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The transport sector emits 18% of global CO2. Industry and consumers must adopt green mobility to reduce emissions and climate change. This will help achieve sustainability by improving efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, smart electric vehicles (SEVs) have emerged. Digital twins concept and technology may help launch SEVs to the market by analysing and optimising supporting infrastructure. This work aims to fill in the gaps between different pieces of research by giving a full review from a technical and scientifically neutral point of view. The study looks at how digital twin technology can be used in smart car systems by looking at its promise and the hurdles faced. Based on a comprehensive literature survey, this is the first in-depth look at how digital twin technology can be used in smart electric cars. The review has been organised into specific areas of the smart vehicle system, such as drive train system battery management system, driver assistance system, vehicle health monitoring system, vehicle power electronics. This review goes into detail about each component of the car to provide an overall view of the smart vehicle system as a whole. This review makes it easier to understand how digital twin technology can be utilized into each area from a scientific point of view. Lastly, the work looks at the technological and economic impact of digital twin technology, which will make considerable changes in car manufacturing processes, as well as help address current obstacles in utilizing advanced technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of entrepreneurship in energy engineering education, emphasizing the importance of incorporating entrepreneurial skills into the curriculum. Given the global challenges associated with sustainable energy, entrepreneurship is identified as a crucial driver for developing innovative technologies in the energy sector. The paper addresses the obstacles and challenges of integrating entrepreneurship into energy engineering education programs and highlights the need for curriculum reform, enhanced industry collaboration, and the utilization of appropriate resources to foster entrepreneurship. Additionally, the paper underscores the importance of balancing technical and entrepreneurial content within energy engineering courses, and the necessity of providing suitable incentives and opportunities for students to engage in entrepreneurial activities. The societal demand for sustainable energy solutions and the pressing global challenges underscore the need for energy engineering students to develop entrepreneurial skills. This development is presented as a vital strategy for driving economic growth and fostering innovation in the energy industry. In conclusion, the paper argues that the integration of entrepreneurship into energy engineering education is essential for preparing students to contribute effectively to the energy sector's evolution and to address the urgent need for sustainable and innovative energy solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the present major issues for industrialised societies is the environmental impact of energy production. Nuclear power is identified as a possible sustainable opportunity to provide a technological answer to this problem. This review aims to overview the physical bases of accelerator-driven systems, focusing on spallation and transmutation phenomena. A discussion on the possible use of these nuclear devices is developed in the context of sustainable energy production, showing a possible new approach to nuclear energy, based on the developments of accelerator physics and technology during the last century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high demand for hydrogen has led to the development of various production methods. This study examines the use of synthetic and natural catalysts in the generation of hydrogen and biohydrogen. A bibliographic analysis was conducted using the VOSviewer and ScientoPy tools. The research focuses on hydrogen synthesis, purification, separation, and storage, based on the findings. Hydrogen and biohydrogen can be produced through processes such as reforming, decomposition, hydrolysis, gasification, photolysis, and fermentation. The most studied approach is natural gas steam reforming, using Ni and Ce as catalysts and Al₂O₃, Al₂O₄, and BaTiO₃ as support materials, resulting in a high turnover frequency (TOF) of 2880 h−1 and an average stability of 100 h. In contrast, ammonia borane (AB) hydrolysis with Pt/Co₃O₄ catalysts may achieve a high TOF of 15 times faster than steam methane reforming (SMR). Additionally, HY‐zeolite containing nickel has a maximum stability of 578 h. Enhancing hydrogen and biohydrogen generation could be achieved by incorporating two or more metals that work synergistically and by building hierarchical structures in zeolite. In photocatalysis, it is important to design catalysts that improve light absorption. Using activated natural zeolites in the gasification process (conventional, supercritical, or hydrothermal) requires various raw materials and advanced chemical processes, which poses challenges for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic viscoelastic theory of soil–pile interaction dominates the initial impedance calculation during the pile dynamic design and analysis. Further, it provides a firm theoretical ground for the wave propagation simulation, which could be the basis of seismic analysis and some geotechnical testing approaches. This review traces the development history and key findings of viscoelastic soil–pile interaction theory and expounds on the advantages and limitations of various theoretical advances in terms of dynamic design and wave propagation modeling. The review consists of three sub-divisions, which are the longitudinal, horizontal, and torsional viscoelastic soil-pile theories. The development and implement of multi-phase soil constitutive equations, multi-dimensional soil–pile interaction modeling methods, pile–soil–pile mutual interactions in pile groups, and the fluid–structure interaction problems in offshore piles are especially remarked and concluded. Finally, the shortcomings and deficiencies of the present development are pointed out with a view to addressing them in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definition: Solar Architecture represents the confluence of the two disciplines of energy engineering and architecture. The concept of Solar Architecture defines a decision-making process to select, design, deploy, and operate solar energy-enabled solutions for environments where solar energy resources are part of the energy mix. The principles of Solar Architecture include maximizing solar energy harvesting from solution's surfaces with a positive balance of energy, carbon, and cost provided by the solution. Solar Architecture application selection is built on two major cornerstones, features and groups, defining the best options in energy engineering of a solar solution. Solar surfaces are key to solar architecture. They are the "heart", and balance-of-system components are the "muscles" of solar solutions. Addressing energy losses in photovoltaic, solar to thermal, and solar to chemical energy conversion allows for increasing energy harvesting yield. Life Cycle Assessment and solar energy harvesting methodologies based on solar surface characteristics define Solar Architecture Balance. This balance allows for defining energy, carbon, and cost return on investment for solar solutions and selecting the best solution for related assets/environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Extensão Universitária is the property of Revista Brasileira de Extensao Universitaria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Biofuels from micro-organisms represents a possible response to the carbon dioxide mitigation. One open problem is to improve their productivity, in terms of biofuels production. To do so, an improvement of the present model of growth and production is required. However, this implies an understanding of the growth spontaneous conditions of the bacteria. In this paper, a thermodynamic approach is developed in order to highlight the fundamental role of the electrochemical potential in bacteria proliferation. Temperature effect on the biosystem behaviour has been pointed out. The results link together the electrochemical potential, the membrane electric potential, the pH gradient through the membrane, and the temperature, with the result of improving the thermodynamic approaches, usually introduced in this topic of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The comparison of various nanomaterials’ effects on the performance of solar flat‐plate collectors has not been drawn thoroughly in the reported literature. In this paper, modeling of a solar flat‐plate collectors working with the mixture of water and different non‐metallic and metallic nanomaterials has been carried out by means of MATLAB coding. A more appropriate exergy factor of solar radiation has been applied for exergy analysis; the pressure loss in collectors manifolds has been considered as well. Results show that uncommonly used cerium oxide, hybrid magnesium oxide/silver, and titanium carbide nanomaterials in flat‐plate collector and commonly used ones such as copper oxide, nickel, iron, and copper have the potential to increase the heat transfer coefficient of the collector understudy. The value has been reported by the present study to be 90 % for cerium oxide case. Accordingly, an improvement in energy efficiency up to 73 % has been achieved at 4 vol.%. As another outcome, the application of these nanoparticles enhances the exergy destruction within the collector. Therefore, it would be advantageous for the environment by paying attention to the environmental impacts of exergy loss. Thus, employing nanomaterial science would help to advance the solar flat‐plate collector engineering technology through higher energy productivity and lower environmental destructive impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, an estimate of the emissions of volatile organic vapors emitted at a gasoline loading terminal is presented, in the absence of a vapor recovery unit. The estimation of the emissions is evaluated by the application of the General Law of Ideal Gases, using data measured in situations of fuel loading. A total of 3800 tank truck compartment samples were collected, totaling a loaded volume of 33 161 838 liters of gasoline for about 282 hours of operation in 21 days, or in three operating weeks. The results obtained provided a first estimate of the reduction of the environmental impact, evaluated by the reduction of the mass of evaporated gasoline and the registration in a database, for the execution of future projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the enactment in 2013 of a renewable energy scheme by contracting qualified power generation facilities working on renewable energy sources (RES), the process of construction and connection of such facilities to the Federal Grid Company has intensified in Russia. In 2013-2015, 93 projects of solar, wind, and small hydropower energy were selected on the basis of competitive bidding in the country with the purpose of subsequent support. Despite some technical and organizational problems and a time delay of some RES projects, in 2014-2015 five solar generating facilities with total capacity of 50 MW were commissioned, including 30 MW in Orenburg oblast. However, the proportion of successful projects is low and amounts to approximately 30% of the total number of announced projects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the experience of implementation of renewable energy projects that passed through a competitive selection and gained the right to get a partial compensation for the construction and commissioning costs of RES generating facilities in the electric power wholesale market zone. The informational background for the study is corporate reports of project promoters, analytical and information materials of the Association NP Market Council, and legal documents for the development of renewable energy. The methodological base of the study is a theory of learning curves that assumes that cost savings in the production of high-tech products depends on the production growth rate (economy of scale) and gaining manufacturing experience (learning by doing). The study has identified factors that have a positive and a negative impact on the implementation of RES projects. Improvement of promotion measures in the renewable energy development in Russia corresponding to the current socio-economic situation is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is expected that in the next year, over a billion wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes will be deployed throughout the world, constituting a wide variety of sensor applications. In such a domain, management of the randomly distributed sensor networks is complicated by issues such as knowledge of energy consumption and coverage, extended lifetimes and demands for improved quality of service parameters. Several researchers have addressed these issues through their own innovations and discoveries of different schemes, methods, techniques or mathematical models and architectures or applications, using a variety of node designs. This in turn, has lead to multiple different choices of hardware and software options. However, this has not simplified the process of setting up application testbeds considering energy consumption. There is no readily available solution for setting up a WSN with user selected profiles and parameters. Multiple communication protocols, routing protocols, signal calibration and propagation methods, data aggregation schemes, clustering formations with multiple variations have been proposed for different research objectives. This paper proposes a method for consolidating all the initiatives and integrating these in a service panel framework that helps manage the desired WSN with options to set up an individual WSN profile and supporting the energy engineering processes involved in the WSN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Producao Online is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Engenharia de Producao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Energy engineering is facing new challenges in educating experts in sustainable energy. The aim of this paper is to characterise expertise related to sustainability in higher education. Future challenges and required skills are explored through recent studies, which have listed key competencies that engineers need in their working life. Sustainability and expertise are discussed on the basis of literature and energy curricula are explored on universities' internet pages . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the years 1979–1984, the Soviet authorities and various coalitions of Western European companies, some of them subsidiaries of US corporations or benefiting from licences and patents, supported by state authorities, negotiated several agreements to provide credit and equipment for the building of a 3,500-mile-long gas pipeline between Northern Central Siberia and Western Europe. There was a fierce controversy between the US and European states and firms whether to honour such contracts or not amid renewed geopolitical tensions between East and West. Business history was thus intimately mixed with geopolitics and corporate commercial and industrial tactics were challenged by diplomatic ethics. While the rules of capitalism can once more be discussed, the numerous lobbying circuits are reconstituted in this article as a way to determine the potential freedom of action of day-to-day business when confronted with high-level politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) must be vaporized before it is used in the combustion process. In most regasification terminals, energy that was previously expended to liquefy natural gas is dissipated in the environment. The paper proposes the use of the thermal effect of LNG regasification for the atmospheric air separation as a possible solution to the LNG exergy recovery problem. The presented idea is based on the coupling of the LNG regasification unit with an oxygen generator based on the Temperature Swing Adsorption (TSA) process. Theoretical analysis has revealed that it is thermodynamically justified to use the LNG enthalpy of vaporization for cooling of the TSA adsorption bed for increasing its adsorptive capacity. It has been shown that 1 kg of LNG carries enough exergy for separating up to approximately 100 g of oxygen using the TSA method. Although the paper suggests using the enthalpy of LNG vaporization for atmospheric air separation, similar processes for other gas mixture separations using the TSA method can be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the ever-growing pressure on our planet's natural resources to supply energy, the production of bioethanol by fermentation of lignocellulosic biomass is increasingly important in courses related to engineering and energy. Moreover, recent changes in the teaching–learning paradigm make necessary the introduction of novel teaching tools where students are the protagonist of their education. In this context, the purpose of this study is to compare the results obtained after traditional lessons with those obtained after the implementation of various computer activities based on modeling and simulation of bioreactors to teach biorefinery concepts focused on bioethanol production. Berkeley Madonna was chosen as the digital simulation software package because it is user-friendly, fast, and easy to program. This software allowed students to gain experience writing models that let optimize fermentations in well-stirred bioreactors and others bioprocess of industrial interest. The students (those who participated in the modeling-simulation classes and those who participated in traditional ones) completed a questionnaire and a cognitive test at the end of the course. Students that participated in modeling-simulation classes got a better score than students that participated in traditional classes. Therefore, the study showed the improvement in the understanding of the biorefinery concepts and the students improved their grades. Finally, students' perception about the proposed modeling-simulation learning was also analyzed and they rated the efficiency of this new learning methodology as satisfactory. There are very few studies providing information about educational experiences regarding the development of skills for the formulation, interpretation, simplification, and use of mathematical models based on mass balances and simple microbial kinetics in biochemical engineering courses. The experience described in this work can be used by professors to plan and conduct courses based on the modeling of biochemical engineering problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mexico, there are regions where the temperature drops below the minimum threshold for tomato cultivation (10 °C), requiring the implementation of auxiliary equipment to heat greenhouse air. The objective of this work was to estimate the energy consumption necessary to maintain climate requirements of a greenhouse located in Texcoco, State of Mexico, by using a model of energy balance implemented on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The temperature prediction relied on a numerical model based on CFD, proposing a benchmarking on the position and direction of the heater to estimate its effect on the thermal distribution. Results indicated that heater operation on January 2019, a power of 85.56 kW was needed to keep the greenhouse at 12 °C. Also, simulations indicated that electric heater used was not enough to get a homogeneous temperature inside the greenhouse. To achieve well-distributed thermal conditions, it was necessary to consider both the direction and position of heaters. Consequently, airflow direction became more important than height of the heater in order to homogenize the greenhouse area, given that the thermal gradient was reduced due to reverse heat flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been firmly established as a fundamental discipline to advancing research on energy engineering. The major progresses achieved during the last two decades both on software modelling capabilities and hardware computing power have resulted in considerable and widespread CFD interest among scientist and engineers. Numerical modelling and simulation developments are increasingly contributing to the current state of the art in many energy engineering aspects, such as power generation, combustion, wind energy, concentrated solar power, hydro power, gas and steam turbines, fuel cells, and many others. This review intends to provide an overview of the CFD applications in energy and thermal engineering, as a presentation and background for the Special Issue "CFD Applications in Energy Engineering Research and Simulation" published by Processes in 2020. A brief introduction to the most significant reviews that have been published on the particular topics is provided. The objective is to provide an overview of the CFD applications in energy and thermal engineering, highlighting the review papers published on the different topics, so that readers can refer to the different review papers for a thorough revision of the state of the art and contributions into the particular field of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: l-Histidine biosynthesis is embedded in an intertwined metabolic network which renders microbial overproduction of this amino acid challenging. This is reflected in the few available examples of histidine producers in literature. Since knowledge about the metabolic interplay is limited, we systematically perturbed the metabolism of Corynebacterium glutamicum to gain a holistic understanding in the metabolic limitations for l-histidine production. We, therefore, constructed C. glutamicum strains in a modularized metabolic engineering approach and analyzed them with LC/MS-QToF-based systems metabolic profiling (SMP) supported by flux balance analysis (FBA). Results: The engineered strains produced l-histidine, equimolar amounts of glycine, and possessed heavily decreased intracellular adenylate concentrations, despite a stable adenylate energy charge. FBA identified regeneration of ATP from 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide (AICAR) as crucial step for l-histidine production and SMP identified strong intracellular accumulation of inosine monophosphate (IMP) in the engineered strains. Energy engineering readjusted the intracellular IMP and ATP levels to wild-type niveau and reinforced the intrinsic low ATP regeneration capacity to maintain a balanced energy state of the cell. SMP further indicated limitations in the C1 supply which was overcome by expression of the glycine cleavage system from C. jeikeium. Finally, we rerouted the carbon flux towards the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway thereby further increasing product yield to 0.093 ± 0.003 mol l-histidine per mol glucose. Conclusion: By applying the modularized metabolic engineering approach combined with SMP and FBA, we identified an intrinsically low ATP regeneration capacity, which prevents to maintain a balanced energy state of the cell in an l-histidine overproduction scenario and an insufficient supply of C1 units. To overcome these limitations, we provide a metabolic engineering strategy which constitutes a general approach to improve the production of ATP and/or C1 intensive products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adsorption technology is currently one of the most popular methods of air separation. At relatively low energy expenditure, this allows oxygen to be obtained with sufficient purity for oxyfuel, metallurgy or medical applications. The adsorption process is dependent on several factors such as pressure, temperature, the concentration of adsorbed element in the gas phase, or the surface area of the phase boundary. The paper shows the calculation of the minimum energy needed for oxygen separation taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of the adsorption methods. The article shows how many times the energy consumption of a real oxygen-separation plant is higher than the theoretical energy consumption, and indicates which components of the adsoption installation can be further improved. The paper is supported by research conducted on an oxygen-separation installation at a semi-technical scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]