According to Our World in Data, the industry sector contributes approximately 5.2 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions in 2016 [1]. Of that percentage, the cement industry contributes approximately 3 percent, thus accounting for more than 57 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions within the industry sector. Industrial-scale heating that is powered by renewable energy sources has the potential to combat this issue. This paper aims to analyze and model the Reverse Brayton Cycle to be used as a heat pump in a novel cement production system. The Simple Reverse Brayton Cycle and its potential concerning performance indicators such as coefficient of performance and scalability are determined. A Regenerative Brayton cycle is modeled in MATLAB® programming in order to be optimized and compared to conventional processes that require higher temperatures. Traditional manufacturing methods are discussed. Furthermore, possible methods of improvement are explored to view its effect on performance and temperatures between stages within the cycle.

Central Vietnam and the communities located within the country experience a high level of natural disaster due to flooding and typhoons. The mission of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the United States Army Corps of Engineers is to build new primary schools that have been damaged due to flooding. The goal of this research is to find a viable solution for the powering of each school, as many communities can’t handle the additional grid load of a fully functioning school. In this research, two main methods were considered after brainstorming possible solutions. First, the total usage of a typical school housing roughly 300 students and staff were calculated. Then, monocrystalline photovoltaic cells were evaluated using given efficiencies, energy usage, and incident shortwave radiation to calculate the total number of panels needed. Small scale wind turbines were also considered, using power curves and a PDF of wind speeds in Ho Chi Minh City for the year 2022, the amount of annual energy generated by turbines was calculated. It was found that solar energy was a much more viable solution. The average price of solar was found to be $19961.77 while the lowest price of wind turbines was $240000. With these high material costs, not factoring in workers or maintenance cost, wind energy is clearly not viable. Instead, installing a solar system on and around the school would be able to accomplish the requirements of the school.

This study introduces a new outdoor accelerated testing method called “Field Accelerated Stress Testing (FAST)” for photovoltaic (PV) modules performed at two different climatic sites in Arizona (hot-dry) and Florida (hot-humid). FAST is a combined accelerated test methodology that simultaneously accounts for all the field-specific stresses and accelerates only key stresses, such as temperature, to forecast the failure modes by 2- 7 times in advance depending on the activation energy of the degradation mechanism (i.e., 10th year reliability issues can potentially be predicted in the 2nd year itself for an acceleration factor of 5). In this outdoor combined accelerated stress study, the temperatures of test modules were increased (by 16-19℃ compared to control modules) using thermal insulations on the back of the modules. All other conditions (ambient temperature, humidity, natural sunlight, wind speed, wind direction, and tilt angle) were left constant for both test modules (with back thermal insulation) and control modules (without thermal insulation). In this study, a total of sixteen 4-cell modules with two different construction types (glass/glass [GG] and glass/backsheet [GB]) and two different encapsulant types (ethylene vinyl acetate [EVA] and polyolefin elastomer [POE]), were investigated at both sites with eight modules at each site (four insulated and four non-insulated modules at each site). All the modules were extensively characterized before installation in the field and after field exposure over two years. The methods used for characterizing the devices included I-V (current-voltage curves), EL (electroluminescence), UVF (ultraviolet fluorescence), and reflectance. The key findings of this study are: i) the GG modules tend to operate at a higher temperature (1-3℃) than the GB modules at both sites of Arizona and Florida (a lower lifetime is expected for GG modules compared to GB modules); ii) the GG modules tend to experience a higher level of encapsulant discoloration and grid finger degradation than the GB modules at both sites (a higher level of the degradation rate is expected in GG modules compared to GB modules); and, iii) the EVA-based modules tend to have a higher level of discoloration and finger degradation compared to the POE-based modules at both sites.

Desorption processes are an important part of all processes which involve utilization of solid adsorbents such as adsorption cooling, sorption thermal energy storage, and drying and dehumidification processes and are inherently energy-intensive. Here, how those energy requirements can be reduced through the application of ultrasound for three widely used adsorbents namely zeolite 13X, activated alumina and silica gel is investigated. To determine and justify the effectiveness of incorporating ultrasound from an energy-savings point of view, an approach of constant overall input power of 20 and 25 W was adopted. To measure the extent of the effectiveness of using ultrasound, the ultrasonic-power-to-total power ratios of 0.2, 0.25, 0.4 and 0.5 were investigated and the results compared with those of no-ultrasound (heat only) at the same total power. Duplicate experiments were performed at three nominal frequencies of 28, 40 and 80 kHz to observe the influence of frequency on regeneration dynamics. Regarding moisture removal, application of ultrasound results in higher desorption rate compared to a non-ultrasound process. A nonlinear inverse proportionality was observed between the effectiveness of ultrasound and the frequency at which it is applied. Based on the variation of desorption dynamics with ultrasonic power and frequency, three mechanisms of reduced adsorbate adsorption potential, increased adsorbate surface energy and enhanced mass diffusion are proposed. Two analytical models that describe the desorption process were developed based on the experimental data from which novel efficiency metrics were proposed, which can be employed to justify incorporating ultrasound in regeneration and drying processes.

Large amplitude westward propagating long waves in midlatitudes of Northern Hemisphere occasionally sustain coherent phase propagation over multiple weeks. Owing to the large amplitude and the life cycle of these waves previous studies have speculated their influence on extended-range weather forecasts but have not quantified them. The primary aim of this study is to establish an updated long-term catalog of Retrograde events which can then be used to investigate the statistics and structure of these waves. Guided by the newly created catalog the dynamics of these waves are further explored. A preliminary look into the dynamics of these waves reveal a sequence of poleward extrusion, westward migration and vortex shedding occurring frequently during certain strong Retrograde wave events. A strong connection between the westward moving low PV structures and the East Asian cold air outbreak is uncovered. Also, the initiation of the sequence of low PV extrusion and vortex shedding is found to be linked with the phase of propagating Wave-1 zonal component. Enhanced predictability of global midlatitude Geopotential Height at 500mb is noted during active period of strong Retrograde wave activity in comparison to inactive period. Skilled forecasts were produced almost (on an average) 12 days in advance during the active period of one of the winters (1995/96) as compared to 9 days during the inactive period of the season.

The phase change process of freezing water is an important application in several fields such as ice making, food freezing technologies, pharmaceuticals etc. Due to the widespread usage of ice-related products, process improvements in this technology can potentially lead to substantial energy savings. After studying the freezing process of water, the supercooling phenomenon was found to occur which showed a negative effect. Therefore, ultrasound was proposed as a technique to reduce the supercooling effect and improve the heat transfer rate. An experimental study was conducted to analyze the energy expenditures in the freezing process with and without the application of ultrasound. After a set of preliminary experiments, an intermittent application of ultrasound at 10W & 3.5W power levels were found to be more effective than constant-power application, and were explored in further detail. The supercooling phenomenon was thoroughly studied through iterative experiments. It was also found that the application of ultrasound during the freezing process led to the formation of shard-like ice crystals. From the intermittent ultrasound experiments performed at 10W and 3.5W power levels, percentage energy enhancements relative to no ultrasound of 8.9% ± 12.4% and 11.9% ± 24.6% were observed, respectively.

Autonomic closure is a recently-proposed subgrid closure methodology for large eddy simulation (LES) that replaces the prescribed subgrid models used in traditional LES closure with highly generalized representations of subgrid terms and solution of a local system identification problem that allows the simulation itself to determine the local relation between each subgrid term and the resolved variables at every point and time. The present study demonstrates, for the first time, practical LES based on fully dynamic implementation of autonomic closure for the subgrid stress and the subgrid scalar flux. It leverages the inherent computational efficiency of tensorally-correct generalized representations in terms of parametric quantities, and uses the fundamental representation theory of Smith (1971) to develop complete and minimal tensorally-correct representations for the subgrid stress and scalar flux. It then assesses the accuracy of these representations via a priori tests, and compares with the corresponding accuracy from nonparametric representations and from traditional prescribed subgrid models. It then assesses the computational stability of autonomic closure with these tensorally-correct parametric representations, via forward simulations with a high-order pseudo-spectral code, including the extent to which any added stabilization is needed to ensure computational stability, and compares with the added stabilization needed in traditional closure with prescribed subgrid models. Further, it conducts a posteriori tests based on forward simulations of turbulent conserved scalar mixing with the same pseudo-spectral code, in which velocity and scalar statistics from autonomic closure with these representations are compared with corresponding statistics from traditional closure using prescribed models, and with corresponding statistics of filtered fields from direct numerical simulation (DNS). These comparisons show substantially greater accuracy from autonomic closure than from traditional closure. This study demonstrates that fully dynamic autonomic closure is a practical approach for LES that requires accuracy even at the smallest resolved scales.

Kuwait is committed to implementing the Kyoto Protocol in “Vision 2035” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by shifting to the use of wind and solar energies [1]. The specific goal of the Vision 2035 is for renewables to comprise 15% of Kuwait’s electrical generation by 2030. Wind and solar are abundant in Kuwait and can easily provide 15% of the total electrical generation. However, there are three significant obstacles. The first is Kuwait currently depends heavily on rapidly diminishing fossil fuels which are the major sources of CO2, NOx, and SOx emissions. Unfortunately, current plans are to build two conventional power stations by 2024. The purpose is to cover the energy needs for growing population. The second problem is that Kuwait has a very small land area. Consequently, there is limited space to build new utility-scale renewable power stations. The third issue is the low electricity tariff provides little incentive for the population to save energy. Offshore wind farms have the potential to provide thousands of GWh/yr to accomplish the goals of Vision 2035. Kuwait has a vast untapped supply of offshore wind energy. Specifically, there are eight offshore locations in which 50 turbines could be built each, for a total of 400 turbines. Using 4.2 MW turbines, this would provide 1.68 GW of wind energy, and increase the renewable portion of the electrical energy production to 13.93% (including Shagaya renewable park). Installing battery storage with the proposed wind turbines could provide fast ramp response which would serve to complement existing power production on Kuwait’s grid. In this work, six different turbines with different sizes are considered from 2.5 MW to 4.2 MW (from well-known manufacturers, such as, Nordex and Vestas), but ultimately 4.2 MW turbines are recommended. Data for this study has been supplied by: A) Civil Aviation -- temperature and wind speed, B) Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) -- electricity data, and C) Public Authority for Civil Information -- population data.

About 20-50% of industrial processes energy is lost as waste heat in their operations. The thermal hydraulic engine relies on the thermodynamic properties of supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) to efficiently perform work. Carbon dioxide possesses great properties that makes it a safe working fluid for the engine’s applications. This research aims to preliminarily investigate the actual efficiency which can be obtained through experimental data and compare that to the Carnot or theoretical maximum efficiency. The actual efficiency is investigated through three approaches. However, only the efficiency results from the second method are validated since the other approaches are based on a complete actual cycle which was not achieved for the engine. The efficiency of the thermal hydraulic engine is found to be in the range of 0.5% to 2.2% based on the second method which relies on the boundary work by the piston. The heating and cooling phases of the engine’s operation are viewed on both the T-s (temperature-entropy) and p-v (pressure-volume) diagrams. The Carnot efficiency is also found to be 13.7% from a temperature difference of 46.20C based on the measured experimental data. It is recommended that the thermodynamic cycle and efficiency investigation be repeated using an improved heat exchanger design to reduce energy losses and gains during both the heating and cooling phases. The temperature of CO2 can be measured through direct contact with the thermocouple and pressure measurements can be improved using a digital pressure transducer for the thermodynamic cycle investigation.

Drainage flow of a viscous compressible gas from a semi-sealed narrow conduit is a pore-scale model for studying the fundamental flow physics of fluid recovery from a porous reservoir without using fluid injection. Thermal effect has been routinely neglected for these flows in the traditional petroleum engineering literature. Since the motion is entirely driven by volumetric expansion, temperature change always accompanies the density change. This thesis examines such thermal effects on the drainage flow.

Thermal drainage flow is first studied by simultaneously solving the linearized continuity, momentum and energy equations for adiabatic walls. It is shown that even in the absence of an imposed temperature drop, gas expansion induces a transient temperature decrease inside the channel, which slows down the drainage process compared to the isothermal model and Lighthill’s model. For a given density drop, gas drains out faster as the initial-to-final temperature ratio increases; and the transient density can undershoot the final equilibrium value. A parametric study is then carried out to explore the influence of various thermal boundary conditions on drainage flow. It is found that as the wall transitions from adiabatic to isothermal condition, the excess density changes from a plane wave solution to a non-plane wave solution and the drainage rate increases. It is shown that when the exit is also cooled and the wall is non-adiabatic, the total recovered fluid mass exceeds the amount based on the isothermal theory which is determined by the initial and final density difference alone. Finally, a full numerical simulation is conducted to mimic the channel-reservoir system using the finite volume method. The Ghost-Cell Navier-Stokes Characteristic Boundary Condition technique is applied at the far end of the truncated reservoir, which is an open boundary. The results confirm the conclusions of the linear theory.