Search results for: clean energies

Authors: Insaf Mehani, Bachir Bouchekima

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The necessary reduction and progressive consumption of fossil fuels, whose scarcity is inevitable, involves mobilizing a set of alternatives.Renewable energy, including bio energy are an alternative to fossil fuel depletion and a way to fight against the harmful effects of climate change. It is possible to develop common dates of low commercial value, and put on the local and international market a new generation of products with high added values such as bio ethanol. Besides its use in chemical synthesis, bio ethanol can be blended with gasoline to produce a clean fuel while improving the octane.

Keywords: bioenergy, dates, bioethanol, renewable energy, south Algeria

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Authors: Abdusalam Gsiea, Ramadan Al-habashi, Mohamed Atumi, Khaled Atmimi

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We present a theoretical investigation on the structural, electronic properties and vibrational mode of nitrogen impurities in ZnO. The atomic structures, formation and transition energies and vibrational modes of (NO3)i interstitial or NO4 substituting on an oxygen site ZnO were computed using ab initio total energy methods. Based on Local density functional theory, our calculations are in agreement with one interpretation of bound-excition photoluminescence for N-doped ZnO. First-principles calculations show that (NO3)i defects interstitial or NO4 substituting on an Oxygen site in ZnO are important suitable impurity for p-type doping in ZnO. However, many experimental efforts have not resulted in reproducible p-type material with N2 and N2O doping. by means of first-principle pseudo-potential calculation we find that the use of NO or NO2 with O gas might help the experimental research to resolve the challenge of achieving p-type ZnO.

Keywords: DFF, nitrogen, p-type, ZnO

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Authors: Nouf Alharbi

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The electrospray deposition technique became an important method that enables fragile, nonvolatile molecules to be deposited in situ in high vacuum environments. Furthermore, it is considered one of the ways to close the gap between basic surface science and molecular engineering, which represents a gradual change in the range of scientist research. Also, this paper talked about one of the most important techniques that have been developed and aimed for helping to further develop and characterize the electrospray by providing data collected using an image charge detection instrument. Image charge detection mass spectrometry (CDMS) is used to measure speed and charge distributions of the molecular ions. As well as, some data has been included using SIMION simulation to simulate the energies and masses of the molecular ions through the system in order to refine the mass-selection process.

Keywords: charge, deposition, electrospray, image, ions, molecules, SIMION

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Authors: Yuanxiaoyue Yang

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Emissions trading, or ‘cap-and-trade', has been long promoted by economists as a more cost-effective pollution control approach than traditional performance standard approaches. While there is a large body of empirical evidence for the overall effectiveness of emissions trading, relatively little attention has been paid to other unintended consequences brought by emissions trading. One important consequence is that cap-and-trade could introduce the risk of creating high-level emission concentrations in areas where emitting facilities purchase a large number of emission allowances, which may cause an unequal distribution of environmental benefits. This study will contribute to the current environmental policy literature by linking trading activity with environmental injustice concerns and empirically analyzing the causal relationship between trading activity and emissions reduction under a cap-and-trade program for the first time. To investigate the potential environmental injustice concern in cap-and-trade, this paper uses a differences-in-differences (DID) with instrumental variable method to identify the causal effect of allowance trading behaviors on emission reduction levels under the clean air interstate rule (CAIR), a cap-and-trade program targeting on the power sector in the eastern US. The major data source is the facility-year level emissions and allowance transaction data collected from US EPA air market databases. While polluting facilities from CAIR are the treatment group under our DID identification, we use non-CAIR facilities from the Acid Rain Program - another NOx control program without a trading scheme – as the control group. To isolate the causal effects of trading behaviors on emissions reduction, we also use eligibility for CAIR participation as the instrumental variable. The DID results indicate that the CAIR program was able to reduce NOx emissions from affected facilities by about 10% more than facilities who did not participate in the CAIR program. Therefore, CAIR achieves excellent overall performance in emissions reduction. The IV regression results also indicate that compared with non-CAIR facilities, purchasing emission permits still decreases a CAIR participating facility’s emissions level significantly. This result implies that even buyers under the cap-and-trade program have achieved a great amount of emissions reduction. Therefore, we conclude little evidence of environmental injustice from the CAIR program.

Keywords: air pollution, cap-and-trade, emissions trading, environmental justice

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Authors: Jayant Athavale, Rendy Ekarantio, Sean Clarke

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The Maharshi University of Spirituality was founded on the base of 30 years of spiritual research. It specializes in conducting research on how the subtle-world and spiritual-vibrations affect the lives of people. One such area of research is how to create spiritually positive vibrations in the premises. By using aura and energy scanners along with the sixth sense, the spiritual research team has identified 3 aspects that are instrumental in enhancing or reducing the spiritual positivity of any premises. Firstly, the characteristics of the land should be considered holistically, that is, from a physical, psychological and spiritual point of view. While procedures for the physical assessment of land are well documented, due to ignorance and disbelief, the spiritual aspects are not considered. For example, if the land was previously a graveyard site, it can have highly detrimental effects on the residents within the premises at the spiritual level. This can further manifest as physical and psychological problems that are faced by the residents. Secondly, the manner of construction and the purpose/use of the building affects the subtle-vibrations in the premises. The manner of construction includes gross aspects such as the materials used, kind of architecture, etc. It also includes the subtle aspects provided in detail in the ancient science of Vastu Shastra and Feng Shui. For example, having the front door of the premises facing the south direction can negatively affect the premises because the southern direction is prone to distressing vibrations. The purpose and use of the premises also plays an important role in determining the type of subtle-vibrations that will be predominantly found within its area. Thirdly, the actions, thoughts, value systems and attitudes of the residents play an important part in determining whether the subtle-vibrations will be positive or negative. Residents with many personality defects emit negative vibrations. If some of the residents are affected with negative energies and are not doing any spiritual practice to overcome it, then it can have a harmful spiritual effect on the rest of the residents and the premises. If these three aspects are appropriately considered and attended to, then the premises will generate higher levels of spiritually positive vibrations. Both living and non-living objects within the premises imbibe this positivity and therefore, it holistically enhances the overall well-being of its residents. The positivity experienced in the premises of the Spiritual Research Centre of the Maharshi University of Spirituality, is a testimony to the success of this research. Due to regular and intense spiritual practice carried out by 10 Saints and over 500 seekers residing in its premises, the positivity in the environment can be felt by people when they enter its premises and even from a distance, and can easily be picked up by aura and energy scanners. Extraordinary and fascinating phenomena are observed and experienced in its premises as both living and non-living objects emit spiritually positive vibrations. This also protects the residents from negative vibrations. Examples of such phenomena and their positive impact are discussed in the paper.

Keywords: negative energies, positive vibrations on the premises, resident’s spiritual practice, science of the premises

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Authors: E. Kolvari, N. Koukabi, A. Sabet, A. Fakhraee, M. Ramezanpour

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A green and efficient method for oxidation of thiols to the corresponding disulfides is reported using free nano-iron oxide in the H2O2 and methanol as solvent at room tempereture. H2O2 is anoxidant for S-S coupling variety aromatic of thiols to corresponding disulfide in the presence of supported iron oxide as recoverable catalyst. This reaction is clean, fast, mild and easy work-up with no side reaction.

Keywords: thiol, disulfide, free nano-iron oxide, H2O2, oxidation, coupling

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Authors: Zicheng Wang

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Offshore wind energy provides a huge potential for the expansion of renewable energies to the coastal countries. High demands are required concerning the shape and type of foundations for offshore wind turbines (OWTs) to find an economically, technically and environmentally-friendly optimal solution. A promising foundation concept is the hybrid foundation system, which consists of a steel plate attached to the outer side of a hollow steel pipe pile. In this study, the bearing behavior of a large diameter foundation is analyzed using a 3-dimensional finite element (FE) model. Non-linear plastic soil behavior is considered. The results of the numerical simulations are compared to highlight the priority of the hybrid foundation to the conventional monopile foundation.

Keywords: hybrid foundation system, mechanical parameters, plastic soil behaviors, numerical simulations

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Authors: Ankita Jadon, Sidi Souvi, Nathalie Girault, Denis Petitprez

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The interaction of fission products (FP) with sodium carbonate (Na₂CO₃) aerosols is of a high safety concern because of their potential role in the radiological source term mitigation by FP trapping. In a sodium-cooled fast nuclear reactor (SFR) experiencing a severe accident, sodium (Na) aerosols can be formed after the ejection of the liquid Na coolant inside the containment. The surface interactions between these aerosols and different FP species have been investigated using ab-initio, density functional theory (DFT) calculations using Vienna ab-initio simulation package (VASP). In addition, an improved thermodynamic model has been proposed to treat DFT-VASP calculated energies to extrapolate them to temperatures and pressures of interest in our study. A combined experimental and theoretical chemistry study has been carried out to have both atomistic and macroscopic understanding of the chemical processes; the theoretical chemistry part of this approach is presented in this paper. The Perdew, Burke, and Ernzerhof functional were applied in combination with Grimme’s van der Waals correction to compute exchange-correlational energy at 0 K. Seven different surface cleavages were studied of Ƴ-Na₂CO₃ phase (stable at 603.15 K), it was found that for defect-free surfaces, the (001) facet is the most stable. Furthermore, calculations were performed to study surface defects and reconstructions on the ideal surface. All the studied surface defects were found to be less stable than the ideal surface. More than one adsorbate-ligand configurations were found to be stable confirming that FP vapors could be trapped on various adsorption sites. The calculated adsorption energies (Eads, eV) for the three most stable adsorption sites for I₂ are -1.33, -1.088, and -1.085. Moreover, the adsorption of the first molecule of I₂ changes the surface in a way which would favor stronger adsorption of a second molecule of I2 (Eads, eV = -1.261). For HI adsorption, the most favored reactions have the following Eads (eV) -1.982, -1.790, -1.683 implying that HI would be more reactive than I₂. In addition to FP species, adsorption of H₂O was also studied as the hydrated surface can have different reactivity than the bare surface. One thermodynamically favored site for H₂O adsorption was found with an Eads, eV of -0.754. Finally, the calculations of hydrated surfaces of Na₂CO₃ show that a layer of water adsorbed on the surface significantly reduces its affinity for iodine (Eads, eV = -1.066). According to the thermodynamic model built, the required partial pressure at 373 K to have adsorption of the first layer of iodine is 4.57×10⁻⁴ bar. The second layer will be adsorbed at partial pressures higher than 8.56×10⁻⁶ bar; a layer of water on the surface will increase these pressure almost ten folds to 3.71×10⁻³ bar. The surface interacts with elemental Cs with an Eads (eV) of -1.60, while interacts even strongly with CsI with an Eads (eV) of -2.39. More results on the interactions between Na₂CO₃ (001) and cesium-based FP will also be presented in this paper.

Keywords: iodine uptake, sodium carbonate surface, sodium-cooled fast nuclear reactor, DFT calculations, fission products

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Authors: Nabila Ihaddadene, Razika Ihaddadene, Abdelwahaab Betka

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1973 energy crisis (rising oil prices) pushed the world to consider other alternative energy resources to existing conventional energies consisting predominantly of hydrocarbons. Renewable energies such as solar, the wind and geothermal have received renewed interest, especially to preserve nature ( the low-temperature rise of global environmental problems). Solar energy as an available, cheap and environmental friendly alternative source has various applications such as heating, cooling, drying, power generation, etc. In short, there is no life on earth without this enormous nuclear reactor, called the sun. Among available solar collector designs, flat plate collector (FPC) is low-temperature applications (heating water, space heating, etc.) due to its simple design and ease of manufacturing. Flat plate collectors are permanently fixed in position and do not track the sun (non-concentrating collectors). They operate by converting solar radiation into heat and transferring that heat to a working fluid (usually air, water, water plus antifreeze additive) flowing through them. An FPC generally consists of the main following components: glazing, absorber plate of high absorptivity, fluid tubes welded to or can be an integral part of the absorber plate, insulation and container or casing of the above-mentioned components. Insulation is of prime importance in thermal applications. There are three main families of insulation: mineral insulation; vegetal insulation and synthetic organic insulation. The old houses of the inhabitants of North Africa were built of brick made of composite material that is clay and straw. These homes are characterized by their thermal comfort; i.e. the air inside these houses is cool in summer and warm in winter. So, the material composed from clay and straw act as a thermal insulation. In this research document, the polystyrene used as insulation in the ET200 flat plate solar collector is replaced by the cheapest natural material which is clay and straw. Trials were carried out on a solar energy demonstration system (ET 200). This system contains a solar collector, water storage tank, a high power lamp simulating solar energy and a control and command cabinet. In the experimental device, the polystyrene is placed under the absorber plate and in the edges of the casing containing the components of the solar collector. In this work, we have replaced the polystyrene of the edges by the composite material. The use of the clay and straw as insulation instead of the polystyrene increases temperature difference (T2-T1) between the inlet and the outlet of the absorber by 0.9°C; thus increases the useful power transmitted to water in the solar collector. Tank Water is well heated when using the clay and straw as insulation. However, it is less heated when using the polystyrene as insulation. Clay and straw material improves also the performance of the solar collector by 5.77%. Thus, it is recommended to use this cheapest non-polluting material instead of synthetic insulation to improve the performance of the solar collector.

Keywords: clay, insulation material, polystyrene, solar collector, straw

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Authors: Andrew Freiburger, Sergi Molins

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Freshwater is a vital resource; yet, the supply of clean freshwater is diminishing as the consequence of melting snow and ice from global warming, pollution from industry, and an increasing demand from human population growth. The unsustainable trajectory of diminishing water resources is projected to jeopardize water security for billions of people in the 21st century. Membrane desalination technologies may resolve the growing discrepancy between supply and demand by filtering arbitrary feed water into a fraction of renewable, clean water and a fraction of highly concentrated brine. The leading hindrance of membrane desalination is fouling, whereby the highly concentrated brine solution encourages micro-organismal colonization and/or the precipitation of occlusive minerals (i.e. scale) upon the membrane surface. Thus, an understanding of brine formation is necessary to mitigate membrane fouling and to develop efficacious desalination technologies that can bolster the supply of available freshwater. This study presents a reactive transport simulation of brine formation and scale deposition during reverse osmosis (RO) desalination. The simulation conceptually represents the RO module as a one-dimensional domain, where feed water directionally enters the domain with a prescribed fluid velocity and is iteratively concentrated in the immobile layer of a dual porosity model. Geochemical PHREEQC code numerically evaluated the conceptual model with parameters for the BW30-400 RO module and for real water feed sources – e.g. the Red and Mediterranean seas, and produced waters from American oil-wells, based upon peer-review data. The presented simulation is computationally simpler, and hence less resource intensive, than the existent and more rigorous simulations of desalination phenomena, like TOUGHREACT. The end-user may readily prepare input files and execute simulations on a personal computer with open source software. The graphical results of fouling-potential and brine characteristics may therefore be particularly useful as the initial tool for screening candidate feed water sources and/or informing the selection of an RO module.

Keywords: desalination, PHREEQC, reactive transport, scaling

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Authors: Swadha Singh

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International Solar Alliance is the foremost treaty-based global organization concerned with tapping the potential of sun-abundant nations between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and enables co-operation among them. As a founding member of the International Solar Alliance, India exhibits its positioning as an upcoming leader in clean energy. India has set ambitious goals and targets to expand the share of solar in its energy mix and is playing a proactive role both at the regional and global levels. ISA aims to serve multiple goals- bring about scale commercialization of solar power, boost domestic manufacturing, and leverage solar diplomacy in African countries, amongst others. Against this backdrop, this paper attempts to examine the ways in which ISA as an intergovernmental organization under Indian leadership can leverage the cause of clean energy (solar) diplomacy and effectively shape partnerships and collaborations with other developing countries in terms of sharing solar technology, capacity building, risk mitigation, mobilizing financial investment and providing an aggregate market. A more specific focus of ISA is on the developing countries, which in the absence of a collective, are constrained by technology and capital scarcity, despite being naturally endowed with solar resources. Solar rich but finance-constrained economies face political risk, foreign exchange risk, and off-taker risk. Scholars argue that aligning India’s climate change discourse and growth prospects in its engagements, collaborations, and partnerships at the bilateral, multilateral and regional level can help promote trade, attract investments, and promote resilient energy transition both in India and in partner countries. For developing countries, coming together in an action-oriented way on issues of climate and clean energy is particularly important since it is developing and underdeveloped countries that face multiple and coalescing challenges such as the adverse impact of climate change, uneven and low access to reliable energy, and pressing employment needs. Investing in green recovery is agreed to be an assured way to create resilient value chains, create sustainable livelihoods, and help mitigate climate threats. If India is able to ‘green its growth’ process, it holds the potential to emerge as a climate leader internationally. It can use its experience in the renewable sector to guide other developing countries in balancing multiple similar objectives of development, energy security, and sustainability. The challenges underlying solar expansion in India have lessons to offer other developing countries, giving India an opportunity to assume a leadership role in solar diplomacy and expand its geopolitical influence through inter-governmental organizations such as ISA. It is noted that India has limited capacity to directly provide financial funds and support and is not a leading manufacturer of cheap solar equipment, as does China; however, India can nonetheless leverage its large domestic market to scale up the commercialization of solar power and offer insights and learnings to similarly placed abundant solar countries. The paper examines the potential of and limits placed on India’s solar diplomacy.

Keywords: climate diplomacy, energy security, solar diplomacy, renewable energy

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Authors: Amit Bhunia, Mohit Kumar Singh, Maryam Al Huwayz, Mohamed Henini, Shouvik Datta

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We report [https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.13518] experimental detection and control of Schrodinger’s Cat like macroscopically large, quantum coherent state of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate of spatially indirect electron-hole pairs or excitons using a resonant tunneling diode of III-V Semiconductors. This provides access to millions of excitons as qubits to allow efficient, fault-tolerant quantum computation. In this work, we measure phase-coherent periodic oscillations in photo-generated capacitance as a function of an applied voltage bias and light intensity over a macroscopically large area. Periodic presence and absence of splitting of excitonic peaks in the optical spectra measured by photocapacitance point towards tunneling induced variations in capacitive coupling between the quantum well and quantum dots. Observation of negative ‘quantum capacitance’ due to a screening of charge carriers by the quantum well indicates Coulomb correlations of interacting excitons in the plane of the sample. We also establish that coherent resonant tunneling in this well-dot heterostructure restricts the available momentum space of the charge carriers within this quantum well. Consequently, the electric polarization vector of the associated indirect excitons collective orients along the direction of applied bias and these excitons undergo Bose-Einstein condensation below ~100 K. Generation of interference beats in photocapacitance oscillation even with incoherent white light further confirm the presence of stable, long-range spatial correlation among these indirect excitons. We finally demonstrate collective Rabi oscillations of these macroscopically large, ‘multipartite’, two-level, coupled and uncoupled quantum states of excitonic condensate as qubits. Therefore, our study not only brings the physics and technology of Bose-Einstein condensation within the reaches of semiconductor chips but also opens up experimental investigations of the fundamentals of quantum physics using similar techniques. Operational temperatures of such two-component excitonic BEC can be raised further with a more densely packed, ordered array of QDs and/or using materials having larger excitonic binding energies. However, fabrications of single crystals of 0D-2D heterostructures using 2D materials (e.g. transition metal di-chalcogenides, oxides, perovskites etc.) having higher excitonic binding energies are still an open challenge for semiconductor optoelectronics. As of now, these 0D-2D heterostructures can already be scaled up for mass production of miniaturized, portable quantum optoelectronic devices using the existing III-V and/or Nitride based semiconductor fabrication technologies.

Keywords: exciton, Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum computation, heterostructures, semiconductor Physics, quantum fluids, Schrodinger's Cat

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Authors: Antonin Jolly, Bertrand Aubry, Corentin Michel, Rebecca Freva

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Wind energy depends on wind strength and varies largely in time. When it is above the demand, it generates a loss while in the opposite case; energy needs are not fully satisfied. To overcome this problem specific to irregular energies, the process of pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH) is studied in present paper. A combination of wind turbine and pumped storage system is more predictable and is more compliant to provide electricity supply according to daily demand. PSH system is already used in several countries to accumulate electricity by pumping water during off-peak times into a storage reservoir, and to use it during peak times to produce energy. Present work discusses a feasibility study on size and financial productivity of PSH system actuated with wind turbines specific power.

Keywords: wind turbine, hydroelectricity, energy storage, pumped-storage hydroelectricity

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Authors: Ould Bouamama, M. Bressel, D. Hissel, M. Hilairet

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Fuel cell (FC) is one of the best alternatives of fossil energy. Recently, the research community of fuel cell has shown a considerable interest for diagnosis in view to ensure safety, security, and availability when faults occur in the process. The problematic for model based FC diagnosis consists in that the model is complex because of coupling of several kind of energies and the numerical values of parameters are not always known or are uncertain. The present paper deals with use of one tool: the Linear Fractional Transformation bond graph tool not only for uncertain modelling but also for monitorability (ability to detect and isolate faults) analysis and formal generation of robust fault indicators with respect to parameter uncertainties.The developed theory applied to a nonlinear FC system has proved its efficiency.

Keywords: bond graph, fuel cell, fault detection and isolation (FDI), robust diagnosis, structural analysis

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Authors: Arslan Usman, Abdul Sattar, Hamid Latif, Afshan Ashfaq, Muhammad Rafique, Martin Koch

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Two-dimensional materials have promising applications in optoelectronic and photonics; MoS₂ is the pioneer 2D material in the family of transition metal dichalcogenides. Its optical, optoelectronic, and structural properties are of practical importance along with its exciton dynamics. Exciton, along with exciton complexes, plays a vital role in realizing quantum devices. MoS₂ monolayers were synthesized using chemical vapour deposition (CVD) technique on SiO₂ and hBN substrates. Photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) was used to identify the monolayer, which also reflects the substrate based peak broadening due to screening effects. In-plane and out of plane characteristic vibrational modes E¹₂g and A₁g, respectively, were detected in a different configuration on the substrate. The B-excitons and trions showed a dominant feature at low temperatures due to electron-phonon coupling effects, whereas their energies are separated by 100 meV.

Keywords: 2D materials, photoluminescence, AFM, excitons

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Authors: Iris Maria Velez Osorio

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There has been in the last decade a concern about the environment, particularly about clean and enough water for human consumption but, some enterprises had some trouble to understand the limited resources in the environment. This research tries to understand how some industries are better oriented to the preservation of the environment through investment for strategic management of scarce resources and try in the best way possible, the contaminants. It was made an industry classification since four different group of theories for Corporate Social Responsibility agree with variables of: investment in environmental care, water protection, and residues treatment finding different levels of commitment with CSR.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, environment, strategic management, water

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Authors: N. Hatraf, N. Moummi

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The interest in air conditioning using renewable energies is increasing. The thermal energy produced from the solar energy can be converted to useful cooling and heating through the thermochemical or thermophysical processes by using thermally activated energy conversion systems. The ambient air contains so much water that very high dehumidification rates are required. For a continuous dehumidification of the process air, the water adsorbed on the desiccant material has to be removed, which is done by allowing hot air to flow through the desiccant material (regeneration). A solid desiccant cooling system transfers moisture from the inlet air to the silica gel by using two processes: Absorption process and the regeneration process. The main aim of this paper is to study how the dehumidification rate, the generation temperature and many other factors influence the efficiency of a solid desiccant system by using TRNSYS software. The results show that the desiccant system could be used to decrease the humidity rate of the entering air.

Keywords: dehumidification, efficiency, humidity, Trnsys

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Authors: Ahmad Rouhani

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Iran has several potentials for using renewable energies, so use them could significantly contribute to energy supply. The purpose of this paper is to identify the potential of the country and select the appropriate DG technologies with consideration the potential and primary energy resources in the regions. In this context, hybrid energy systems proportionate with the potential of different regions will be determined based on technical, economic, and environmental aspect. In the following, the proposed structure will be optimized in terms of size and cost. DG technologies used in this project include the photovoltaic system, wind turbine, diesel generator, and battery bank. The HOMER software is applied for choosing the appropriate structure and the optimization of system sizing. The results have been analyzed in terms of technical and economic. The performance and the cost of each project demonstrate the appropriate structure of hybrid energy system in that region.

Keywords: feasibility, hybrid energy system, Iran, renewable energy

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Authors: Zurina Mahadi, Hukil Sino

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United Nations resolved 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 to complete what Millennium Development Goals did not achieve. Accommodating 17 goals and 169 targets, Sustainable Development Goals are designated to be achieved over the next 15 years. A survey was conducted in July 2019 among the undergraduate students of a public university in Selangor, Malaysia, to learn their selection over Sustainable Development Goals, which they think is the most critical in the Malaysian scenario. This study adopted a qualitative approach, and data is gathered from a single instruction questionnaire administered to a purposive sample of participants. 13 goals were selected by the participants which are Goal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16 and 17 while none has selected Goal 7, 9, 14 and 15 which are ‘Affordable and Clean Energy’; ‘Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure’; ‘Life Below Water’ and ‘Life On Land’ respectively. The selected goals are then ranked according to the number of participants who chose that particular goal. Goal 8 is found to be at the highest position of the ranking while Goal 5, 6, 10, and 13 accommodating the lowest position. Goal 8, which is ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ is chosen by 13 participants as the most critical goal in Malaysia while Goal 5,6 10, and 13, which are ‘Gender Equality’; ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’; ‘Reduced Inequalities’ and ‘Climate Action’ respectively, are chosen by only one participant each. Issues highlighted by the participants are themed into 10 themes, which are job availability, cost of living, well-being, corruption, education, environment, gender, development planning, consumption, and partnership. The theme of the cost of living has the highest number of issues, followed by the theme of job availability and the environment. The theme of gender has the least number of issues, followed by the theme of corruption and development planning. In principle, these findings, therefore, conclude that from a public university students’ point of view, the most critical sustainable development goal is decent work and economic growth while the most concerning issue is the cost of living. The implications of these findings are students’ knowledge towards the current issues of development, and their views of future sustainable development are considerably high. This study, therefore, suggests their views be inculcated into local, sustainable development frameworks to increase the inclusiveness of the young generation as they are the future SDGs stakeholders.

Keywords: cost of living, inclusiveness, job availability, sustainable development goals

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Authors: Constantinos Vayenas, Athanasios Fokas, Dimitrios Grigoriou

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We use special relativity to compute the inertial and thus gravitational mass of relativistic electron and muon neutrinos, and we find that, for neutrino kinetic energies above 150 MeV/c2, these masses are in the Planck mass range. Consequently, we develop a simple Bohr-type model using gravitational rather than electrostatic forces between the rotating neutrinos as the centripetal force in order to examine the bound rotational states formed by two or three such relativistic neutrinos. We find that the masses of the composite rotational structures formed, are in the meson and baryon mass ranges, respectively. These models contain no adjustable parameters and by comparing their predictions with the experimental values of the masses of protons and pions, we compute a mass of 0.0437 eV/c2 for the heaviest electron neutrino mass and of 1.1 x10-3 eV/c2 for the heaviest muon neutrino mass.

Keywords: geons, gravitational confinement, neutrino masses, special relativity

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Authors: Ambrish Singh

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The corrosion inhibition performance of pyran (AP) and benzimidazole (BI) derivatives on J55 steel in 3.5% NaCl solution saturated with CO₂ was investigated by electrochemical, weight loss, surface characterization, and theoretical studies. The electrochemical studies included electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potentiodynamic polarization (PDP), electrochemical frequency modulation (EFM), and electrochemical frequency modulation trend (EFMT). Surface characterization was done using contact angle, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques. DFT and molecular dynamics (MD) studies were done using Gaussian and Materials Studio softwares. All the studies suggested the good inhibition by the synthesized inhibitors on J55 steel in 3.5% NaCl solution saturated with CO₂ due to the formation of a protective film on the surface. Molecular dynamic simulation was applied to search for the most stable configuration and adsorption energies for the interaction of the inhibitors with Fe (110) surface.

Keywords: corrosion, inhibitor, EFM, AFM, DFT, MD

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Authors: Laid Degaa, Bachir Bendjedia, Nassim Rizoug, Abdelkader Saidane

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Energy storage system is a key aspect for the development of clean cars. The work proposed here deals with the modeling of hybrid storage sources composed of a combination of lithium-ion battery and supercapacitors. Simulation results show the performance of the active model for a hybrid source and confirm the feasibility of our approach. In this context, sizing of the electrical energy supply is carried out. The aim of this sizing is to propose an 'optimal' solution that improves the performance of electric vehicles in term of weight, cost and aging.

Keywords: battery, electric vehicles, energy, hybrid storage, supercapacitor

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Authors: Sammar Zain Allam

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Smart Growth, intelligent cities, and healthy cities cited by WHO world health organization; they all call for clean air and minimizing air pollutants considering human health. Air quality is a thriving matter to achieve ecological cities; towards sustainable environmental development of urban fabric design. Selection criteria depends on the strategic location of our area as it is located at the entry of the city of Alexandria from its agricultural road. Besides, it represents the city center for retail, business, and educational amenities. Our study is analyzing readings of definite factors affecting air quality in a centric area in Alexandria. Our readings will be compared to standard measures of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, suspended particles, and air velocity or air flow. Carbon emissions are pondered in our study, in addition to suspended particles and the air velocity or air flow. Carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide crystalize the main elements to necessitate environmental and sustainable studies with the appearance of global warming and the glass house effect. Nevertheless, particulate matters are increasing causing breath issues especially to children and elder people; still threatening future generations to meet their own needs; sustainable development definition. Analysis of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, suspended particles together with air velocity or air flow has taken place in our area of study to manifest the relationship between these elements and the urban fabric design and land use distribution. For conclusion, dense urban fabric affecting air flow, and thus result in the concentration of air pollutants in certain zones. The appearance of open space with green areas allow the fading of air pollutants and help in their absorption. Along with dense urban fabric, high rise buildings trap air carriers which contribute to high readings of our elements. Also, street design may facilitate the circulation of air which helps carrying these pollutant away and distribute it to a wider space which decreases its harms and effects.

Keywords: carbon emissions, air quality measurements, arteries air quality, airflow or air velocity, particulate matter, clean air, urban density

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Authors: Jonathan Sohn

Abstract:

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown state-of-the-art performance for many applications, including computer vision, natural language processing, and speech recognition. Recently, adversarial attacks have been studied in the context of deep neural networks, which aim to alter the results of deep neural networks by modifying the inputs slightly. For example, an adversarial attack on a DNN used for object detection can cause the DNN to miss certain objects. As a result, the reliability of DNNs is undermined by their lack of robustness against adversarial attacks, raising concerns about their use in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving. In this paper, we focus on studying the adversarial attacks and defenses on DNNs for image classification. There are two types of adversarial attacks studied which are fast gradient sign method (FGSM) attack and projected gradient descent (PGD) attack. A DNN forms decision boundaries that separate the input images into different categories. The adversarial attack slightly alters the image to move over the decision boundary, causing the DNN to misclassify the image. FGSM attack obtains the gradient with respect to the image and updates the image once based on the gradients to cross the decision boundary. PGD attack, instead of taking one big step, repeatedly modifies the input image with multiple small steps. There is also another type of attack called the target attack. This adversarial attack is designed to make the machine classify an image to a class chosen by the attacker. We can defend against adversarial attacks by incorporating adversarial examples in training. Specifically, instead of training the neural network with clean examples, we can explicitly let the neural network learn from the adversarial examples. In our experiments, the digit recognition accuracy on the MNIST dataset drops from 97.81% to 39.50% and 34.01% when the DNN is attacked by FGSM and PGD attacks, respectively. If we utilize FGSM training as a defense method, the classification accuracy greatly improves from 39.50% to 92.31% for FGSM attacks and from 34.01% to 75.63% for PGD attacks. To further improve the classification accuracy under adversarial attacks, we can also use a stronger PGD training method. PGD training improves the accuracy by 2.7% under FGSM attacks and 18.4% under PGD attacks over FGSM training. It is worth mentioning that both FGSM and PGD training do not affect the accuracy of clean images. In summary, we find that PGD attacks can greatly degrade the performance of DNNs, and PGD training is a very effective way to defend against such attacks. PGD attacks and defence are overall significantly more effective than FGSM methods.

Keywords: deep neural network, adversarial attack, adversarial defense, adversarial machine learning

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Authors: E. S. Johal, M. S. Saini, M. K. Jha

Abstract:

Currently, 1.1 billion people are at risk due to lack of clean water and about 35 % of people in the developed world die from water related problem. To alleviate these problems water purification technology requires new approaches for effective management and conservation of water resources. Electrospun nanofibres membrane has a potential for water purification due to its high large surface area and good mechanical strength. In the present study PAMAM dendrimers composite nynlon-6 nanofibres membrane was prepared by crosslinking method using Glutaraldehyde. Further, the efficacy of the modified membrane can be renewed by mere exposure of the saturated membrane with the solution having acidic pH. The modified membrane can be used as an effective tool for water purification.

Keywords: dendrimer, nanofibers, nanocomposite membrane, water purification

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Authors: Keiju Matsui, Mikio Yasubayashi, Masayoshi Umeno

Abstract:

Consumption of energy is increasing every year, and yet does not the decline at all. The main energy source is fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas. Since it is the finite resources, they will be exhausted someday. Moreover, to make the fossil fuel an energy source causes an environment problem. In such way, one solution of the problems is the solar battery that is remarkable as one of the alternative energies. Under such circumstances, in this paper, we propose a novel maximum power control circuit for photovoltaic power generation system with simple and fast-response operation. In addition to an application to the solar battery, since this control system is possible to operate with simple circuit and fast-response, the polar value control like the maximum or the minimum value tracking for general application could be easily realized.

Keywords: maximum power control, inter-connection, photovoltaic power generation, PI controller, multiplier, exclusive-or, power system

Procedia PDF Downloads 426

Authors: Deepika Bhaskar, Neena Wadehra, Megha Gulati, Aruna Narula, R. Vishnu, Gunjan Katyal

Abstract:

With drug resistance becoming widespread in Plasmodium falciparum infections, development of the alternative drugs is the desired strategy for prevention and cure of malaria. Three drug targets were selected to screen promising drug molecules from the GSK library of around 14000 molecules. Using an in silico structure-based drug designing approach, the differences in binding energies of the substrate and inhibitor were exploited between target sites of parasite and human to design a drug molecule against Plasmodium. The docking studies have shown several promising molecules from GSK library with more effective binding as compared to the already known inhibitors for the drug targets. Though stronger interaction has been shown by several molecules as compare to reference, few molecules have shown the potential as drug candidates though in vitro studies are required to validate the results.

Keywords: plasmodium, malaria, drug targets, in silico studies

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Authors: Ammar Ouahab, Meriem Houichi , Sanna Mihoubi

Abstract:

Background: Nigella sativa is an annual flowering plant, belongs to the Ranunculaceae family. It has many pharmacological activities such as anti-inflammatory; anti-bacterial; anti-hepatotoxic activities etc. Materials: In order to predict the pharmacological activity of Nigella Sativa’s compounds, some web based servers were used, namely, PubChem, Molinspiration, ADMET-SAR, PASS online and PharMapper. In addition to that, AutoDOCK was used to investigate the different molecular interactions between the selected compounds and their target proteins. Results: All compounds displayed a stable interaction with their targets and satisfactory binding energies, which means that they are active on their targets. Conclusion: Nigella sativa is an effective medicinal plant that has several ethno-medical uses; the latter uses are proven herein via an in-silico study of their pharmacological activities.

Keywords: Nigella sativa, AutoDOCK, PubChem, Molinspiration, ADMET-SAR, PharMapper, PASS online server, docking

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Authors: Nadia Miranda Lorick, Neela Badrie, Marsha Singh

Abstract:

Cassava (Manihot esculenta, Crantz) which is also known as ‘yucca’ or ‘manioc’ has been acknowledged as a millennium crop which has been utilized for food security purposes. The crop provides considerable amount of energy. The aim of the study was to assess consumer groups of both ‘fresh’ and ‘frozen’ in terms of their perceptions toward the quality and safety attributes of frozen cassava. The questionnaire included four sections: consumer demographics, consumer perceptions on quality attributes of ‘frozen’ cassava, consumer knowledge, awareness and attitudes toward food safety of ‘frozen’ cassava and consumer suggestions toward the improvement of frozen cassava. A face-to-face questionnaire was administered to 200 consumers of cassava between April and May 2016. The criteria for inclusion in the survey were that they must be 15 years and over and consumer of cassava. The sections of the questionnaire included demographics of respondents, consumer perception on quality and safety attributes of cassava and suggestions for the improvement of the value-added product. The data was analysed by descriptive and chi-square using SPSS as well as qualitative information was captured. Only 17% of respondents purchased frozen cassava and this was significantly (P<0.05) associated to income. Some (15%) of fresh cassava purchasers had never heard of frozen cassava products and 7.5% o perceived that these products were unhealthy for consumption. More than half (51.3%) of the consumers (all from the ‘fresh’ cassava group) believed that there were ‘no toxins’ within cassava. The ‘frozen’ cassava products were valued for convenience but purchasers were least satisfied with ‘value for money’ (50%), ‘product safety’ (50%) and ‘colour’ (52.9%). Cassava purchasers demonstrated highest dissatisfaction levels with the quality attribute: value for money (6.6%, 11.8%) respectively. The most predominant area outlined by respondents for frozen cassava improvement was promotion /advertising/education (23%). The ‘frozen’ cassava purchasers were ‘least satisfied’ thus most concern that clean knives and clean surface would not be used agro- processing. Fresh cassava purchasers were comparatively more knowledgeable on the potential existence of naturally occurring toxins in cassava, however with 1% respondents being able to specifically identify the toxin as ‘cyanide’. Dangerous preservatives (31%), poor hygiene (30%) and chemicals from the packaging (11%) were identified as some sources of contamination of ‘frozen’ cassava. Purchasers of frozen cassava indicated that the information on packaging label was unclear (P<0.01) when compared to ‘fresh’ cassava consumers.

Keywords: consumer satisfaction, convenience, cyanide toxin, product safety, price, label

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Authors: Julian David Hunt, Andreas Nascimento

Abstract:

Green hydrogen is the most environmental, renewable alternative to produce hydrogen. However, an important challenge to make hydrogen a competitive energy carrier is a constant supply of renewable energy, such as solar, wind and hydropower. Given that the electricity generation potential of these sources vary seasonally and interannually, this paper proposes installing an electrolysis hydrogen production plant in a ship and move the ship to the locations where electricity is cheap, or where the seasonal potential for renewable generation is high. An example of electrolysis ship application is to produce green hydrogen with hydropower from the North region of Brazil and then sail to the Northeast region of Brazil and generate hydrogen using excess electricity from offshore wind power. The electrolysis ship concept is interesting because it has the flexibility to produce green hydrogen using the cheapest renewable electricity available in the market.

Keywords: green hydrogen, electrolysis ship, renewable energies, seasonal variations

Procedia PDF Downloads 138