In day to day life the use of water has increased for domestic, industrial, agricultural purposes. Due to the rapid increase of the population and industrialization, that makes water an important resource to mankind making it essential to socio-economic sectors, this implies that any improvements regarding it's quantity is interconnected with future growth. Rainfall is a highly variable non-continuous process in space and time, the constant alteration between dry and rainy periods is called rainfall intermittency. This variation makes intermittency a difficult element to take into account in rainfall modeling. Also, this property of rainfall also plays a factor of uncertainty in forecasting. This contribution would play a role in understanding the link between intermittency and aridification, this would be vital for water limited regions, helping with hydrological forecasting and water management. Hence, due to the little progress done in literature, this could turn into a stepping stone.
Crude glycerol is the byproduct of the biodiesel production at a rate 10-20 depending on the process. As biodiesel is been pursued as strong alternative to petro-diesel due to fear of fossil fuel deletion and climate change glycerol production is at rise. Transesterification process is the most popular biodiesel production method and stochiometrically, one mole of glycerol is generated for each mole of lipid/triglyceride feedstock or per three moles of produced biodiesel. The quality and quantity of glycerol byproduct has been a burden for purification or direct combustion. Understanding the chemical and physical properties of this crude helps in proper utilization process. Thermal analysis techniques evaluate the physical and chemical properties of materials as a function of temperature or isothermally as a function of time in control conditions. The thermal behavior of pure, crude glycerol, and in comparison to diesel combustion process is investigated via thermogravimetric analysis. Results shows the single event devolatalization that emerges into combustion for the pure glycerol. The curd however was characterized with multiple events indicating its mixture status it also exhibited three combustion events. These behavior was clearly very different from diesel combustion.
In the current study, a numerical model is formulated to investigate the effects of water invasion in complex micro-channels found in sub-surface structures. The formulation is based on Level-Set Multiphase Flow model where oil displacement phenomenon is studied using external water flooding. In sub-surface flow, effects of different ratios of water volume-fraction at inlet was studied. It is found that in micro-channel for sub-surface structures, displacement efficiency in micro-channel increase with the increase of volume fraction of invading water .
Many industries are heavily dependent on fossil fuels to carry out their daily operations. As the deposits of fossil fuels deplete, the need for sustainable energy sources rises as well as the need to develop sustainable solution such as electric vehicles and drones. Companies have begun incorporating drones in their operations; from autonomous drone taxis to using drones for parcel deliveries. This work proposes an energy management system consisting of multiple energy sources integrated in a drone/robot to optimize the switching between different sources to increase the drone/robot's flight time and travel distance. Different constraints will be considered, primarily the state of charge of the batteries. The concept of scheduling components in a system to generate the optimal operating sequence could be used in many areas. By altering the inputs and constraints, this algorithm could be used to optimize the operations of electric vehicles, smart homes, and other applications.
The use of non-corrosive fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs) in reinforced concrete structures started in the 1960s as alternatives to steel reinforcements. Basalt fiber-reinforced polymers (BFRPs) have recently been introduced as new FRP bars for reinforced concrete structures. In this study, three dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) modelling is performed to evaluate the structural performance of BFRP reinforced concrete (BFRP-RC) columns subjected to eccentric loading, using Abaqus?. This paper discusses the details of the FE model created for the BFRP-RC columns, followed by the model verification and the results. The 3D FE model was verified in the light of BFRP-RC columns tested experimentally under eccentric loading. After that, a parametric study was conducted to evaluate the effects of changing longitudinal reinforcement ratio and eccentricity on the behavior of the columns. Finally, several interaction diagrams were developed for the BFRP-RC columns using the FE model.
In 2007 the government of Abu Dhabi published a plan for the year 2030, in which a thorough strategy of growth was shared, with Masdar City as a sustainable neighborhood to portray to the world what a zero-carbon emission city would look like. Nevertheless, the project has not reached the milestones at the times it was originally thought, and the transportation infrastructure has not made justice to the sustainability claims of the development. The built environment of Masdar City makes great proposals for environmentally friendly alternatives of transportation, but the isolation of the neighborhood has hindered this objective. In this research, different factors are compared to the travel mode and travel time of the people who work/study at Masdar City in order to compare the influence the neighborhood has on commute to work/studies and on nonwork or studies related travel.
The paper aims at the last mile of a business to consumer delivery system, where the parcels ordered by a consumer online are delivered at the doorstep of the customer. Currently it is estimated that on average, the Last mile can contribute more than 15 % of the total logistics costs. This can be attributed to missed deliveries, cancelled orders, fuel price hikes, constant traffic blocks, unreasonable time windows for delivery. in addition consider, that a customer order a product from two different companies. Each company will delivery separately. contributing to the environmental pollution and each has its own delivery cost. This paper proposes a consolidation in the deliveries from all the companies. A delivery box (DB) system is proposed, where several deliveries, from several companies are consolidated according to the region at the Urban consolidation centers and are then delivered to a location that is within a close range of the customer. The DBs are delivered once every day and collected back every night, the uncollected parcels are added to the pool of deliveries for the next day. hence no additional costs are incured. the proposed model should decrease the total B@C logistics costs by a high margin.
The passivating properties provided by Al2O3 layers deposited by thermal ALD on p-type crystalline silicon is presented. Minority carrier lifetimes of 8.5 ms were obtained corresponding to an SRV of 1.5 cm/s after forming gas anneal. Similar lifetimes of 8.3 ms are achieved following an anneal in air of a 25 nm thick Al2O3 film. The passivation mechanisms are studied using C-V measurements, very low density of interface traps (<1011eV>2x1012cm-2) are largely responsible for this. We have shown that the lifetime can be maintained at reasonably high values of 3.4 ms for films of 10 nm. Further reduction of the film thickness results in a large decrease in lifetime down to 0.3 ms, a study is undertaken to determine the contribution of the field effect passivation and chemical passivation respectively in these films.
Research shows that there is a great value for the alternative sources of energy that are sustainable and that are of less cost. This research is a mixed methods research that aims at evaluating the potential of success of landfill gas energy in the UAE. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with UAE families to estimate their awareness of biofuel gas energy. Researchers reviewed the literature systematically and prototyped the project of entrepreneurship in this field of industry. The aim of this research is to evaluate the readiness of UAE nationals and institutions to start this kind of alternative energy. To achieve this aim the researcher interviewed 60 respondents before and after prototyping the idea of this type of alternative energy. Researcher interviewed the decision makers in DEWA to test the acceptance of the prototype and the readiness for application.
Biomass thermal conversion is currently widely used for the production of renewable energy. The process involved high temperature processing of organic (carbonaceous) material in a controlled environment (reactor). Depending on the reactor operating condition (temperature and residence time) the process can be optimized to predominantly produce bio-gas (gasification), bio-oil (pyrolysis) or bio-char (carbonization). This study presents the details of commissioning and optimization of the biomass feeding in an augur reactor as part of a newly built lab-scale gasification/pyrolysis system. This reactor and its operating principles are less understood compared to other conventional types. The reactor feeding system comprises a biomass hopper, primary motor and screw feeder, a drop tube and a secondary motor connected to a main screw feeding directly to the heated reactor. Various biomass particle sizes and aeration gas flow rates have been tested to determine a correlation between the biomass mass flow and the motor speed (rpm). The results will be used for future mapping of the reactor performance in terms of the product yield, biomass feeding rate and particle size.
