On-site Installation Research Articles

(Invited) Affordable Green Hydrogen from Alkaline Water Electrolysis: An Industrial Perspective

Electrolysers is a novel component in the energy system and is expected to play a key role in the transition to a fossil free energy system and supply Green Hydrogen to a number of small- and large-scale applications within a number of industries e.g. transportation, industry etc. with several hundreds of GW is projected to be installed towards 2030.Modularity and mass production are key factors for the large scale deployment of electrolysis as envisioned in Hydrogen Strategies across the World. However, a number of different design strategies and modularities can be chosen in order to achieve this.This talk focuses on fundamental aspects of alkaline electrolysis including industrial requirements for catalysts and diaphragms, how to develop an electrolyser product and the development of multi-MW alkaline electrolysers plants with factory assembled modules allowing rapid on-site installation in order to keep up with the pace needed to reach deployment targets.

ITER Correction Coil and Magnet Feeder On-Site Installation Lessons Learned

ITER Correction Coil and Magnet Feeder On-Site Installation Lessons Learned

Innovative landslide disaster monitoring: unmanned aerial vehicle-deployed GNSS technology

Real-time monitoring technologies of surface deformation represented by the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) are essential for landslides early warning. Monitoring methods such as GNSS require on-site manual installation. Therefore, it becomes nearly impossible to deploy surface monitoring equipment when landslides are located in high mountain valleys that are challenging for personnel to access, and/or in hazardous situations. We propose an intelligent real-time monitoring and early-warning technology that employs an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a carrier to deploy GNSS equipment. A system was initially designed with five components: an adaptive sampling GNSS receiver, an intelligent cooperative network transmission module, UAV-dropped GNSS equipment, special delivery UAV, and an intelligent monitoring and early warning cloud platform. This new technology was applied to a real landslide in Gansu Province, China, in 2020. The mean absolute error of 30 days in the east, north, and upward directions were 1.2, 1.3, and 2.9 mm/d, respectively, comparing the deformation velocity between the traditional monitoring station and the UAV-dropped monitoring station. This observation facilitated the successful prediction of a landslide hazard on 27 January 2021, allowing for a timely alert to be issued. Collectively, the results of this study established that UAV-deployed GNSS technology can accomplish unmanned deployment of GNSS equipment for landslide monitoring to ensure early warning issuance in inaccessible and/or high-risk areas.

A scheme of installing ALC wall panels based on autonomous mobile robot

Autoclaved lightweight concrete (ALC) wall panels are widely used in building envelope structures. Due to the limitations of their sizes and architectural environment, installing ALC wall panels is very complex, requiring significant labor and time costs. Construction robots provide enhanced efficiency, yet current façade installation robots lack comprehensive on-site automation. In this study, an on-site wallboard installation robot with sensors, a mobile base, and a mechanical gripper was self-designed. Based on this robot, an automated installation scheme with integrated functions was proposed for the multiple steps from grasping to installing the wall panel. The robot could recognize and judge the posture of the wall panel through a robot vision algorithm and was able to navigate according to the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The proposed scheme achieved good results in both simulation and field testing. The robot automatically completed multiple tasks, from grasping to placing ALC wall panels, significantly reducing the difficulty of manually installing ALC wall panels and avoiding construction hazards.

Upgrade and Renovation of Steel Billet Scale in front of High-speed Wire Furnace

This article briefly introduces the weighing device for steel billets in front of the heating furnace of the high-speed wire rod unit, and analyzes and summarizes the problems existing in the original weighing device for steel billets in production and use. Based on on-site installation conditions, design a new weighing method, match a large range weighing sensor, upgrade the automation control of the weighing device, and remotely transmit the billet weighing data to the MES system of the group. The automatic, stable, reliable, and accurate measurement of steel billet raw materials has been achieved, providing important guarantees for the accurate measurement of production line billet and product yield.

Research on Construction Technology of Steel Bifurcation for Diversion System in Pumped Storage Power Station Under Complex Conditions

Limited by weight and volume, the transportation and on-site installation of steel bifurcation in the diversion system of pumped storage power station have become a big problem in the construction of the project. According to the needs of the installation and construction of large 800 MPa steel bifurcation in the complex environment, combined with the characteristics of the transportation and installation in the tunnel, the unloading of steel bifurcation is carried out by using the bridge crane between the installation of underground powerhouse. The hoisting up-anchors and sliding trolley arranged in the tunnel are used to place and install the steel bifurcation, which solves the difficulty of hoisting and installing the large turnout pipe in the tunnel and has positive significance in saving the project cost and reducing the construction risk. In this paper, the construction technology of steel bifurcation is described under the complex conditions in pumped storage power station. Detailed description of steel bifurcation construction layout, assembly, site transportation and installation and other construction points, provide a feasible idea for the development of other similar projects.

Research on on-site installation process of grinding roller of SLM5600 Vertical roller mill

SLM5600 vertical roller mill is widely used in 6000t/d cement clinker production line, the main parts of SLM series mill is a whole disc and three grinding roller, the roller in addition to the regular change with the liner accident, also need to regularly check and change with the bearing and oil seal and the wear bushing, by SLM5600 roller mill Department of heavy cement plant machinery maintenance conditions are limited, many manufacturers can only be shipped back to my company roller for repair and replacement parts, resulting in long period of maintenance, repair costs, provide a set of field assembly roller assembly process in this paper, according to the process maintenance workers on-site replacement parts and grinding roller assembly.

Deep learning-based automated productivity monitoring for on-site module installation in off-site construction

Effectively monitoring and analyzing on-site module installation for modular integrated construction (MiC) is essential to properly coordinating the MiC process. In this study, the authors propose an automated productivity monitoring framework for on-site module installation operations consisting of three modules: object detection, activity classification, and productivity analysis. The object detection module detects mobile cranes and modules interacting with mobile cranes, and the activity classification module classifies module installation activities into five different activities by considering the spatiotemporal relationship between the detected objects. Finally, the productivity analysis module analyzes the productivity of the module installation process by utilizing the accumulated activity classification results over image frames. The proposed model achieves an average accuracy of 89% (hooking: 85.71%, lifting: 84.44%, positioning: 94.90%, returning: 83.09%, and idling: 96.87%) in classifying the five activities. The developed framework enables practitioners to measure the productivity of the on-site module installation process automatically. In addition, productivity data stored from diverse construction sites contribute to identifying progress-impeding factors and improving the productivity of the entire MiC process.

Wall-embedded micro heat pump for radiant heating in buildings: Evaluation of energy and thermal comfort performance

This paper presents a novel radiant heating system with a wall-embedded micro heat pump (WEMHP) for residential buildings. The interior surface temperature of the exterior wall-section empowered by the micro heat pump is independently controlled, enabling distributed thermal comfort delivery. The micro heat pump consists of a miniature compressor along with an aluminum roll-bond condenser and evaporator. In contrast to conventional hydronic radiant systems and heat pumps with separate indoor and outdoor units (i.e., split systems), the WEMHP is a “packaged” system that would not require on-site installation and charging of a secondary water loop and circulation pump or refrigerant piping. This could ultimately lead to reduced installation and maintenance costs. In this study, a detailed system model is presented and integrated with a single-zone building model to assess the energy performance of the WEMHP in heating mode. For a designed living room scenario with an external wall WEMHP-to-wall ratio (HPWR) of 0.6 and window-to-wall ratio (WWR) of 0.2, the simulation results show that up to 23 % energy savings compared with a baseline air-to-air heat pump are possible. The results also indicate the HPWR needs to be higher than 0.4 to achieve performance comparable to the baseline. Additionally, experiments were conducted in a laboratory environment in which surface temperatures were controlled to emulate different scenarios for integration of WEMHP technology and to evaluate thermal comfort conditions. The experimental results show that the median operative temperature differences in the indoor environment were within 0.5 °C for various locations while the largest radiant asymmetry was 2.2 °C for the designed room configuration. Moreover, simulations were conducted to evaluate thermal comfort conditions in applications having a smaller HPWR of 0.4 with various values of WWR. Overall, the combined simulation and experimental study shows that the WEMHP has potential to reduce energy use while maintaining thermal comfort at acceptable levels where the HPWR is higher than 0.4.

Comparative environmental value stream assessment of offsite and onsite 3D construction printing processes

Extensive research has been conducted to establish a comprehensive understanding of the environmental impact of prefabrication and traditional onsite construction methods. In the case of 3D printing, onsite construction involves the transportation and onsite installation of a huge 3D printing setup, while offsite 3D construction printing (3DCP) requires the movement of bulky printed components. Consequently, the comprehensive environmental impact assessment of offsite and onsite 3DCP from raw material supply to the final construction stage needs to be investigated. This study aims to investigate the impact of onsite and offsite 3DCP processes on the environment considering the raw material production, transportation, printing and assembly processes. Environmental value stream assessment based on life cycle analysis (LCA) has been performed to analyze the impact of different processes on ecosystem, natural resources and human health. The findings show that the onsite 3DCP offers 21%, 19.7% and 27.6% lesser impact in terms of global warming potential (GWP), terrestrial acidification and fossil resource scarcity, respectively, than offsite 3DCP. Raw materials production contributes significantly to human carcinogenic toxicity and mineral resource scarcity, while transportation activities have a significant contribution to fossil resource scarcity and global warming potential. Sensitivity analysis shows that the offsite 3DCP can be preferred for small-scale construction containing concrete materials less than 140 tonnes in terms of transportation. In this case, moving the entire printing setup can have a greater environmental impact than transporting small printed components.

Integration of BIM and LCA: a system to predict and optimise embodied carbon for prefabricated buildings

This paper presents the development of a system for automatically predicting and optimising embodied carbon of prefabricated buildings during the design phase. Building information modelling (BIM) is selected as the working environment from data input to results display, highly improving the automation level of carbon assessment. Besides, automatic carbon assessment for on-site installation is achieved by developing a component-oriented on-site emission factor database from a Chinese code. This system also supports optimising embodied carbon by providing various low-carbon alternatives from the perspectives of selecting construction materials, transportation modes, and installation methods. This system is applied to a ten-storey office building for demonstration. It is found that the system can accurately estimate and efficiently reduce the embodied carbon emissions of prefabricated buildings

Erection strategy for main cable based on unstrained length of parallel wire strands

This paper presents a construction scheme aimed at achieving one-time erection of strands through precise control of the unstrained length. The scheme entails correcting system errors through the initial strand erection and reducing the influence of random errors by improving manufacturing conditions and increasing field measurements. The key objective is to control cable erection using cable length. A reliability analysis program was developed to assess the accuracy of the main cable installation. A case study of an actual bridge was conducted to verify the feasibility of the scheme. First, an assessment of the distribution characteristics of the random variables was performed. Subsequently, a comparative analysis was performed to evaluate the reliability of the proposed scheme against conventional erection methods. Finally, the new method was validated by on-site installation of several strands. Results revealed that while the reliability of cable formation shape was comparable between the traditional method and the proposed scheme, the latter exhibited superior uniformity of internal force among cable strands after formation. In addition, the average value of the cable length correction for Nos. 2 to 15 strands closely aligns with that of the reference strand, suggesting that the systematic error correction determined by the reference strand exhibits relatively high accuracy. Furthermore, strands erected with cable length as the control objective effectively maintained sag errors within the range of [− 4 mm, 8 mm], demonstrating a high level of precision.

Detention Properties of Subsurface Stormwater Modules Under Tropical Climate

Subsurface stormwatermodule is one of the components of a sustainable drainage system. However, the performance of subsurface stormwater module as on-site detention under tropical climate like Malaysia has not been extensively studied in the literature. The current study involves on-site installation of pilot scale subsurface stormwater modules exposed to tropical climate to simulate real conditions to evaluate the detention performance. Rainfall together with the changes in water level and volume of water detained in the installation were observed for six months between April 2021 to October 2021. The subsurface stormwater module used in the current study has a porosity of 94%. It was found that the subsurface stormwater module setup was able to detain between 35.2% to 95.6% of the rainfall volume generated from total rainfall between 11.1 mm to 56.8 mm. The findings can be used as design consideration for using subsurface stormwater module under tropical climate.

Performance Evaluation of Chiller Fault Detection and Diagnosis Using Only Field-Installed Sensors

Owing to the rapid expansion of data science, data-driven methods have emerged as a dominant trend in chiller fault detection and diagnosis (FDD). Most of these methods prioritize feature selection to achieve optimal diagnostic performance. However, on-site research indicates a common installation of a limited number of sensors, coupled with a necessity to minimize diagnostic costs. This discrepancy between existing research’s feature selection principles and the current on-site sensor installation status presents a significant challenge. To facilitate the practical implementation of data-driven methods in real chiller units, this study addresses a critical question: under the constraint of limited on-site sensor installations, what is the optimal performance achievable by data-driven methods and their improved versions? To answer this, only features derived from commonly installed sensors on field chillers are chosen as indicators for typical chiller faults. The FDD performance of six frequently used data-driven methods, namely, back-propagation neural network, convolutional neural network, support vector machine, support vector data description, Bayesian network, and random forest, along with their improved versions, is comprehensively evaluated and validated using experimental data, considering four evaluation metrics. The conclusions drawn in this paper provide valuable insights for users/manufacturers with limited or no budget, detailing the best achievable diagnostic performance for each typical fault and offering guidance for those aiming to further enhance FDD performance.

Direct Tensile Capacity of Steel-Tube Connections in a Precast Concrete Double-Wall System

This study introduces a new precast concrete (PC) double-wall system designed to simplify the complex fabrication process of existing PC double-wall systems and eliminate laitance and other defects that can occur during the manufacture of concrete panels. An experiment and finite element analysis were conducted on 11 specimens to determine the tensile resistance performance of rectangular steel tubes that maintain spacing to avoid damage to the PC panels during transportation or on-site installation. Specimens varied in terms of the end details of the rectangular steel tubes, such as the presence of welded steel plates or embedded concrete and total length in terms of whether longer or shorter specimens were used. As a result, the specimens showed a 20–30% increase in maximum tensile strength compared to the control specimen according to the end details, except for the case where side steel plates were cut and bent inward. The control specimen filled with concrete was the most suitable for connections when constructing PC double-wall systems. It has significant tensile resistance according to the experiment and finite element analysis and does not require additional construction steps or costs.

Analysis of the Impact of Government-Supplied Material Purchase Contracts with On-site Installation on Construction Market

The purchase contract for government-supplied materials, which means materials provided by the owner in public construction works, has various delivery conditions. Controversy has continued between public agencies such as the Public Procurement Service and construction contractors over the appropriateness of application of the purchase contract with on-site installation conditions, and the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) made recommendations in 2012. Nevertheless, public agencies continue to actively apply product purchase contracts with on-site installation conditions. In this study, total on-site installation related costs was defined as the sum of direct labor costs, equipment expenses, and other related interlocking costs. As a result of analyzing the total on-site installation related costs of government-supplied materials from the actual construction cost data of 25 construction works, it accounted for an average of 4.49% of the estimated price. If the ratio of 4.49% to the 37.5 trillion won estimated as the average amount of public construction projects in Korea is reflected, the annual on-site installation related costs is about 1.6838 trillion won. It can be confirmed that the proportion of on-site installation related costs of government-supplied materials in the construction market is substantially significant.

Deviation-Correcting Interface for Building-Envelope Renovation

In order to reach a Zero-Energy-consuming building stock, it is necessary to insulate and add renewable energy sources on top of existing building envelopes. Off-site prefabricated modules have been used for covering building facades, but manual on-site installation procedures are still more competitive than prefabricated ones. Renovation with prefabricated modules requires high precision in order to obtain airtight and waterproof conditions. For that, an accurate installation of the anchors on top of the facade is crucial. With current techniques, this is a time-consuming operation. One of the attempts to solve the above-mentioned issue was to place the part of the anchor on top of a building facade with high tolerances and to use an interface to correct the deviations. In previous research, this concept, named Matching Kit, was validated, but improvements needed to be made to make it more competitive. In this paper, thanks to novel algorithms and the use of Point Clouds, an improved version is presented. The results show a reduction in working time and an increase in precision. With this research, the interface is closer to being used in the construction industry.

Solar energy harvesting from the photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) pavement: Energy performance analyses and comparison considering ground influence

Under the carbon neutrality targets, the easy-installation low-investment photovoltaic (PV) technology is vital, while the limited urban rooftop area and high building façade cost limit the onsite PV installation. Thus, harvesting solar energy from the road, namely pavement-integrated photovoltaic/thermal (PIPV(T)) technology, is promising. The 2D finite element PIPV(T) models are proposed and verified through the field test within 3% (cell temperature) and 7% (PV output) mean absolute percentage error. The parametric analyses on system designs (water tank volume, water velocity, water inlet temperature), weather conditions (solar irradiance, wind velocity), and ground boundary condition influence are conducted. The water inlet temperature acts as a minor factor, while tank volume and fluid velocity are crucial, i.e., a 32.76% thermal efficiency increase for a 125 L tank volume increase. Results show that over 0.2 L/s water flow rate is recommended for a 100 L water tank, and the solar irradiance increase adds to the thermal efficiency to 41.47% under 1000 W/m2 with 11.38% ground influence. The annual system performances for southern and northern metropolises are compared, with water tank variation considered. Results show that a small water tank leads to high temperature and low system thermal efficiency at 9.3% and 12.17% in Hong Kong and Beijing.

Cost analysis of hydrogen production by high-temperature solid oxide electrolysis

We estimate construction and operation costs of gigawatt-scale solid oxide electrolysis (SOE) facilities for producing high purity hydrogen gas from water. Manufacturing and assembly costs for two types of SOE cell stacks are estimated using a detailed design for manufacture and assembly (DFMA®) analysis. Modular balance of plant (BOP) process equipment is designed and sized with Aspen®, and cost estimated using equipment vendor quotes. Factory and on-site assembly and installation costs for SOEC stack and BOP equipment integration into modular SOE process units are calculated using a simplified DFMA® method. Total stack costs on a stack input power (SIP) basis reduce to <$100/kWe DCSIP for >500 MWe DCSIP/year production rates with electrode cermet, interconnects, and high-temperature heat treatments dominating the total cost. Integration of stacks with larger BOP equipment operating at higher pressures offers ∼36% cost reduction in total facility capital cost due to an economies of physical scale effect since BOP equipment comprises >50% of facility costs. Optimized H2 prices decrease from ∼$4/kgH2 to ∼$2/kgH2 for 1 GWe DCSIP facilities using $0.025/kWh electricity price. All costs are reported in 2021 US dollars.

Methodology of fabricating 3D printing modified plastic single-layer panels with UAV positioning technology in the era of mass customization

Mass customization of prefabricated architecture is becoming increasingly crucial for developing the architectural industry. Advanced technologies such as 3D printing and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has brought opportunities and challenges for traditional fabrication and construction methodology. Based on these emerging digital design tools and intelligent construction methods, this paper presents a novel methodology for fabricating single-layer 3D printing panels using UAV positioning technology, which has the potential to revolutionize the construction process and enhance the overall efficiency. This paper first provides a comprehensive review of the existing technologies in 3D printing and UAV positioning, highlighting their benefits and limitations in the context of construction applications. Next, a step-by-step process for fabricating single-layer 3D printing panels is introduced, detailing the optimal design parameters, material selection, and printing techniques. The utilization of UAV for precise positioning and alignment of the panels is then discussed, including the development of an on-site installation for accurate control. To validate the proposed method, a construction practice of the Chengdu Agricultural Expo Centre is produced o demonstrate the promising manufacturing and installation of single-layer 3D printed panels using UAV positioning technology. The results indicate that this method significantly reduces construction time, material waste, and labour costs, while also demonstrating significant customization and design flexibility.