Alternative Energy

Some processes aimed to biofuels production, use lignocellulosic wastes as feedstocks for fermentative conversion. If this is the case, pretreatment is required to make these resources fully digestible. Among a wide range of pretreatment options, this study focuses and compares oxidative-alkaline...

One major issue limiting the implementation of renewable energy sources is the lack of efficient, cost-effective, and reliable energy storage technologies. The vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) is a flow-assisted electrochemical system which shows great promise for grid-scale energy storage due to...

Due to the recent surge in energy costs and uncertainties in fuel prices, there is significant interest in seeking alternative sources of energy particularly from renewable such as biomass. Indirect liquefaction of biomass (via the thermo-chemical conversion to syngas followed by liquefaction via...

Abstract Renewable energy, including wind and solar, could supply a significant amount of electrical energy in the United States and around the world. However, despite the benefits of wind and solar, integration of these intermittent sources into the electrical grid system poses major challenges to...

Saccharification of fermentable sugars is one of the most critical steps in producing bio-ethanol from lignocellulosics through Consolidate Bioprocessing (CBP). However, the extreme pH and ethanol concentration are commonly considered to be the potential inhibitory factors for the application of...

Chemical-looping combustion (CLC) is a promising combustion technique with efficient CO 2 -capture at low cost due to inherent gas separation. In a CLC process, a metal oxide is circulated between two reactors, wherein they undergo changes from an oxidized form in the air reactor to a reduced one...

Ordered mesoporous Zr-doped TiO 2 /ZnO material is currently being investigated for band gap tuning and higher loadings of photo-sensitizer. Utilization of such mesoporous materials thereby offers an opportunity to sensitize semiconductor with higher sensitizer loadings leading to effective charge...

A detailed model of a real solar thermal power plant has been built using a steady state power plant simulation software. The plant includes numerous parabolic trough collectors tracking the sun on a single axis. A heat transfer fluid flows in the focal line of the troughs collecting solar heat...

Due to the complex morphology and small length scales of many fuel cell materials, experimental quantification of the key properties of these materials can be expensive and quite difficult to conduct, if not impossible. As a result, modeling efforts become an imperative approach to evaluate the...

Research over several decades by several institutions has shown that alkali-promoted metal sulfide catalysts are capable of producing mixed alcohols from syngas with high selectivity and yield. Unfortunately, process models suggest that syngas to mixed alcohol processes, and especially...