wang, Na Li

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The rapid development of the information society puts forward an ever-increasing urgent need for information storage, processing, and transmission capabilities. With the ending of Moore's Law, the semiconductor industry urgently needs to find new solutions. Lowdimensional materials are considered to be a new breakthrough in the semiconductor industry in the post-Moore era, because of the size characteristics of atomic-level thickness, the structural advantage of no dangling bonds on the surface, and the sensitivity to electrical and optical control methods caused by a large specific surface area. Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory has introduced a group of top scientists and established a …

Lessons Learned From Bp: Deepwater Horizon And The Transition To Renewables, Daniel Valle

Journal of Global Awareness

This paper analyzes the gradual transition of British Petroleum (BP), one of the world's largest oil and gas companies, into a renewable energy company focused on sustainability and the reduction of carbon emissions. BP's leadership and ethical practices are compared before and after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. The purpose of the comparison and the broader analysis of the transition is to identify how effective leadership can be used to transform a company with a suspect social responsibility record into a leader among its peers. Lessons learned from the disaster, and the subsequent transition conclude the research.

Diversifying Nuclear Technology: A Technical Analysis On Small Modular Reactors And Its Impact On Nuclear Energy Policy, Carolina Lugo Mejia, Marcos Lugo

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

The energy policy debate in the United States has revolved around the diversification of energy sources while promoting advantageous economic profits. One drive for this has been the discussion of anthropogenic, environmental endangerment concerns (Vlassopoulous 2011, 104). However, despite the environmental concerns, the U.S. has for some time only relied on one type of energy source—fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are categorized as natural gas, coal, petroleum, and other gases responsible (U.S. Energy Administration 2019). Natural gas is responsible for 38.4%, coal for 23.4%, petroleum for 0.4%, and other gases for 0.3% of the U.S.’s electrical generation (U.S. Energy Administration 2019). …

Infrastructure Systems Modeling Using Data Visualization And Trend Extraction, Jacob Marshal Hale

Doctoral Dissertations

“Current infrastructure systems modeling literature lacks frameworks that integrate data visualization and trend extraction needed for complex systems decision making and planning. Critical infrastructures such as transportation and energy systems contain interdependencies that cannot be properly characterized without considering data visualization and trend extraction.

This dissertation presents two case analyses to showcase the effectiveness and improvements that can be made using these techniques. Case one examines flood management and mitigation of disruption impacts using geospatial characteristics as part of data visualization. Case two incorporates trend analysis and sustainability assessment into energy portfolio transitions.

Four distinct contributions are made in this …

Dual-Axis Solar Tracker, Bryan Kennedy

All Undergraduate Projects

Renewable energies, and fuels that are not fossil fuel-based, are one of the prolific topics of debate in modern society. With climate change now becoming a primary focus for scientists and innovators of today, one of the areas for the largest amount of potential and growth is that of the capturing and utilization of Solar Energy. This method involves using a mechanical system to track the progression of the sun as it traverses the sky throughout the day. A dual-axis solar tracker such as the one designed and built for this project, can follow the sun both azimuthally and in …

Recent Progress In Electrical Generators For Oceanic Wave Energy Conversion, Abidur Rahman, Omar Farrok, Md Rabiul Islam, Wei Xu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Oceanic wave energy extraction through electrical generator is one of the most interesting topics in the field of power engineering. Almost all the existing relevant review paper focus on electrical generator with the working principle of electromagnetic induction or piezoelectric or triboelectric effect. In this paper, all the existing types (based on principle of operation) of electrical generator used for wave power harvesting are discussed. This paper not only covers recent progress in electrical power generation by electro-magnetic induction, piezoelectric generator, and electrostatic induction, but also presents critical comparative review as well where suitable use and weakness of each type …

An Iot- Based Decision Support Tool For Improving The Performance Of Smart Grids Connected With Distributed Energy Sources And Electric Vehicles, Md Rabiul Islam, Haiyan Lu, M J. Hossain, Li Li

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

vThe growing penetration of distributed energy sources (DES), such as photovoltaic (PV) solar power, battery energy systems and electric vehicles (EVs) into low voltage distribution networks is creating serious challenges for distribution network operators. Uncertain nature of these DES and EV charging is a key factor to cause unbalance, which degrade network performance in terms of energy loss, voltage unbalance, and voltage profile of the distribution network, etc. Some methods were proposed to mitigate such negative impact of these uncertain DES and EV charging from both centralized and decentralized approaches by controlling charging or discharging power of EVs. However, these …

Outage Probability And Throughput Analyses In Full-Duplex Relaying Systems With Energy Transfer, Jiaman Li, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In this article, we consider a dual-hop full-duplex (FD), amplify-and-forward, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) relaying network, where the relay operates based on a time-switching architecture to harvest energy from radio frequency signals. We use a polarization-enabled digital self-interference cancellation (PDC) scheme to cancel the self-interference signal at the relay in order to achieve FD communications. The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the system performances in terms of outage probability and throughput over multipath Rayleigh fading channels. Furthermore, the optimal time split between the duration of energy harvesting and signal transmission to maximize the system throughput is numerically calculated. …

Progress In Piezoelectric Material Based Oceanic Wave Energy Conversion Technology, Mahbubur Kiran, Omar Farrok, Md Abdullah-Al-Mamun, Md Rabiul Islam, Wei Xu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Recently, electrical engineers are paying great attention to develop oceanic wave energy conversion technologies based on the piezoelectric materials because of their excellent conveniences. Piezoelectric oceanic wave energy converters (OWECs) have several benefits over the others such as its small size, lightweight, no requirement of using intermediate device as well as having less negative impacts on the oceanic environment. Various review and research papers focus on the piezoelectric devices, their operation and application for oceanic energy conversion. But, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, none of the existing research or review papers present detailed scheme of piezoelectric device based …

An Adaptive Feed-Forward Phase Locked Loop For Grid Synchronization Of Renewable Energy Systems Under Wide Frequency Deviations, Aravind Chellachi Kathiresan, Jeyaraj Pandiarajan, Asokan Sivaprakash, Thanikanti Sudhakar Babu, Md Rabiul Islam

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Synchronization is a crucial problem in the grid-connected inverter’s control and operation. A phase-locked loop (PLL) is a typical grid synchronization strategy, which ought to have a high resistance to power system uncertainties since its sensitivity influences the generated reference signal. The traditional PLL catches the phase and frequency of the input signal via the feedback loop filter (LF). In general, to enhance the steady-state capability during distorted grid conditions generally, a filter tuned for nominal frequency is used. This PLL corrects large frequency deviations around the nominal frequency, which increases the PLL’s locking time. Therefore, this paper presents an …

Increase In Volumetric Electrical Power Density Of A Linear Generator By Winding Optimization For Wave Energy Extraction, Selim Molla, Omar Farrok, Abidur Rahman, Md Samiul Bashir, Md Rabiul Islam, Abbas Z. Zouzani, M. A Parvez Mahmud

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In this article, a method of winding optimization of the linear generator is proposed to increase the electrical power generation from the oceanic wave. A linear generator is designed in the ANSYS/Maxwell environment to analyze the proposed winding optimization method. The electrical and magnetic properties of the generator are extensively analyzed. The cross-sectional area and the number of turns of the copper conductor are optimized to maximize the output power. Load characteristics are also considered for different conductor sizes and turn numbers to determine a suitable operating point. A cooling system is also incorporated in the optimized linear generator to …

Homes With Higher Energy Ratings Sell For More. Here’S How Australian Owners Could Cash In, Daniel J. Daly

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Everybody wants an energy-efficient home. After all, an energy-efficient home is comfortable to live in, without large energy bills. These can be important factors for prospective home owners or renters. Our review of international research found energy-efficient homes typically fetch a higher price.

Design And Optimization Of A Novel Dual-Port Linear Generator For Oceanic Wave Energy Conversion, Omar Farrok, Md Rabiul Islam, Kashem M. Muttaqi, Danny Sutanto, Jianguo Zhu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

All the existing linear generators used for oceanic wave energy conversions are basically a single-port linear electrical generators (SPLEGs). The conventional SPLEG transfers electrical power to the load/grid discontinuously due to its working principle and the intermittent nature of oceanic waves. This paper proposes a new dual-port linear electrical generator (DPLEG) topology, which is capable to transfer electrical power with an adequate voltage even at zero vertical velocity of the oceanic wave. The analysis shows that the efficiency and the performance of the DPLEG depend greatly on the stator tooth design. For this reason, the proposed DPLEG is optimized using …

Our Energy Future, Fall/Winter 2007, Issue 15

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

Unconventional Energy, Fall/Winter 2015, Issue 31

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Energy Transitions At Different Scales: Fossil Fuel Divestment In Higher Education And Individual Behavior, Elizabeth Palchak

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

A sociotechnical energy transition requires both a shift to new technologies and attention to social issues like political movements, policy and human behavior. This dissertation investigates social elements of the renewable energy transition occurring at different scales. The core research questions are: How are universities creating and responding to the shifting language of fossil fuel investments? How and for whom do behavioral interventions work? And finally, do in-home displays (IHDs) change behaviors and attitudes of millennial energy users?

The three studies covered here occurred within higher education and reflect the importance of colleges and universities as dynamic players in energy …

Performance Simulation And Evaluation Of Net Zero Energy Buildings In An Australian Coastal Climate, Joel Anderson, Duane A. Robinson, Zhenjun Ma

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Net zero energy buildings (NZEB) are becoming more common, and as new energy saving designs and technologies become available, the ability to estimate overall energy use and understand the impact on operation of building appliances will become important. This paper outlines simulation results of performance improvements achieved by modifying various components (glazing, lighting, thermal comfort settings) of two tertiary education NZEBs and a typical modern commercial building. The DesignBuilder models' thermal performance and energy consumption were validated using real data from case study buildings. The work shows validating models of smaller, less conven-tional, buildings is more difficult than for larger …

A Method Of Uncertainty Analysis For Whole-Life Embodied Carbon Emissions (Co2-E) Of Building Materials Of A Net-Zero Energy Building In Australia, Mehdi Robati, Daniel J. Daly, Georgios Kokogiannakis

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The construction of new buildings requires the use of a substantial amount of materials, which have an associated embodied energy for manufacturing, transport, construction and end-of-life disposal. A number of inventories have been developed to collate the typical embodied energy or carbon emissions associated with different building materials and activities, and these can be used to quantify the environmental impacts of different construction methods. However, uncertainty exists in the estimation of embodied CO2-e emissions and other environmental impact results, due to i) inconsistencies in typical embodied carbon emissions values in inventories; ii) errors in estimations of material quantities; iii) assumptions …

Study On Performance Evaluation Of Co2 Heat Pump System Integrated With Thermal Energy Storage For Space Heating, Zhihua Wang, Yuxin Zheng, Fenghao Wang, Mengjie Song, Zhenjun Ma

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

CO2 heat pumps have drawn a great deal of attention owing to their advantages of high efficiency and environmental friendly for heating water under low ambient temperature. However, the system performance is not desirable and shows a lower COP for space heating, especially for a radiator as heating terminal, due to the higher inlet water temperature at the gas cooler, which causes a large throttle loss when the refrigerant flow through the throttling device. To tackle this issue, a transcritical CO2 heat pump system integrated with thermal energy storage (TES) systems was developed in this paper. The heating performance of …

Full-Duplex Ofdm Relaying Systems With Energy Harvesting In Multipath Fading Channels, Jiaman Li, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In this paper, the performance of in-band fullduplex OFDM relaying systems with energy-harvesting and selfinterference cancellation in the polarization domain is analyzed. Specifically, we use the time switching-based relaying protocol to implement energy harvesting. The harvested energy is used by the relay to forward the transmitted information from the source. To cancel the self-interference, the polarization-enabled digital self-interference cancellation scheme is deployed at the relay. Our simulation results show that the full-duplex OFDM energy harvesting relaying system almost doubles the throughput, while maintaining the same bit error performance by a modest increase in the signal-to-noise ratio compared to the half-duplex …

The Correlation Between Energy Cost Share, Human, And Economic Development Using Time Series Data From Australasia, Europe, North America, And The Brics Nations, Ryan Roberts, Josephine Kaviti Musango, Alan Colin Brent, Matthew K. Heun

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

This paper investigates how a change in a region's energy cost share (ECS), a ratio of a region's energy expenditure as a fraction of its gross domestic product (GDP), affects the region's social and economic development. Nations from four regions of the world, namely Australasia, Europe, North America, and the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) were chosen for this study. Using time series data from the period of 1978 to 2010, the annual ECS of each country was compared to the year-on-year GDP change, as well as the components of the human development index (HDI). High …

A Two-Level Clustering Strategy For Energy Performance Evaluation Of University Buildings, Kehua Li, Zhenjun Ma, Duane A. Robinson, Jun Ma

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This paper presents a clustering strategy to evaluate the energy performance and identify typical daily load profiles of buildings. The cluster analysis included intra-building clustering and inter-building clustering. The intra-building clustering used Gaussian mixture model clustering to identify the typical daily load profiles of each individual building. The inter-building clustering used hierarchical clustering to further identify the typical daily load profiles of a stock of buildings based on the typical daily load profiles identified for each individual building. The performance of this strategy was tested and evaluated using the two-year hourly electricity consumption data collected from 40 buildings on a …

Economic Operation Optimization Of Battery Energy Storage Systems In A Solar Rich Microgrid, Herath Pathiranage Asanga Priyankara Jayawardana, Massimo Fiorentini, Duane A. Robinson, Ashish P. Agalgaonkar

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The increasing trend of connecting local distributed generation units to the grid has unlocked new economic opportunities for owners. This is supported by the ongoing development of energy storage technologies, especially battery based systems. In practice, battery storage systems typically operate based on control algorithms where tariff structures and future generation and load profiles are not taken into account. This paper investigates the results of a case study for a microgrid using a proposed optimization model which minimizes cost by considering an import/export tariff structure. The effect of changing time resolution related to variations in demand and generation is examined, …

Model Predictive Control (Mpc) For Enhancing Building And Hvac System Energy Efficiency: Problem Formulation, Applications And Opportunities, Gianluca Serale, Massimo Fiorentini, Alfonso Capozzoli, Daniele Bernardini, Alberto Bemporad

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In the last few years, the application of Model Predictive Control (MPC) for energy management in buildings has received significant attention from the research community. MPC is becoming more and more viable because of the increase in computational power of building automation systems and the availability of a significant amount of monitored building data. MPC has found successful implementation in building thermal regulation, fully exploiting the potential of building thermal mass. Moreover, MPC has been positively applied to active energy storage systems, as well as to the optimal management of on-site renewable energy sources. MPC also opens up several opportunities …

Performance Evaluation Of Full-Duplex Energy Harvesting Relaying Networks Using Pdc Self-Interference Cancellation, Jiaman Li, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In this paper, throughput and bit error performance of an in-band full duplex (IBFD) relaying system assisted by the radio frequency energy harvesting technique and the polarization-enabled digital self-interference cancellation (PDC) scheme are investigated. In particular, the relay node harvests power from the wireless radio frequency signal transmitted from the source node and uses this power to amplify and forward signals to the destination. Meanwhile, the PDC scheme is used at the relay node to cancel the self-interference signal in order to facilitate the concurrent in-band transmission and reception. The impact of both energy harvesting and self-interference cancellation on the …

The Quiet Undoing: How Regional Electricity Market Reforms Threaten State Clean Energygoals, Danny Cullenward, Shelley Welton

All Faculty Scholarship

In a series of largely unnoticed but extremely consequential moves, two regional electricity market operators are pursuing reforms to make it more difficult for states to achieve their clean energy goals. The federal energy regulator, FERC, has already approved one such reform and ordered a second market operator to go farther in punishing state-supported clean energy resources than it had initially proposed. This disturbing trend highlights a shift in energy governance that threatens to destabilize the field’s delicate cooperative federalist model. Over the past several decades, states have increasingly ceded control over energy dispatch and grid planning to private market …

Development Of Microencapsulated Phase Change Material For Solar Thermal Energy Storage, Weiguang Su, Jo Darkwa, Georgios Kokogiannakis

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In this paper a novel microencapsulated phase change material (MF-3) has been developed and tested for solar assisted hot water storage systems. Even though the morphology of the sample was affected by the type of emulsifier used for fabrication it recorded the highest energy storage capacity of 126 kJ/kg with encapsulation efficiency of 97.4% as compared with other developed samples. For the purpose of assessing its thermal effectiveness it was theoretically evaluated in a compacted fixed bed TES unit and found to be capable of achieving a higher energy storage density as well as relatively smaller physical storage size than …

Simulation Of The Melting Process Of Ice Slurry For Energy Storage Using A Two-Fluid Lattice Boltzmann Method, Qi Lin, Shugang Wang, Zhenjun Ma, Jihong Wang, Tengfei Zhang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Ice slurry can be used as the thermal storage media in latent cool storage systems for both residential and commercial buildings. This paper presents the investigation of the phase change characteristics of the ice slurry using a two-fluid Lattice Boltzmann Method (TFLBM). The melting and migration processes of the ice slurry are simulated by improving the equilibrium distribution function and matching the relevant parameters such as the kinetic viscosity of ice particle cluster and cross-collision coefficient. The sensitivity analysis of the ice slurry viscosity and cross-collision coefficient are achieved through six numerical experiments, and the ice melting in the internal-melt …

Hybrid Model Predictive Control Of A Residential Hvac System With On-Site Thermal Energy Generation And Storage, Massimo Fiorentini, Josh Wall, Zhenjun Ma, Julio H. Braslavsky, Paul Cooper

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper describes the development, implementation and experimental investigation of a Hybrid Model Predictive Control (HMPC) strategy to control solar-assisted heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems with on-site thermal energy generation and storage. A comprehensive approach to the thermal energy management of a residential building is presented to optimise the scheduling of the available thermal energy resources to meet a comfort objective. The system has a hybrid nature with both continuous variables and discrete, logic-driven operating modes. The proposed control strategy is organized in two hierarchical levels. At the high-level, an HMPC controller with a 24-h prediction horizon and a …