Global Energy Solution Research Articles

Innovations and Challenges in Semi-Transparent Perovskite Solar Cells: A Mini Review of Advancements Toward Sustainable Energy Solutions

Amid the shift away from fossil fuels, third-generation perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have become pivotal due to their high efficiency and low production costs. This review concentrates on semi-transparent perovskite solar cells (ST-PSCs), highlighting their power conversion efficiency (PCE) and average visible transmittance (AVT). We address strategies to optimize ST-PSC performance, tackling inherent challenges, such as optical losses from reflection, parasitic absorption, and thermalization loss, which impact the operational efficiency under variable environmental conditions. ST-PSCs are distinguished by their lightweight, flexible, and translucent properties, allowing for diverse applications in urban building integration, agricultural greenhouses, and wearable technology. These cells integrate seamlessly into various settings, enhancing energy harnessing without compromising on aesthetic or structural elements. However, the scalability of ST-PSCs involves challenges related to stability and efficiency in large-scale deployments. The tropical urban landscape of Singapore provides a unique case study for ST-PSC application, blending architectural aesthetics with high solar irradiance to optimize energy efficiency. While the potential for ST-PSCs to contribute to sustainable urban development is immense, significant technological hurdles must be overcome to realize their full potential. Continued advancements in material science and engineering are essential to address these challenges, ensuring the scalability and long-term deployment of ST-PSCs in global energy solutions.

Market Trends and Outlook for Oil and Gas, a Review

Hydrocarbon business globally, commands enormous influence over the dynamics of financial integrity on wealth creation in the world economy, through global trade. Citing example with Nigeria’s Oil and Gas industry, her richly endowed mineral deposits, for the past six decades has (directly or indirectly) played very significant role on virtually all economic and commercial activities; in determining the financial health/viability of the nation’s economy. The global economy presently faces challenges of the global warming due to the climate change that has occurred as a result of incremental growth in energy demands and consumption. Energy, known as a critical factor to life is essential for purposes of powering the economy through daily economic activities, and also for maintenance of man’s existence, has its own consequences on the environment in the course of its production and utilization. As a result, it has been proven to be posing a number of challenges, threats to life and man’s sustainable existence because of the adverse incidences on the planet, resulting from impact of carbon emissions being generated from energy consumption of fossil fuels/Oil and Gas sources (among other greenhouse gases, GHGs). Energy transition, as a phenomenal trend on the global energy solutions management, would contain these global challenges (in ever increasing global population with its imminent threat of energy crisis/poverty) by applying energy-mix menu and technologically advanced initiatives (the proposed Maximum energy-minimum emissions strategy) to control global warming by net-zero carbon emissions target through decarbonizing technologies; for sustainability of the planet.

Maximum energy, minimum emissions strategy

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission or the greenhouse gas (GHG) emitted into the atmosphere over several decades, has adversely impacted the environment with the consequences of global warming (GW) from the eventual climate change on earth. GW manifested from consumption of fossil fuels (coals, crude oil and natural gas) to generate energy for daily economic and commercial activities. To mitigate the devastating impact of GW, the United Nations (UN) initiated climate action policies that apply innovative measures to minimize and reduce carbon emissions. Nations are engaged in annual multilateral conventions, for a net-zero future against imminent catastrophe. The policy objective is, to preserve the planet earth for man’s future/sustainable existence. The GW mitigation and adaptation measures are enforced partly through implementing global energy solutions management (GESM), applied on energy-mix menu, for optimal energy utilization, energy security and affordability. This paper highlights the critical roles in energy transition and security, involving continual utilization of fossil fuels to produce cleaner energy as well as renewable energy.

Global attractor of the Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes system with moving contact lines

This paper is concerned with the long-time behavior of solutions for the Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes system with moving contact lines. Thanks to the strong coupling at the boundary, it is very difficult to obtain the uniqueness of an energy solution for problem (1)-(3) even in two dimension. To overcome this difficulty, inspired by the idea of Sell's radical approach (see [49]) to the global attractor of the three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, we prove the closedness of the set $ W $ of all global energy solutions for problem (1)-(3) equipped with some metric such that the $ \omega $-limit set of any bounded subset in $ W $ still stay in $ W, $ which is crucial to prove the existence of a global attractor for problem (1)-(3). In addition, we prove the existence of an absorbing set in $ W $ and the uniform compactness of the semigroup $ S_t $ for problem (1)-(3), which entails the existence of a global attractor in $ W $ for problem (1)-(3).

Global Energy Solution to the Schrödinger Equation Coupled with the Chern-Simons Gauge and Neutral Field

We study the Cauchy problem of the Chern-Simons-Schrödinger equations with a neutral field, under the Coulomb gauge condition, in energy space H1(R2). We prove the uniqueness of a solution by using the Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality with the specific constant. To obtain a global solution, we show the conservation of total energy and find a bound for the nondefinite term.

Global energy solutions to a stochastic Schrödinger–Poisson system with multiplicative noise in two dimensions

We are concerned with the Cauchy problem for a two-dimensional stochastic Schrödinger–Poisson system with a multiplicative noise in the energy space. Depending on the values of the physical parameters, this system models a self-gravitating Bose–Einstein condensate of the dark matter in the universe or the electron transport in semiconductors under the effect of thermal fluctuations. We show that in both cases the system admits a unique global solution in H1. The key ingredient of this paper is to establish appropriate commutator estimates for the multiplicative noise.

Cahn–Hilliard–Navier–Stokes systems with moving contact lines

We consider a well-known diffuse interface model for the study of the evolution of an incompressible binary fluid flow in a two or three-dimensional bounded domain. This model consists of a system of two evolution equations, namely, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for the average fluid velocity u coupled with a convective Cahn–Hilliard equation for an order parameter $$\phi $$ . The novelty is that the system is endowed with boundary conditions which account for a moving contact line slip velocity. The existence of a suitable global energy solution is proven and the convergence of any such solution to a single equilibrium is also established.

Thermoelectric Properties of Nanowires with a Graphitic Shell.

A thermoelectric device that can generate electricity from waste heat can play an important role in a global energy solution. However, the strongly correlated thermoelectric properties have remained a major hurdle for the highly efficient conversion of thermoelectric energy. Herein, the electrical and thermal properties of Si and SiO2 nanowires with few-layer graphitic shells are demonstrated; these structures exhibit enhanced electrical properties but no increase in thermal conductivity. The main path of the phonons through the structures is the core nanowire, which has a large cross-sectional area relative to that of the graphitic shell layer. However, the electrical conductivities of the nanowires with shell structures are high because of the good electrical conductivity of the graphitic shell, despite its small cross-sectional area.

Using anaerobic digestion of organic wastes to biochemically store solar thermal energy

Solar energy is the most abundant energy resource with the potential to become a major component of a sustainable global energy solution. However, unsteady energy flow and low energy density make it difficult to collect, convert, and store solar energy, which is why current solar power generation technologies have limited applications. This paper comprehensively studied the integration of solar thermal collection with different anaerobic digestion operations to form solar-bioreactor systems in order to realize biological storage of solar energy and solve the issues that solar energy generation encounters. The experimental comparison of manure digestion and co-digestion concluded that co-digestion had a better methane yields with a minimum difference between mesophilic and thermophilic conditions. The energy analysis of solar-bioreactor systems with both manure digestion and co-digestion at different bioreactor sizes further concluded that solar-bioreactor systems with mesophilic co-digestion was the preferred system to store solar energy into methane biogas. The optimal solar-storage efficiencies for the three systems of 10, 100, 1000 m3 were 67%, 68% and 70%, respectively. The corresponding solar-bioreactor system efficiencies were 82%, 88%, and 89%.

Characterization of large energy solutions of the equivariant wave map problem: II

We consider $1$-equivariant wave maps from $\Bbb{R}^{1+2}\to\Bbb{S}^2$ of finite energy. We establish a classification of all degree one global solutions whose energies are less than three times the energy of the harmonic map~$Q$. In particular, for each global energy solution of topological degree one, we show that the solution asymptotically decouples into a rescaled harmonic map plus a radiation term. Together with a companion article (Part I), where we consider the case of finite-time blow up, this gives a characterization of all $1$-equivariant, degree~$1$ wave maps in the energy regime $[E(Q),3E(Q))$.

Global energy solutions of Chern–Simons–Higgs equations in one space dimension

We study an initial value problem of Chern–Simons–Higgs equations in one space dimension. The global existence of solutions is proved for the finite energy data. Moreover, we study local well-posedness below the energy regularity, observing null forms of the system and applying bilinear estimates for wave-Sobolev space Hs,θ.

Single-Ended High-Efficiency Step-up Converter Using the Isolated Switched-Capacitor Cell

The depletion of natural resources and renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaic (PV) energy, has been highlighted for global energy solution. The PV power control unit in the PV power-generation technology requires a high step-up DC-DC converter. The conventional step-up DC-DC converter has low efficiency and limited step-up ratio. To overcome these problems, a novel high step-up DC-DC converter using an isolated switched capacitor cell is proposed. The step-up converter uses the proposed transformer and employs the switched-capacitor cell to enable integration with the boost inductor. The output of the boost converter and isolated switched-capacitor cell are connected in series to obtain high step-up with low turn-on ratio. A hardware prototype with 30 V to 40 V input voltage and 340 V output voltage is implemented to verify the performance of the proposed converter. As an extended version, another novel high step-up isolated switched-capacitor single-ended DC-DC converter integrated with a tapped-inductor (TI) boost converter is proposed. The TI boost converter and isolated-switched-capacitor outputs are connected in series to achieve high step-up. All magnetic components are integrated in a single magnetic core to lower costs. A prototype hardware with 20 V to 40 V input voltage, 340 V output voltage, and 100 W output power is implemented to verify the performance of the proposed converter.

Different Perspectives in Enabling Materials Resource Sustainability

The REWAS 2013 symposium at this year’s TMS Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX, follows in the footsteps of previous REWAS conferences organized by TMS. REWAS 2013 builds on the 2010 Sustainable Materials Processing and Production Symposium and the 2011 Materials and Society plenary session ‘‘Linking Science and Technology for Global Energy Solutions.’’ In the 2010 symposium, for the first time, we connected the metallurgical and materials science community to the broader, interdisciplinary topic of sustainability by linking technology, metrics, modeling, education, and the role materials play in the transition to a sustainable society. REWAS 2013 again brought together the material science community and other stakeholders from across the material and product life cycle, resulting in 75 presentations. Its topic and focus is well timed as it coincides with the recent UNEP Resource Panel report ‘‘Metal Recycling: Opportunities, Limits, Infrastructure.’’ The next REWAS will be held in conjunction with the TMS 2016 Annual Meeting in Nashville. By pulling in practitioners and educators from outside the TMS community, interdisciplinary approaches and system thinking can be further fostered. This was one of the most important aspects of the symposium. Some examples from the proceedings are as follows:

Power from space: the policy challenge

The scientific community has long embraced the concept of globalized collaboration, recognizing that scientific inquiry knows no borders and that scientific theory transcends nationality. With respect to translating scientific and technological innovation into practical application, however, national, political, and ideological barriers suddenly arise. At a time when the worlds of economics and finance are rapidly globalizing, the world of applied science lags behind — despite increasingly urgent need for global energy solutions. In the context of considering space solar power (SSP) systems, the author contends that these solutions require new ways of determining costs and benefits; that scientific experts should seek active engagement in the policy arena; and that SSP's scientific community has a critical role to play in advocating for consideration of space-based energy solutions.

THE GENI MODEL: The Interconnection of Global Power Resources to Obtain an Optimal Global Sustainable Energy Solution

The Global Energy Network International (GENI) model quantifies the economic, environmental, and social benefits of developing remote renewable energy sources and linking them to population centers via long distance electrical transmission lines. The model investigates an optimal sustainable global energy solution by comparing the GENI alternative to those alternatives presented by the World Energy Council (WEC) and others. This paper describes the work in progress accomplished by the GENI organization. The correlation between electricity and quality of life indicators is presented. Abbreviated problem and project definitions are presented.