Renewable Energy Resources and Technologies
Setare Peirow; Fatemeh Razi Astaraei; Amir Ali Saifoddin; Hossein Yousefi
Abstract
The issue of power supply in hospitals is of special importance because of its direct effect on people's health conditions and vital treatment and care measures. Hospitals are among buildings with high energy consumption. The possibility of using renewable sources in their energy supply is one of the ...
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The issue of power supply in hospitals is of special importance because of its direct effect on people's health conditions and vital treatment and care measures. Hospitals are among buildings with high energy consumption. The possibility of using renewable sources in their energy supply is one of the issues and challenges that specialists encounter. This paper discusses the possibility of installing a small solar power generation unit on a hospital rooftop to improve the quality of power supply systems. The case study is a hospital located in Tehran, Iran. For this purpose, the hospital energy system was modeled with the Design-Builder software. The obtained results were validated based on the actual consumption of the model specified in the hospital energy bills. According to the modeling step results, the annual consumption of the current energy system was 3.08 GWh of electricity and 4.23 GWh of gas. In the second step, a renewable power generation unit consisting of photovoltaic panels and battery was designed for the hospital's roof using PVsyst software. The designed power generation unit could produce 132 MWh of solar energy per year, of which 85 MWh may be sold to the main grid. The techno-economic and environmental feasibility study for the proposed system was performed using HOMER Pro software. The evaluation results revealed that considering the 20-year lifetime of the project, the proposed system achieved a lower energy cost and lower net present cost than the current system. Environmental assessment of the model by considering emission penalty indicated that the proposed system emitted fewer pollutant gases into the environment than the current system. Sensitivity analysis was also applied to investigate the effect of discounting and diesel fuel price variation on the system’s energy cost. According to the results, a 4 % increase in the discount rate leads to a 14 % growth in the cost of energy for the project. Also, there was a direct relation between enhancement of the expected inflation rate and raising the net present cost of the project.
Renewable Energy Economics, Policies and Planning
Ali Khatibi; Mohammad Hossein Jahangir; Fatemeh Razi Astaraiea
Abstract
Land-use change is one of the most important spatial phenomena that can affect the usage of energy technologies. In this study, land-use change in barren and residential areas in Alborz province in Iran was modeled using the cellular automata combined with the Markov Chain from 2001 to 2031. Due to adaptability ...
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Land-use change is one of the most important spatial phenomena that can affect the usage of energy technologies. In this study, land-use change in barren and residential areas in Alborz province in Iran was modeled using the cellular automata combined with the Markov Chain from 2001 to 2031. Due to adaptability to the environmental considerations, all protected areas were removed from the study area. Then, an economical and performance-based optimization model was developed; then, by using the status of the two land-use classes in 2031, an optimum scenario was identified for generating solar electricity. Based on the results, the optimum scenario involves installing distributed photovoltaic modules in 18.37 % of residential areas and setting up concentrated solar systems in 0.74 % of barren areas, simultaneously. Economic investigation of the optimum scenario showed that although there were some environmental and political benefits for using the solar electricity such as reduction of air pollutants and more energy safety, the optimum scenario will be costly and non-economical without the government’s financial supports.
Environmental Impacts and Sustainability
Sepideh Abedia; Fatemeh Razi Astaraiea; Barat Ghobadian; Omid Tavakoli; Hassan Jalili
Abstract
Nowadays, the replacement of renewable energies such as biofuels is one of the main priorities in environmental programming and investments. This study is based on sustainable strategy towards integrating algal biomass generation as a green feedstock with wastewater treatment, CO2 bio-fixation, and bioenergy ...
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Nowadays, the replacement of renewable energies such as biofuels is one of the main priorities in environmental programming and investments. This study is based on sustainable strategy towards integrating algal biomass generation as a green feedstock with wastewater treatment, CO2 bio-fixation, and bioenergy production. Therefore, the performance of Trichormus variabilis in biomass production together with ammonium and phosphate removal from an actual effluent obtained from a mixed wastewater streams has been investigated using two mixing methods under aeration and agitation conditions. Dilutions of 10 %, 20 %, 40 %, 60 %, 90 % and 100 % (v/v) were used for growth evaluation. The results showed that the bubbled air effectively enhances the biomass productivity. However, the agitation system was suggested to cultivate the algae in the wastewater due to the elimination of possible mechanical stimulation stress on cells. Moreover, high pH levels (pH>8) indicated a negative inhibitory effect on growth. Thus, unexpected inhibitory impacts were removed through providing the wastewater dilutions mixed with BG11 culture medium, which contains essential required nutrients, to support the algal growth in the wastewater, adjust pH and remove the mechanical stress induced by bubbling compressed air. The results with respect to investigating the effect of the inoculums and wastewater concentrations on the biomass production suggested that the highest biomass generates with 30 mg.mL-1 inoculum in 40 % mixed wastewater diluted by the BG11 medium having the highest potential in CO2 bio-fixation of 9.19±0.64 g.L-1. The results of the wastewater analysis demonstrated the removal potential of ~43 % and ~75 % for NH4+ and PO43−, respectively. The generated biomass after phycoremediation and CO2 bio-fixation can be effectively utilized in different types of biofuel production.
