Research on New Energy Materials, Energy Conversion, and Energy Storage

Dear Colleagues,

The current global situation on the fuel market and the need to reduce the carbon footprint makes it necessary to find alternative fuels supplying combustion engines or other propulsion systems. The components added to liquid fuels, i.e., bio-based and synthetic additives obtained from the processing of plastics, are of particular importance. Gaseous fuels are a separate group (e.g., hydrogen, ammonia, LNG, LPG) and are used to power the engines of transport vehicles. The green electricity and flywheel energy are another group of alternative fuels in transport.

Energy conversion is the exchange of one kind of energy for another. According to the principle of conservation of energy, the total energy of an isolated system remains constant. Individual energy components included in the total energy can change their value, but the system always has the same amount of energy. In energy and power equipment, there are usually several stages of energy conversion. All energy processes use energy conversion, usually multistage, to produce the required form of usable energy (usually electrical, thermal, kinetic, potential, mechanical and other). Energy conversion should be as efficient as possible (for ecological, economic and social reasons).

This Special Issue aims to present the use of alternative fuels in transport means described above and other problems related to their use and present energy conversion systems with high efficiency and the issues related to the use and operation of these systems.

Topics of interest for publication include but are not limited to:

• Increases in the use of energy-efficient drives to reduce the energy intensity of industry;
• Gasification of solid fuels to maximize energy efficiency combined with the elimination or reduction of methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions;
• The combination of natural biodegradation with biogas recovery;
• Substitution of technologies for the use of natural gas as a fossil fuel in favour of agricultural and landfill biogas from sewage treatment plants, pyrolytic gas and from coal and lignite gasification;
• Biomass thermal processing based on the capture of chemical carbon in the form of charcoal or biochar, combined with the production of energy based on volatile parts without the use or minimized use of elemental carbon (BECCS—energy with a negative CO₂ balance);
• New technologies for electricity generation (including in combination) using fuel cells (for mobile or stationary applications);
• The construction of new hybrid systems using fuel cells;
• New or improved fuel cells;
• Use of energy storage systems in distributed hybrid systems (including, among others, batteries, kinetic storage systems such as flywheels, batteries with internal storage, pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants);
• The use of excess energy for the production of carriers enabling the storage of alternative fuels (including, among others, hydrogen and synthetic methane);
• New or improved energy storage technologies.

Prof. Dr. Zbigniew Matuszak
Dr. Marcin Szczepanek
Dr. Marcin Matuszak
Dr. Sławomir Kowalski
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.