Solving Energy Problems Research Articles

Differences and influencing factors for Chinese urban resident willingness to pay for green housings: Evidence from five first-tier cities in China

Promotion and use of green buildings is a fundamental way to improve living environments, reduce building energy consumption, and solve energy problems. A theoretical and quantitative research model of urban resident willingness to pay for green housing is constructed using China's five first-tier cities as examples, analyzing 2937 valid questionnaires. Five clear effects were identified as follows. (1) Purchase purpose was split in three dimensions: willingness to pay for economical and practical, willingness to pay for investment, and willingness to pay for comfort and pleasure. willingness to pay obstacles were divided into internal (security/functional) and external (economic/policy) risks. (2) There was no significant difference in willingness to pay for economical and practical between gender and income levels, willingness to pay for investment between marital status and family resident population, and willingness to pay for comfort between and pleasure between education, housing type, and family resident population. The willingness to pay dimension distributions varied by region and demographic characteristics, with female residents showing highest willingness to pay in all five first-tier cities, junior high school and below education status showing lowest willingness to pay. Middle income and middle managers showed the highest willingness to pay, rather than higher income or higher employment level. (3) Educational background regulates between anchoring price and resident willingness to pay. Highly educated people are not easily affected by price anchoring, and decide whether to purchase based on their understanding of the product, whereas lower educated people are more likely to be anchored and more dependent on external information when making purchasing decisions. (4) Order and effect (positive (+) or negative (−)) for significant WTP influencing factors were: group pressure (+) ＞ functional risk (−) ＞ individual attitude (+) ＞ perceived behavioral control (+) ＞ egoistic values (−) ＞ security risk (−) ＞ ecological values (+). (5) Residents were most willing to purchase three-star green housings when there was a government subsidy; in the absence of a subsidy, maximum incremental cost residents were willing to pay was 51–100 yuan/m2. Relevant policy implications are presented based on these findings.

رؤیة مستدامة للفراغ العمرانى بتفعیل تقنیات الطاقة الشمسیة (دراسة حالة مبنى دار ضیافة جامعة المنصورة)

The research problem is summarized in the lack of sustainable applied vision in the field of architecture and urbanization to improve the environmental performance of architectural spaces and existing buildings despite the fact that many of them have a non-dynamic, plastic and environmental characteristics, and a gap between the theoretical and practical aspects. The research focuses on activating solar energy techniques and their impact on solving energy problems with architectural spaces and rationalization of their consumption in existing buildings under the constraints of the status quo such as guidance and the effects of urbanization. Therefore, the research aims to study how to activate the applications of solar energy in architecture and the conclusion of design strategies and their application in a case study ( a local existing model ,the building of the guest house and conferences at Mansoura University ) and its environmental performance evaluation. By following the research methodology in the following order: • The theoretical study method through the study of architectural and architectural applications based on solar energy and its impact on the design of urban space and architectural cover (social- formally - environmentally - functionally). • Then the analytical approach to study and analyze a project that uses solar energy techniques in the design of the urban vacuum to produce design strategies that achieve a balance between sustainable environmental thought and architectural and architectural creativity. • The case study methodology was used to conduct an applied study of the design strategies derived on the building of Mansoura University Guest House, up to proposals and a design model that achieves an improvement in the environmental performance of the building and its measurements.

Research progress on non-fullerene receptor in organic solar cell

Organic solar cell was one of important means to solve energy problem and the electron receptor material was limited to the fields of fullerene and its derivatives; scientists were forced to seek new receptor materials due to the problems such as narrow spectral absorption, poor solubility, high cost and unfriendly environment during production process, etc. Attention of scientists has been drawn to non-fullerene electron receptor material in recent years. Widely application of non-fullerene receptor materials in the field of organic solar cell was decided by its features such as wide spectral absorption, good solubility, controllable structure and easy processing, etc. The field progress of receptor material of non-fullerene organic solar cell has been summarized in recent years and its future development is discussed.

Накопичена енергія в мортмасі березових насаджень Чернігівщини

Rapid industrial development, the growth of the population on the planet and the reduction of fossil energy resources over the past century have led to an unstable supply of energy resources in most countries of the world. Under these conditions, the European Commission plans to increase the share of renewable energy to 30 % over the next half century. Today in Ukraine there are several sources of obtaining energy wood raw materials. First of all, it is fuel wood, chipped residue and wood that has not been removed from the forest. There are two main areas of bioenergy: the energy of the ecosystem and the energy that is concentrated in wood and can be used as fuel. In our research, the forest litter of the bedding refers to the direction of "energy of the ecosystem", and the mortmass snags , logs , and branches to the components that can be used by man as an additional source of energy. Establishing the amount of energy accumulated in the forest ecosystem is possible, first of all, due to the estimation of phytomass and mortmass plantings. It is known that the first attempts of such studies were performed by simple extrapolation of phytomass estimation data on selected test areas to significant forest regions with significant overestimation of results. The most tested at the present stage of the study of the features of the accumulation of living organic matter in forest systems are the methods associated with the evaluation of relevant indicators through the regression modeling of the components of fractions in absolute values or using transfer coefficients. The purpose of the study is to establish quantitative indices of accumulated energy in mortmass of birch forestry. Material and methods of research. In order to determine the components of the above ground mortmass, 30 temporary trial areas were laid in modal birches of in Chernihiv region. On each test area, an estimation of the classical inventory indices of the planting, also the established reserves, the structure of phytomass and mortmass. To calculate the components of mortmass, data from a solid list of trunks on the temporary trial areas and biometric parameters of model trees using the PERTA software were used. To determine the area of birch forestry in the Chernihiv region, data from the production association «Ukrderzhlisproekt» (2011) database was used. Conclusions According to the results of the research, the energy content of the dry mortmass snags of birch trees, which varies from 3,9 GJ·ha -1 to 108 GJ·ha -1 , in dry branches from 17,6 GJ·ha -1 to 12,5 GJ·ha -1 . The energy content of the mortmass logs can vary from 1,1 GJ·ha -1 to 103 GJ·ha -1 , in the mortmass of rough branches it changes from 0,5 GJ·ha -1 in young to 26 GJ·ha -1 in ripe birch forestry. Thus, the obtained results will contribute to the practical implementation of the development of bioenergy in Ukraine as one of the most promising directions for solving energy problems, and the developed reference materials can be used during scientific, ecological, forestry substantiation of the expanded use of forest energy resources of birch laying in Chernihiv region. Key words: snags , logs , branches, forest litter, average diameter, average height, basic density, classes of destruction

Use of MCDM techniques for energy policy and decision-making problems: A review

Energy consumption increases all over the world as a result of industrialization in recent years. In this context, it has become important to meet increasing energy demand. It is significant to find alternative energy sources because of limited nonrenewable energy sources such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas. At this point, renewable energy sources have an important role to meet energy requirement. As a result, decision and policy making for energy is completely critical issue for countries. Various technical, economic, environmental, and social criteria are used to solve energy policy and decision-making problems such as evaluation of energy projects, selection among energy alternatives, power plant site selection, and determining energy policy. Multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methods are used as effective tools to help decision makers while solving energy problems. There are a large number of studies including articles, conference papers, and book chapters, which examine energy problems by using MCDM methods in the literature. Therefore, analyzing these studies according to different features such as publication year, MCDM method, document type, statistical analyses, country, and published journal can be beneficial for leading researchers who study in energy decision-making field. In this study, published papers, which use traditional MCDM methods to handle energy problems, are examined systematically. By the way, it is aimed to lead to researchers regarding MCDM methods which are utilized in energy applications. It also conducted some statistical analyses to obtain trends between years and MCDM methods. Besides, recent developments in energy field are presented through this comprehensive literature review.

Thermal hydraulic analysis of water cooled blanket under transient condition

Nuclear fusion is known as the most effective way in the future to solve energy problems. And blanket is the key component to achieve the function of energy transfer. In a fusion reactor, the fusion reaction produces high energy neutrons, and the blanket is designed to slow and absorb neutrons in a reliable and efficient manner. Energy absorbed from the fast neutrons is extracted and passed into the primary coolant in the blanket. Hence, the design of the blanket will strongly affect the operating power and the safety of fusion reactors. It is significant to analyze the hydraulic properties and heat transfer properties of the blanket.The object of this study is a water cooled blanket within conceptual design. In the first place, the original complicated design of the blanket is simplified reasonably. Then, RELAP5 is adopted to analyze the thermal hydraulic properties in steady state of the blanket under 100% power level. The system pressure drop along the flow and the temperatures of water, channel wall and blanket structure were discussed. After that, this study analyzed the transient response characteristics of the blanket under transient condition.The results of this study turn out that, under transient condition, the blanket of current design cannot keep safety. To ensure the normal operation of fusion reactors in the future, the current design should be improved.

Basic Technologies and Equipment Used for Peat Deposits Development in Foreign Countries

The article discusses the perspectives of the use of peat to solve several issues. First, there are prospects of using peat fuel for solving energy problems. Second, there is a need to use peat processing products for increasing soil fertility and combating desertification of territories. The author considers a possible solution of the problem of utilization of livestock wastes together with the obtaining of peat composts. The objective prerequisites for increasing the volume of peat extraction in the Russian Federation are given. The article discusses features of the main technologies for the extraction of milled and sod peat. The interrelation of the technology of peat harvesting with the technology of its further processing is substantiated. A limited amount of technological equipment produced in Russia causes the need for its importing. The paper overviews the main peat extraction technologies used in Western Europe and Canada. An analysis of the features of technological processes related to the characteristics of raw materials and the needs of the market is made. The tendencies in development of production of technological equipment are considered. Currently, it is recommended to use mixed sets of technological equipment of various manufacturers.

Financial Development, Economic Growth and Energy Consumption Nexus in Cote d’Ivoire

This paper examines the relationship between financial development, economic growth and energy consumption in Cote d’Ivoire over the period 1971-2011. To do so, the study first built a synthetic indicator of financial development through the principal component analysis technique (PCA) and used four energy sources such as electric power consumption, electricity production from renewable sources, electricity production from oil sources and electricity production from hydroelectric sources. Then, employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration, we find that there is a long run relationship between financial development, economic growth and energy consumption sources. Furthermore, the results of the vector error correction models (VECM) reveal unidirectional causality running from financial development to energy consumption sources, bidirectional causality between economic growth and energy consumption and unidirectional causality from financial development to economic growth in the long run. The mixed results are due to the use of different proxies for energy consumption. Accordingly, this paper recommends that policy makers should solicit the support of financial sector in order to solve energy problems and further the diversification of the energy consumption sources since financial development has a positive effect on energy consumption in long run. Moreover, government should develop public-private partnership (PPP) to stimulate economic growth, improve the access to energy and maintain a sustainable development in Cote d’Ivoire.

Plywood production wastes to energy

Wood and by-products of its processing are a renewable energy source with carbon neutral and may be used in solving energy problems. ZAO «Arkhangelsk plywood factory» installed and put into operation the boiler with capacity of 22 MW (saturated steam of 1.2 MPa) to reduce the cost of thermal energy, the impact of environmental factors on stability of the company’s development and for reduction of harmful emissions into the environment. Fuel for boiler is the mixture consists of chip plywood, birch bark, wood sanding dust (WSD) and sawdust of the plywood processing. The components of the fuel mixture significantly differ in thermotechnical characteristics and technological parameters but especially in size composition. Particle dimensions in the fuel mixture differ by more than a thousand times which makes it «unique» and very difficult to ensure the effective and non-explosive use. WSD and sawdust from line of cutting of plywood are small fraction material and relate to IV group of explosion. Criterion of explosive for them has great values (КfWSD=10.85; Кfsaw=9.66). Boiler’s furnace equipped with reciprocating grate where implemented a three-stage scheme of combustion. For a comprehensive survey of the effectiveness of installed equipment was analyzed the design features of the boiler, defined the components of thermal balance, studied nitrogen oxide emissions, carbon and particulate matter with the determination of soot emissions. Amount of solid particles depending on their shape and size was analyzed.

Invasion of privacy by smart meters: An analysis of consumer concerns

ABSTRACTWhile smart meters offer an innovative way to solve energy problems, they have also brought concerns regarding consumer privacy. In this study, we develop an instrument to measure the consumers’ concerns for information privacy (CFIP) in adopting smart meters, and propose a conceptual model to examine the relationship between privacy concerns, trusting beliefs, risk beliefs, and intention to adopt smart meters. Using both focus group study and survey methods, we show that CFIP can be measured by three dimensions: collection, secondary use, and improper access, and that the effect of CFIP on behavioral intention is fully mediated by risk beliefs.

Enlightenment of Foreign Energy Education on China's Energy Education

As a response to energy crisis in many developed countries, the energy education has been accommodated in their energy and educational undertakings, and these countries vigorously promote the development of energy education. With the rapid development of China's economy and social transformation, the domestic energy problem is increasingly prominent, in order to build an economical society, we need to take the initiative to strengthen the energy saving, it is necessary for us to learn the experience of solving energy problems from developed countries, and vigorously develop energy education undertakings, in view of this, the author puts forward some suggestions for the development of energy education in China.

An Algebraic Approach to Energy Problems II — The Algebra of Energy Functions

Energy and resource management problems are important in areas such as embedded systems or autonomous systems. They are concerned with the question whether a given system admits infinite schedules during which certain tasks can be repeatedly accomplished and the system never runs out of energy (or other resources). In order to develop a general theory of energy problems, we introduce energy automata: finite automata whose transitions are labeled with energy functions which specify how energy values change from one system state to another. We show that energy functions form a *-continuous Kleene ω-algebra, as an application of a general result that finitely additive, locally *-closed and T-continuous functions on complete lattices form *-continuous Kleene ω-algebras. This permits to solve energy problems in energy automata in a generic, algebraic way. In order to put our work in context, we also review extensions of energy problems to higher dimensions and to games.

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Nanotechnology Innovations & Business Opportunities in Renewable Energy Sector

Nanotechnology, being anticipated general purpose breakthrough technology of 21st century, has potential to solve problems related to human civilizations pertaining to both basic needs and aspirations for comfort life. Out of basic needs of human which include food, drinking water, energy, cloth, shelter, health and clean environment, perhaps, solving energy problem by providing a way to generating, storing, and converting it to required form at any time and any amount of time called ‘ubiquitous energy’ is the opportunity and the challenge for scientific world and for human prosperity. In this paper, we have discussed the challenges and opportunities of nanotechnology innovations and business opportunities in energy sector. The nanotechnology impact on seven areas of energy sector including solar energy, wind energy, nuclear energy, oil-fuel based energy, artificial photosynthesis, energy storage and effective energy management to promote nanotechnology based energy as ubiquitous energy are discussed and reviewed.The paper includes possible innovations and research opportunities in nano-modified solar cells, Nano-influenced Fuel storage cells, and nanotech based artificial photosynthesis. We have also used ABCD analysis to discuss the business opportunities by studying the advantages, benefits, constraints and disadvantages of nanotechnology based energy solutions. Finally, a futuristic possible solution is proposed for the problem of how to solve ever demanding energy crisis using Molecular Nanotechnology model.

Nanotechnology Innovations & Business Opportunities in Renewable Energy Sector

Nanotechnology, being anticipated general purpose breakthrough technology of 21st century, has potential to solve problems related to human civilizations pertaining to both basic needs and aspirations for comfort life. Out of basic needs of human which include food, drinking water, energy, cloth, shelter, health and clean environment, perhaps, solving energy problem by providing a way to generating, storing, and converting it to required form at any time and any amount of time called ‘ubiquitous energy’ is the opportunity and the challenge for scientific world and for human prosperity. In this paper, we have discussed the challenges and opportunities of nanotechnology innovations and business opportunities in energy sector. The nanotechnology impact on seven areas of energy sector including solar energy, wind energy, nuclear energy, oil-fuel based energy, artificial photosynthesis, energy storage and effective energy management to promote nanotechnology based energy as ubiquitous energy are discussed and reviewed.The paper includes possible innovations and research opportunities in nano-modified solar cells, Nano-influenced Fuel storage cells, and nanotech based artificial photosynthesis. We have also used ABCD analysis to discuss the business opportunities by studying the advantages, benefits, constraints and disadvantages of nanotechnology based energy solutions. Finally, a futuristic possible solution is proposed for the problem of how to solve ever demanding energy crisis using Molecular Nanotechnology model.

바이오매스 폐기물의 에탄올 생산 공정의 기술경제성 평가

Extensive efforts from all over the world have been made to solve energy problems, such as high oil prices, global warning due to the depletion of oil. Among them, biofuel has been drawing attention as a clean energy, which can replace fossil fuels. However, conventional biofuels were often converted from eatable biomass such as sugar cane, corn and soy which should be replaced with uneatable biomass. In this study, a techno-economical evaluation of the gasification of biomass waste with mixed alcohol synthesis process was performed. Considering available domestic biomass wastes, a 2000 ton/day conversion plant were assumed to produce 533000 L/day ethanol. Also, financial data from previous studies were evaluated and used and economical sensitivities with various operation conditions were established. Economic analysis were conducted by the payback period and internal rate of return (IRR) and net present value (NPV). Sensitivity analyses of raw material costs, initial investment, the major process cost, ethanol price changes and operating costs were all performed.

Graphene enabled all-weather solar cells for electricity harvest from sun and rain

Graphene enabled all-weather solar cells can generate electricity from both sunlight and raindrops, making them promising for solving energy problems.

Energy potentials of military buildings

The economic crisis, extremely large budgets for providing necessary energy and the adopted legislation in the field of energy impose the necessity of finding and implementing positive solutions in order to achieve a proper and desirable degree of energy efficiency. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of the prescribed legislation in the field of energy - energy efficiency as well as the analysis of the reports on problems in construction engineering and projects used to solve energy problems in buildings. To obtain preliminary data of the financial effects of the implementation of positive solutions for improving the energy efficiency of buildings, a non-professional software package was used and the results obtained were within the framework of the national average for buildings of the same age. The structural characteristics of a building in question and its geographical location point to its specific potential for using renewable energy sources. The paper has shown that there is a legal obligation for the energy retrofit of a building used by the Army of Serbia as well as preliminary economic effects of the energy retrofit project realization and utilization of renewable energy sources.

Financially Stricken China's Environment and Energy Problems: A Comparison of Japan and China

China has now emerged into the world's largest consumer of energy that might account for a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, it tugs on the global energy market and may draw out vast results from introducing energy. In order to solve the various energy problems, it is important above all things for China to maintain good relations in common with the other countries of the world diplomatically, economically and socially. It may be said that the stability of international relations and characteristic openness of using energy domestically is the first step to solving energy problems. In fact, there are many places that are not sufficiently maintained in the global energy market. In order to maintain such, should the world not be expecting China to pour out its power? This issue goes beyond Japan and China, but the whole world needs to deal with.

Solution Offers For Efficiency and Savings in Industrial Plants

Energy consumption has become an important problem with the rapid energy consumption today. Industrial enterprises who have the largest share in the energy consumption are the consumers who have the biggest problem. Turkey is foreign-dependent in energy production and try to find energy by spending billions of dollars, and its energy need continues to increase. In this context, the most urgent and important thing is energy efficiency. In industrial enterprises, energy efficiency studies to decrease foreign-dependency for energy are dealt. Energy saving studies will be useful as industrial companies are designed without making required feasibility study. Our country will both solve energy problems and increase its competency power with other countries with the serious energy policies in this field. So, studies on important energy saving clues and solutions in compressors, electric motors, pumps and lightening which mostly use energy are done