Publications

The greenhouse effect has always been a problem troubling various country many fields have made corresponding technological improvements and regulations and the shipping industry is no exception. In the shipping field governments are actively looking for viable low-carbon/zero-carbon alternative fuels to reduce their dependence on traditional fossil fuels. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of replacing fuel oil with clean energies. Firstly the alternative fuels that have been proposed frequently and widely in recent years are summarized and their sources adaptive power systems and relationships among fuels are systematically summarized. Secondly when evaluating the advantages and future development trends of each energy the environmental economic and safety factors are digitally quantified. Results show that the analysis focuses on the efficiency and economics of carbon reduction. Hydrogen ammonia and nuclear energy show advantages in environmental quantification factors while LNG biofuels and alcohols show benefits in economic quantification factors considering calorific value and fuel price and LNG and alcohols received high scores in safety assessment. Finally the study predicts the evolution and development trend of ship fuels in the future and evaluates the most suitable energy for ship development in different periods.

Taking into account the international policies in the field of environmental protection in the world in general and in the European Union in particular the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and primarily of carbon dioxide has become one of the most important objectives. This can be obtained through various renewable energy sources and non-polluting technologies such as the mixing of hydrogen and natural gas. Combining hydrogen with natural gas is an emerging trend in the energy industry and represents one of the most important changes in the efforts to achieve extensive decarbonisation. The importance of this article consists of carrying out a techno-economic study based on the simulation of annual consumptions regarding the construction and use of production capacities for hydrogen to be used in mixtures with natural gas in various percentages in the distribution network of an important operator in Romania. In order to obtain relevant results natural gas was treated as a mixture of real gases with a known composition as defined in the chromatographic bulletin. The survey presents a case study for the injection of 5% 10% and 20% hydrogen in the natural gas distribution system of Bucharest the largest city in Romania. In addition to conducting this techno-economic study the implications for final consumers of this technical solution in reducing greenhouse gas emissions—mainly those of carbon dioxide from combustion—are also presented.

An energy storage system based on a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzer system which could be managed by a nanoGrid for Home Applications (nGfHA) is able to convert the surplus of electric energy produced by renewable sources into hydrogen which can be stored in pressurized tanks. The PEM electrolyzer system must be able to operate at variable feeding power for converting all the surplus of renewable electric energy into hydrogen in reasonable time. In this article the dynamic electric simulation model of a PEM electrolyzer system with its pressurized hydrogen tanks is developed in a proper calculation environment. Through the calculation code the stack voltage and current peaks to a supply power variation from the minimum value (about 56 W) to the maximum value (about 440 W) are controlled and zeroed to preserve the stack the best range of the operating stack current is evaluated and hydrogen production is monitored.

Sets out our vision for the future of heat in buildings and the actions we are taking in the buildings sector to deliver our climate change commitments maximise economic opportunities and ensure a just transition including helping address fuel poverty.

The continuous rise of global carbon emissions demands the utilization of fossil fuels in a sustainable way. Owing to various forms of emissions our environment conditions might be affected necessitating more focus of scientists and researchers to upgrade oil processing to more efficient manner. Gasification is a potential technology that can convert fossil fuels to produce clean and environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel in an economical manner. Therefore this study analyzed and examined it critically. In this study two different routes for the production of high-purity hydrogen from vacuum residue while minimizing the carbon emissions were proposed. The first route (Case I) studied the gasification of heavy vacuum residue (VR) in series with dry methane reforming (DMR). The second route studied the gasification of VR in parallel integration with DMR (Case II). After investigating both processes a brief comparison was made between the two routes of hydrogen production in terms of their CO2 emissions energy efficiency energy consumption and environmental and economic impacts. In this study the two vacuum-residue-to-hydrogen (VRTH) processes were simulated using Aspen Plus for a hydrogen production capacity of 50 t/h with 99.9 wt.% purity. The results showed that Case II offered a process energy efficiency of 57.8% which was slightly higher than that of Case I. The unit cost of the hydrogen product for Case II was USD 15.95 per metric ton of hydrogen which was almost 9% lower than that of Case I. In terms of the environmental analysis both cases had comparably low carbon emissions of around 8.3 kg of CO2/kg of hydrogen produced; with such high purity the hydrogen could be used for production of other products further downstream or for industrial applications.

Hydrogen futures are in the making right in front of our eyes and will determine socio-ecological path dependencies for decades to come. However expertise on the societal effects of the hydrogen transition is in its infancy. Future energy research needs to include the social sciences humanities and interdisciplinary studies: energy cultures have to be examined as well as  power relations and anticipation processes since the need for (green) hydrogen is likely to require a massive expansion of renewable energy plants.

Fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) are emerging as one of the prominent zero emission vehicle technologies. This study follows a deterministic modeling approach to project two scenarios of FCEV adoption and the resulting hydrogen demand (low and high) up to 2050 in California using a transportation transition model. The study then estimates the number of hydrogen production and refueling facilities required to meet demand. The impact of system scale-up and learning rates on hydrogen price is evaluated using standalone supply chain models: H2A HDSAM HRSAM and HDRSAM. A sensitivity analysis explores key factors that affect hydrogen prices. In the high scenario light and heavy-duty fuel cell vehicle stocks reach 12.5 million and 1 million by 2050 respectively. The resulting annual hydrogen demand is 3.9 billion kg making hydrogen the dominant transportation fuel. Satisfying such high future demands will require rapid increases in infrastructure investments starting now but especially after 2030 when there is an exponential increase in the number of production plants and refueling stations. In the long term electrolytic hydrogen delivered using dedicated hydrogen pipelines to larger stations offers substantial cost savings. Feedstock prices size of the hydrogen market and station utilization are the prominent parameters that affect hydrogen price.

Fuel cell electric vehicles are generally considered to have broad development prospects due to their high efficiency and zero emissions. The governments of the United States Japan the European Union and China are taking action to promote the development of the industry. In 2020 China launched a fuel cell electric vehicle demonstration project and there will be 30∼50 thousand FCEVs included in this project by the end of 2025. How to standardize the consistency of data and develop a unified and accurate evaluation method is an important topic. The difficulty is how to keep balance among scientificity neutrality and feasibility in the evaluation method. In order to evaluate the performance of vehicles in demonstration operation projects China has issued the "Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Test Specifications" which is an important guide for the future development of fuel cell electric vehicles in China. This paper compares the test methods for critical parameters in this specifications with those used in the United States and Japan. It explains China’s technical considerations in detail including fuel cell system rated power the volume power density of the fuel cell stack fuel cell system specific power fuel cell system sub-zero cold start and fuel cell electric vehicle range contributed by hydrogen. For the volume power density of the fuel cell stack as an example both the US Department of Energy and Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization have proposed technical goals. However the lack of specific and detailed test methods has confused the industry. We propose a new test method using bipolar plate measurement based on scientificity feasibility and neutrality This is the first time to define the measuring method of the volume and specific power density of the fuel cell stack. For sub-zero cold start we put forward a feasible scheme for sub-zero cold start at the system level. For range contributed by hydrogen we propose a new test method that can distinguish the contributing of electric and hydrogen energy. Furthermore a hydrogen-to-electric conversion formula is proposed to calculate the equivalent hydrogen consumption which makes it possible to compare the energy consumption between plug-in and non-plug-in vehicles. At the same time this approach is significant in helping fuel cell-related enterprises to understand the formulation of China’s “Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Test Specifications”. It should also be helpful for guiding product design and predicting fuel cell electric vehicle policy direction in China.

Through data mining and analysis of the word frequency and occurrence position of industrial policy keywords the main policy parameters affecting industrial development are determined and the functional relationship between industrial policy and industrial development is obtained through multi-parameter non-linear regression: Yit−1 (y1 y2 y3 y4 y5) = β1it X1 + β2it ln X2 + β3it ln X3 + β4it X1it ∗ ln X3 + εit . The time series function of the industrial development index: Y (t) = 0.174 ∗ e (0.256∗t) is established and the industrial development under the influence of next year’s policy is predicted. It is concluded from the mathematical expression of the statistical model that there is a certain coupling effect between different policies and that industrial development is influenced by the joint effect on the parent and sub-industries. This ultimately proves that there is a clear correlation between policy and industry development.

Hydrogen is considered as one of the pillars of the European decarbonisation strategy boosting a novel concept of the energy system in line with the EU’s commitment to achieve clean energy transition and reach the European Green Deal carbon neutrality goals by 2050. Hydrogen from biomass sources can significantly contribute to integrate the renewable hydrogen supply through electrolysis at large-scale production. Specifically it can cover the non-continuous production of green hydrogen coming from solar and wind energy to offer an alternative solution to such industrial sectors necessitating of stable supply. Biomass-derived hydrogen can be produced either from thermochemical pathways (i.e. pyrolysis liquefaction and gasification) or from biological routes (i.e. direct or indirect-biophotolysis biological water–gas shift reaction photo- and dark-fermentation). The paper reviews several production pathways to produce hydrogen from biomass or biomass-derived sources (biogas liquid bio-intermediates sugars) and provides an exhaustive review of the most promising technologies towards commercialisation. While some pathways are still at low technology readiness level others such as the steam bio-methane reforming and biomass gasification are ready for an immediate market uptake. The various production pathways are evaluated in terms of energy and environmental performances highlighting the limits and barriers of the available LCA studies. The paper shows that hydrogen production technologies from biomass appears today to be an interesting option almost ready to constitute a complementing option to electrolysis.