Special Issue "Advances in Sustainability: Selected Papers from the Second World Sustainability Forum (2012)"

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2013)

Special Issue Editor

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario, L1H 7K4, Canada
Website: http://www.exergycourse.org/lectrurers/rosen-mark-a
E-Mail: marc.rosen@uoit.ca
Phone: +1 905 721 8668, ext 5726
Fax: +1 905 721 3370
Interests: sustainable development; energy; exergy; efficiency; environmental impact; economics; ecology; sustainable engineering and design

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue comprises selected papers from the Proceedings of the 2nd World Sustainability Forum, an electronic conference that was held on the sciforum.net platform in November 2012. Sustainability and sustainable development cover environmental, social and economic dimensions and require a multi-disciplinary approach in order to examine, explore and critically engage with issues and advances in these and related areas. The 2nd World Sustainability Forum facilitated debates on theoretical and practical investigations, and allowed participants to "make a difference" through on-line discussions. Besides covering the three pillars of sustainable development, other areas were covered including environmental sustainability, corporate sustainability strategy, social values for a sustainable economy, renewable energy self-sufficiency, energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, sustainable urban development, sustainable development policy and practice, sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainability innovation, remote sensing for sustainable management of land and biodiversity, and sustainable agriculture. Papers selected for this special issue were subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments and applications.

Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed Open Access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 800 CHF (Swiss Francs).

Keywords

environmental sustainability
economical sustainability
social sustainability
corporate sustainability strategy
social values for a sustainable economy
renewable energy self-sufficiency
energy efficiency and renewable energy sources
sustainable urban development
sustainable development policy and practice
sustainable entrepreneurship
sustainability innovation and remote sensing for sustainable management of land
biodiversity
sustainable agriculture

Published Papers (3 papers)

Cornelia A. Bulucea, Marc A. Rosen, Doru A. Nicola, Nikos E. Mastorakis and Carmen A. Bulucea

Article: Approaching the Processes in the Generator Circuit Breaker at Disconnection through Sustainability Concepts

Sustainability 2013, 5(3), 1161-1176; doi:10.3390/su5031161

Received: 16 January 2013; in revised form: 20 February 2013 / Accepted: 4 March 2013 / Published: 19 March 2013

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Abstract: Nowadays, the electric connection circuits of power plants (based on fossil fuels as well as renewable sources) entail generator circuit-breakers (GCBs) at the generator terminals, since the presence of that electric equipment offers many advantages related to the sustainability of a power plant. In an alternating current (a.c.) circuit the interruption of a short circuit is performed by the circuit-breaker at the natural passing through zero of the short-circuit current. During the current interruption, an electric arc is generated between the opened contacts of the circuit-breaker. This arc must be cooled and extinguished in a controlled way. Since the synchronous generator stator can flow via highly asymmetrical short-circuit currents, the phenomena which occur in the case of short-circuit currents interruption determine the main stresses of the generator circuit-breaker; the current interruption requirements of a GCB are significantly higher than for the distribution network circuit breakers. For shedding light on the proper moment when the generator circuit-breaker must operate, using the space phasor of the short-circuit currents, the time expression to the first zero passing of the short-circuit current is determined. Here, the manner is investigated in which various factors influence the delay of the zero passing of the short-circuit current. It is shown that the delay time is influenced by the synchronous machine parameters and by the load conditions which precede the short-circuit. Numerical simulations were conducted of the asymmetrical currents in the case of the sudden three-phase short circuit at the terminals of synchronous generators. Further in this study it is emphasized that although the phenomena produced in the electric arc at the terminals of the circuit-breaker are complicated and not completely explained, the concept of exergy is useful in understanding the physical phenomena. The article points out that just after the short-circuit current interruption by the generator the circuit-breaker (when the GCB has been subjected at the metal contact terminals to the high temperature of a plasma arc, up to 50,000 K) between its opened contacts, there arises the transient recovery voltage (TRV) which constitutes the most important dielectric stress after the electric arc extinction. Since the magnitude and shape of the TRV occurring across the generator circuit-breaker are critical parameters in the recovering gap after the current zero, in this paper, we model, for the case of the faults fed by the main step-up transformer, the equivalent configurations, with operational impedances, for the TRV calculation, taking into account the main transformer parameters, on the basis of the symmetrical components method.

Sylvie Flämig and Marc A. Rosen

Brief Report: Advances in Sustainability: Contributions and Outcomes of the 2nd World Sustainability Forum

Sustainability 2013, 5(3), 1208-1210; doi:10.3390/su5031208

Received: 13 March 2013 / Accepted: 13 March 2013 / Published: 19 March 2013

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Natalia Kuosmanen, Timo Kuosmanen and Timo Sipiläinen

Article: Consistent Aggregation of Generalized Sustainable Values from the Firm Level to Sectoral, Regional or Industry Levels

Sustainability 2013, 5(4), 1568-1576; doi:10.3390/su5041568

Received: 11 February 2013; in revised form: 28 March 2013 / Accepted: 28 March 2013 / Published: 11 April 2013

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Last update: 5 December 2012

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