Viability Analysis of the Use of Solar Energy for Water Heating in Brazil

The sun is an inexhaustible source and harness its potential both for heating and power generation is one of the most promising and necessary alternatives, mainly due to environmental issues. However, it should be noted that this has always been present in the generation of energy on earth, only indirectly, since it is responsible for virtually all other energy sources, such as generating source of evaporation of the water cycle, allowing the impoundment and the consequent generation of electricity (hydroelectric power); winds are caused by atmospheric induction caused by large scale solar radiation; petroleum, coal and natural gas were generated from waste plants and animals that originally derived energy required for their development of solar radiation. This paper presents a study on the feasibility of using solar energy for water heating in homes. A simplified methodology developed for formulation of solar heating operation model of water in alternative systems of solar energy in Brazil, and compared it to that in the international market. Across this research, it was possible to create new paradigms for alternative applications to the use of solar energy.

Knowledge and Eating Behavior of Teenage Pregnancy

The purposed of this research was to study the eating habit of teenage pregnancy and its relationship to the knowledge of nutrition during pregnancy. The 100 samples were derived from simple random sampling technique of the teenage pregnancy in Bangkae District. The questionnaire was used to collect data with the reliability of 0.8. The data were analyzed by SPSS for Windows with multiple regression technique. Percentage, mean and the relationship of knowledge of eating and eating behavior were obtained. The research results revealed that their knowledge in nutrition was at the average of 4.07 and their eating habit that they mentioned most was to refrain from alcohol and caffeine at 82% and the knowledge in nutrition influenced their eating habits at 54% with the statistically significant level of 0.001.

Aerodynamic Models for the Analysis of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs)

This paper details the progress made in the development of the different state-of-the-art aerodynamic tools for the analysis of vertical axis wind turbines including the flow simulation around the blade, viscous flow, stochastic wind, and dynamic stall effects. The paper highlights the capabilities of the developed wind turbine aerodynamic codes over the last thirty years which are currently being used in North America and Europe by Sandia Laboratories, FloWind, IMST Marseilles, and Hydro-Quebec among others. The aerodynamic codes developed at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada, represent valuable tools for simulating the flow around wind turbines including secondary effects. Comparison of theoretical results with experimental data have shown good agreement. The strength of the aerodynamic codes based on Double-Multiple Stream tube model (DMS) lies in its simplicity, accuracy, and ability to analyze secondary effects that interfere with wind turbine aerodynamic calculations.

The Effects of Spatial Dimensions and Relocation and Dimensions of Sound Absorbers in a Space on the Objective Parameters of Sound

This study investigated the differences in the objective parameters of sound depending on the changes in the lengths of the lateral surfaces of a space and on the replacement of the sound absorbers that are placed on these surfaces. To this end, three models of room were chosen. The widths and heights of these rooms were the same but the lengths of the rooms were changed. The smallest room was 8 m. wide and 10 m. long. The lengths of the other two rooms were 15 m. and 20 m. For each model, the differences in the objective parameters of sound were determined by keeping all the material in the space intact and by changing only the positions of the sound absorbers that were placed on the walls. The sound absorbers that were used on the walls were of two different sizes. The sound absorbers that were placed on the walls were 4 m and 8 m. long and story-height (3 m.). In all model room types, the sound absorbers were placed on the long walls in three different ways: at the end of the long walls where the long walls meet the front wall; at the end of the long walls where the long walls meet the back wall; and in the middle part of the long walls. Except for the specially placed sound absorbers, the ground, wall and ceiling surfaces were covered with three different materials. There were no constructional elements such as doors and windows on the walls. On the surfaces, the materials specified in the Odeon 10 material library were used as coating material. Linoleum was used as flooring material, painted plaster as wall coating material and gypsum boards as ceiling covering (2 layers with a total of 32 mm. thickness). These were preferred due to the fact that they are the commonly used materials for these purposes. This study investigated the differences in the objective parameters of sound depending on the changes in the lengths of the lateral surfaces of a space and on the replacement of the sound absorbers that are placed on these surfaces. To this end, three models of room were chosen. The widths and heights of these rooms were the same but the lengths of the rooms were changed. The smallest room was 8 m. wide and 10 m. long. The lengths of the other two rooms were 15 m. and 20 m. For each model, the differences in the objective parameters of sound were determined by keeping all the material in the space intact and by changing only the positions of the sound absorbers that were placed on the walls. The sound absorbers that were used on the walls were of two different sizes. The sound absorbers that were placed on the walls were 4 m and 8 m. long and story-height (3 m.). In all model room types, the sound absorbers were placed on the long walls in three different ways: at the end of the long walls where the long walls meet the front wall; at the end of the long walls where the long walls meet the back wall; and in the middle part of the long walls. Except for the specially placed sound absorbers, the ground, wall and ceiling surfaces were covered with three different materials. There were no constructional elements such as doors and windows on the walls. On the surfaces, the materials specified in the Odeon 10 material library were used as coating material. Linoleum was used as flooring material, painted plaster as wall coating material and gypsum boards as ceiling covering (2 layers with a total of 32 mm. thickness). These were preferred due to the fact that they are the commonly used materials for these purposes.

Effect of Orientation of the Wall Window on Energy Saving under Clear Sky Conditions

In this paper, an attempt has been made to analyze the effect of wall window orientation on Daylight Illuminance Ratio (DIR) and energy saving in a building known as “SODHA BERS COMPLEX (SBC)” at Varanasi, UP, India. The building has been designed incorporating all passive concepts for thermal comfort as well daylighting concepts to maximize the use of natural daylighting for the occupants in the day to day activities. The annual average DIR and the energy saving has been estimated by using the DIR model for wall window with different orientations under clear sky condition. It has been found that for south oriented window the energy saving per square meter is more compared to the other orientations due to the higher level of solar insolation for the south window in northern hemisphere whereas energy saving potential is minimum for north oriented wall window. The energy saving potential was 26%, 81% and 51% higher for east, south and west oriented window in comparison to north oriented window. The average annual DIR has same trends of variation as the annual energy saving and it is maximum for south oriented window and minimum for north oriented window.

Maintenance Alternatives Related to Costs of Wind Turbines Using Finite State Markov Model

The cumulative costs for O&M may represent as much as 65%-90% of the turbine's investment cost. Nowadays the cost effectiveness concept becomes a decision-making and technology evaluation metric. The cost of energy metric accounts for the effect replacement cost and unscheduled maintenance cost parameters. One key of the proposed approach is the idea of maintaining the WTs which can be captured via use of a finite state Markov chain. Such a model can be embedded within a probabilistic operation and maintenance simulation reflecting the action to be done. In this paper, an approach of estimating the cost of O&M is presented. The finite state Markov model is used for decision problems with number of determined periods (life cycle) to predict the cost according to various options of maintenance.

Computer-Assisted Management of Building Climate and Microgrid with Model Predictive Control

With 40% of total world energy consumption, building systems are developing into technically complex large energy consumers suitable for application of sophisticated power management approaches to largely increase the energy efficiency and even make them active energy market participants. Centralized control system of building heating and cooling managed by economically-optimal model predictive control shows promising results with estimated 30% of energy efficiency increase. The research is focused on implementation of such a method on a case study performed on two floors of our faculty building with corresponding sensors wireless data acquisition, remote heating/cooling units and central climate controller. Building walls are mathematically modeled with corresponding material types, surface shapes and sizes. Models are then exploited to predict thermal characteristics and changes in different building zones. Exterior influences such as environmental conditions and weather forecast, people behavior and comfort demands are all taken into account for deriving price-optimal climate control. Finally, a DC microgrid with photovoltaics, wind turbine, supercapacitor, batteries and fuel cell stacks is added to make the building a unit capable of active participation in a price-varying energy market. Computational burden of applying model predictive control on such a complex system is relaxed through a hierarchical decomposition of the microgrid and climate control, where the former is designed as higher hierarchical level with pre-calculated price-optimal power flows control, and latter is designed as lower level control responsible to ensure thermal comfort and exploit the optimal supply conditions enabled by microgrid energy flows management. Such an approach is expected to enable the inclusion of more complex building subsystems into consideration in order to further increase the energy efficiency.

Estimate of Maximum Expected Intensity of One-Half-Wave Lines Dancing

In this paper, the regression dependence of dancing intensity from wind speed and length of span was established due to the statistic data obtained from multi-year observations on line wires dancing accumulated by power systems of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. The lower and upper limitations of the equations parameters were estimated, as well as the adequacy of the regression model. The constructed model will be used in research of dancing phenomena for the development of methods and means of protection against dancing and for zoning plan of the territories of line wire dancing.

Power Performance Improvement of 500W Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Salient Design Parameters

This paper presents the performance characteristics of Darrieus-type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) with NACA airfoil blades. The performance of Darrieus-type VAWT can be characterized by torque and power. There are various parameters affecting the performance such as chord length, helical angle, pitch angle and rotor diameter. To estimate the optimum shape of Darrieustype wind turbine in accordance with various design parameters, we examined aerodynamic characteristics and separated flow occurring in the vicinity of blade, interaction between flow and blade, and torque and power characteristics derived from it. For flow analysis, flow variations were investigated based on the unsteady RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes) equation. Sliding mesh algorithm was employed in order to consider rotational effect of blade. To obtain more realistic results we conducted experiment and numerical analysis at the same time for three-dimensional shape. In addition, several parameters (chord length, rotor diameter, pitch angle, and helical angle) were considered to find out optimum shape design and characteristics of interaction with ambient flow. Since the NACA airfoil used in this study showed significant changes in magnitude of lift and drag depending on an angle of attack, the rotor with low drag, long cord length and short diameter shows high power coefficient in low tip speed ratio (TSR) range. On the contrary, in high TSR range, drag becomes high. Hence, the short-chord and long-diameter rotor produces high power coefficient. When a pitch angle at which airfoil directs toward inside equals to -2° and helical angle equals to 0°, Darrieus-type VAWT generates maximum power.

Healing Performances: Ethnographic Concepts and Emic Perspectives

This paper looks at healing performances as ethnographic expressions of local knowledge and culture embedded within the Malay psyche and gemeinschaft. As society develops and progresses, these healing performances are caught within conflicting trajectories which become compounded by the contestations of tradition, religious concerns, locality and modernity. As exemplifications of the Malay ethos, these performances practice common rituals, cater to the innate needs of the practitioners and serve the targeted, closed, local community. This paper traces the ethnographic methods in documenting these practices as rituals of healing in a post-modern world. It delineates the ethnographic concepts used to analyze these rituals, and to semiotically read the varied binarial oppositions and juxtapositions. The paper concludes by highlighting the reconciliatory processes involved in maintaining these ritual performances as exemplifications of the Malay ethos playing an important role in the re-aligning, re-balancing and healing of the Malay community’s psyche.

Hydrodynamic Performance of a Moored Barge in Irregular Wave

Motion response of floating structures is of great concern in marine engineering. Nonlinearity is an inherent property of any floating bodies subjected to irregular waves. These floating structures are continuously subjected to environmental loadings from wave, current, wind etc. This can result in undesirable motions of the vessel which may challenge the operability. For a floating body to remain in its position, it should be able to induce a restoring force when displaced. Mooring is provided to enable this restoring force. This paper discusses the hydrodynamic performance and motion characteristics of an 8 point spread mooring system applied to a pipe laying barge operating in the West African sea. The modelling of the barge is done using a computer aided-design (CAD) software RHINOCEROS. Irregular waves are generated using a suitable wave spectrum. Both frequency domain and time domain analysis is done. Numerical simulations based on potential theory are carried out to find the responses and hydrodynamic performance of the barge in both free floating as well as moored conditions. Initially, potential flow frequency domain analysis is done to obtain the Response Amplitude Operator (RAO) which gives an idea about the structural motion in free floating state. RAOs for different wave headings are analyzed. In the following step, a time domain analysis is carried out to obtain the responses of the structure in the moored condition. In this study, wave induced motions are only taken into consideration. Wind and current loads are ruled out and shall be included in further studies. For the current study, 2000 seconds simulation is taken. The results represent wave induced motion responses, mooring line tensions and identify critical mooring lines.

Seismic Assessment of an Existing Dual System RC Buildings in Madinah City

A 15-storey RC building, studied in this paper, is representative of modern building type constructed in Madina City in Saudi Arabia before 10 years ago. These buildings are almost consisting of reinforced concrete skeleton i.e. columns, beams and flat slab as well as shear walls in the stairs and elevator areas arranged in the way to have a resistance system for lateral loads (wind – earthquake loads). In this study, the dynamic properties of the 15-storey RC building were identified using ambient motions recorded at several, spatially-distributed locations within each building. Three dimensional pushover analysis (Nonlinear static analysis) was carried out using SAP2000 software incorporating inelastic material properties for concrete, infill and steel. The effect of modeling the building with and without infill walls, on the performance point as well as capacity and demand spectra due to EQ design spectrum function in Madina area has been investigated. ATC- 40 capacity and demand spectra are utilized to get the modification factor (R) for the studied building. The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate the expected performance of structural systems by estimating, strength and deformation demands in design, and comparing these demands to available capacities at the performance levels of interest. The results are summarized and discussed.

Aerodynamic Study of Vehicle Wind Tunnel and Water Tunnel for Analysis of Bodies

The simulation in wind tunnel is used thoroughly to model real situations of drainages of air. Besides the automotive industry, a great number of applications can be numbered: dispersion of pollutant, studies of pedestrians’ comfort, and dispersion of particles. This work had the objective of visualizing the characteristics aerodynamics of two automobiles in different ways. To accomplish that drainage of air a fan that generated a speed exists (measured with anemometer of hot thread) of 4,1m/s and 4,95m/s. To visualize the path of the air through the cars, in the wind tunnel, smoke was used, obtained with it burns of vegetable oil. For “to do smoke” vegetable oil was used, that was burned for a tension of 20V generated by a thread of 2,5mm. The cars were placed inside of the wind tunnel with the drainage of “air-smoke” and photographed, registering like this the path lines around them, in the 3 different speeds.

Wind Tunnel for Aerodynamic Development Testing

The study of the aerodynamics related to the improvement in the acting of airplanes and automobiles with the objective of being reduced the effect of the attrition of the air on structures, providing larger speeds and smaller consumption of fuel. The application of the knowledge of the aerodynamics not more limits to the aeronautical and automobile industries. Therefore, this research aims to design and construction of a wind tunnel to perform aerodynamic analysis in bodies of cars, seeking greater efficiency. Therefore, this research aims to design and construction of a wind tunnel to perform aerodynamic analysis in bodies of cars, seeking greater efficiency. For this, a methodology for wind tunnel type selection is designed to be built, taking into account the various existing configurations in which chose to build an open circuit tunnel, due to the lower complexity of construction and installation; operational simplicity and low cost. The guidelines for the project were teaching: the layer that limits study and analyze specimens with different geometries. For the variation of pressure in the test, section of a switched gauge used a pitot tube. Thus, it was possible to obtain quantitative and qualitative results, which proved to be satisfactory.

Wall Pressure Fluctuations in Naturally Developing Boundary Layer Flows on Axisymmetric Bodies

This paper investigates the characteristics of wall pressure fluctuations in naturally developing boundary layer flows on axisymmetric bodies experimentally. The axisymmetric body has a modified ellipsoidal blunt nose. Flush-mounted microphones are used to measure the wall pressure fluctuations in the boundary layer flow over the body. The measurements are performed in a low noise wind tunnel. It is found that the correlation between the flow regime and the characteristics of the pressure fluctuations is distinct. The process from small fluctuation in laminar flow to large fluctuation in turbulent flow is investigated. Tollmien-Schlichting wave (T-S wave) is found to generate and develop in transition. Because of the T-S wave, the wall pressure fluctuations in the transition region are higher than those in the turbulent boundary layer.

An Integrated CFD and Experimental Analysis on Double-Skin Window

Result from the constant dwindle in natural resources, the alternative way to reduce the costs in our daily life would be urgent to be found in the near future. As the ancient technique based on the theory of solar chimney since roman times, the double-skin façade are simply composed of two large glass panels in purpose of daylighting and also natural ventilation in the daytime. Double-skin façade is generally installed on the exterior side of buildings as function as the window, so there is always a huge amount of passive solar energy the façade would receive to induce the airflow every sunny day. Therefore, this article imposes a domestic double-skin window for residential usage and attempts to improve the volume flow rate inside the cavity between the panels by the frame geometry design, the installation of outlet guide plate and the solar energy collection system. Note that the numerical analyses are applied to investigate the characteristics of flow field, and the boundary conditions in the simulation are totally based on the practical experiment of the original prototype. Then we redesign the prototype from the knowledge of the numerical results and fluid dynamic theory, and later the experiments of modified prototype will be conducted to verify the simulation results. The velocities at the inlet of each case are increase by 5%, 45% and 15% from the experimental data, and also the numerical simulation results reported 20% improvement in volume flow rate both for the frame geometry design and installation of outlet guide plate.

Investigation of the Operational Principle and Flow Analysis of a Newly Developed Dry Separator

Mineral product, waste concrete (fine aggregates), waste in the optical field, industry, and construction employ separators to separate solids and classify them according to their size. Various sorting machines are used in the industrial field such as those operating under electrical properties, centrifugal force, wind power, vibration, and magnetic force. Study on separators has been carried out to contribute to the environmental industry. In this study, we perform CFD analysis for understanding the basic mechanism of the separation of waste concrete (fine aggregate) particles from air with a machine built with a rotor with blades. In CFD, we first performed two-dimensional particle tracking for various particle sizes for the model with 1 degree, 1.5 degree, and 2 degree angle between each blade to verify the boundary conditions and the method of rotating domain method to be used in 3D. Then we developed 3D numerical model with ANSYS CFX to calculate the air flow and track the particles. We judged the capability of particle separation for given size by counting the number of particles escaping from the domain toward the exit among 10 particles issued at the inlet. We confirm that particles experience stagnant behavior near the exit of the rotating blades where the centrifugal force acting on the particles is in balance with the air drag force. It was also found that the minimum particle size that can be separated by the machine with the rotor is determined by its capability to stay at the outlet of the rotor channels.

A Real Time Comparison of Standalone and Grid Connected Solar Photovoltaic Generation Systems

Green and renewable energy is getting extraordinary consideration today, because of ecological concerns made by blazing of fossil powers. Photovoltaic and wind power generation are the basic decisions for delivering power in this respects. Producing power by the sun based photovoltaic systems is known to the world, yet control makers may get confounded to pick between on-grid and off-grid systems. In this exploration work, an endeavor is made to compare the off-grid (stand-alone) and on-grid (grid-connected) frameworks. The work presents relative examination, between two distinctive PV frameworks situated at V.V.P. Engineering College, Rajkot. The first framework is 100 kW remain solitary and the second is 60 kW network joined. The real-time parameters compared are; output voltage, load current, power in-flow, power output, performance ratio, yield factor, and capacity factor. The voltage changes and the power variances in both frameworks are given exceptional consideration and the examination is made between the two frameworks to judge the focal points and confinements of both the frameworks.

Collocation Assessment between GEO and GSO Satellites

The change in orbit evolution between collocated satellites (X, Y) inside +/-0.09° E/W and +/- 0.07° N/S cluster, after one of these satellites is placed in an inclined orbit (satellite X) and the effect of this change in the collocation safety inside the cluster window has been studied and evaluated. Several collocation scenarios had been studied in order to adjust the location of both satellites inside their cluster to maximize the separation between them and safe the mission.

Adjusted LOLE and EENS Indices for the Consideration of Load Excess Transfer in Power Systems Adequacy Studies

When evaluating the capacity of a generation park to cover the load in transmission systems, traditional Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE) and Expected Energy not Served (EENS) indices can be used. If those indices allow computing the annual duration and severity of load non covering situations, they do not take into account the fact that the load excess is generally shifted from one penury state (hour or quarter of an hour) to the following one. In this paper, a sequential Monte Carlo framework is introduced in order to compute adjusted LOLE and EENS indices. Practically, those adapted indices permit to consider the effect of load excess transfer on the global adequacy of a generation park, providing thus a more accurate evaluation of this quantity.