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The increasingly serious energy crisis and environmental pollution caused by the excessive use of fossil fuels have been prompting China to aggressively seek a clean and self-sufficient energy source in the future. In the past decades, hydrogen has emerged as a promising alternative due to its advantages of cleanliness, abundance, high energy density, and high conversion efficiency. However, several challenges have to be overcome for China's successful transition to hydrogen economy. In this paper, the hydrogen supply chain is firstly described to help the readers to clearly understand the hydrogen economy. Subsequently, the feasibility of hydrogen economy is discussed by reviewing viewpoints from the literature. Finally, the challenges of China's transition to hydrogen economy are detailed summarized and discussed, and the strategies for China to develop hydrogen economy were compared with that of Japan and Australia. • Hydrogen economy is feasible with many challenges. • Hydrogen and electricity should clearly have the same strategic position in China. • Geographic differences in resources and demands should be addressed. • It is necessary to diversify the application of hydrogen. • CCS technology is significance to the medium-term development of China's hydrogen economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Pervaporation membranes for alcohols/water separation is important to alleviate the fossil energy crisis. • MOFs and COFs based pervaporation membranes with excellent performance have received widespread attention. • This review provides general guidance on the MOFs and COFs based pervaporation membranes for alcohols/water separation. High-performance pervaporation membrane has great application and development potential in alcohols/water separation industry due to its high efficiency and economy. It is an important pathway to alleviate the fossil energy crisis and obtain various alcohols scientifically. As a new type of porous crystal material, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with controllable pore structure and rich chemical functions are promising for constructing high-performance alcohols/water separation membranes for future manufacturing development. There are different types of MOFs and COFs based pervaporation membranes, including MOFs polycrystalline membranes, MOFs based mixed matrix membranes (MMMs), COFs continuous membranes, and COFs based MMMs. In this review, we firstly discuss the classification of membranes, describe the process mechanism and evaluation indicators of pervaporation, select decisive criterions for MOFs and COFs, summary the preparation strategies and separation performance of these four membranes, and discuss in detail the impact of operating conditions. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of these four kinds of membranes are summarized, the challenges faced are identified, and the future development direction is pointed out, aiming to provide slight guidance for the design and development of high-performance MOFs and COFs based membranes for alcohols/water separation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harnessing renewable energy (RE) sources to power desalination systems can migrate the pressures of freshwater scarcity and fossil fuel depletion. In this paper, a novel mathematical framework was developed to assess the sustainability of different RE-powered desalination systems, which is very essential for their portfolio selection, by resorting to the fuzzy multi-attribute decision making (MAMD) methods. In the framework, an evaluation system including ten attributes from four dimensions is introduced, while fuzzy triangular numbers and interval values are employed to capture the epistemic and aleatory uncertainties of decision information, respectively. More importantly, three fuzzy MADM methods were proposed in the framework to make the following methodological contributions: (1) fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory-based analytic network process (DANP) offers a reliable weighting result by addressing the interrelationships among the attributes; (2) fuzzy full consistency method (FUCOM) can easily but rigorously quantify the qualitative attributes by using the simplified pair-wise comparisons; (3) interval vector-aided technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (VATOPSIS) generates a rational ranking sequence by incorporating the balance among multi-attributes. To illustrate the proposed framework, six RE-powered desalination systems were studied, showing that the solar thermal-powered multi-effect distillation would be the best option under current conditions. Finally, the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed framework were verified by results comparison and discussion. Image 1 • A framework was proposed to assess the sustainability of RE-powered desalination. • The mathematical framework can address both the epistemic and aleatory uncertainties. • A fuzzy DANP approach was used to assign the weights to the interrelated attributes. • A fuzzy FUCOM method was developed to easily quantify the qualitative attributes. • An interval VATOPSIS method was introduced to rationally rank the alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination with carbon capture and storage (CCS) can significantly reduce CO 2 emission in power generation systems, however, it remains to be clarified whether the CCS combination can make the power generation systems more sustainable by comprehensively taking account of economic, social and environmental effects. In this study, a novel multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) mathematical framework was developed to evaluate the sustainability of power generation systems using either fossil energy (with or without CCS) or renewable energy sources. In the mathematical framework, interval numbers are used to retain the objective uncertainties, and an improved Grey-Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (G-DEMATEL) method is employed to determine the weights of the evaluation criteria, which can avoid subjective uncertainties while considering the interactions between evaluation criteria. According to the affecting factors calculated by G-DEMATEL, the interaction between criteria can be visualized and key criteria can be identified more intuitively. Finally, the interval Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacijia I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method is employed to rank the sustainability of alternative power generation systems. In order to verify the developed framework, the sustainability of 6 power generation systems was assessed and compared by considering 10 criteria from dimensions of technology, environment, economy and society. The results show that "Wind power" is assessed as the most sustainable technology and the criterion of "Global warming" has the greatest impact on the sustainability of power generation systems, while the sustainability of power generation systems using fossil energy can be significantly improved by combining with CCS. • A framework for assessing the sustainability of power generation systems is proposed. • The effect of combining with carbon capture and storage is investigated. • An objective weighting method that consider the interaction of criteria is developed. • An approach is developed for visualizing the interaction between the criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]