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Toward Carbon Neutrality: Renewable Energy and Energy Engineering

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 11180

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Xiaoya Li

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Guest Editor

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Interests: renewable energy technologies; energy harvesting and storage; thermal management; electrochemical energy systems

Dr. Rui Jing

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Guest Editor

College of Energy, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, China
Interests: building energy; urban energy planning; integrated energy systems; energy and climate change; energy nexus
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change has great impacts on energy security, human life, agriculture, sea level and more. To tackle this increasingly severe issue and address the goals of the Paris Agreement, many countries have made the commitment to achieve carbon neutrality, or zero carbon emissions. There are two main approaches that the energy sector can take to contribute to carbon emissions reduction: one is exploring new and green renewable energy sources to replace the currently dominant fossil fuels, and the other is improving the energy efficiencies of existing systems to enable a more efficient energy utilization.

This Special Issue aims to provoke dialogue regarding the solutions to carbon neutrality, either from the renewable energy field or via the efficiency improvement of existing energy systems. It will mainly address the questions below:

Carbon neutrality: What is the current situation of carbon emissions in various countries and districts, and in various sectors? What are the expected roadmaps of carbon reductions in terms of countries, sectors, and horizons? What efforts have been made by actors from policymakers to industries?
Renewable energy: What are the potentials of different renewable energy sources for energy supply? How is the renewable energy distributed in terms of total amount, fluctuations, and accessibility? How can renewable energy contribute to the resilience and flexibility of energy systems? How can renewable energy be integrated with other sectors to achieve efficient networks?
Energy engineering: How can the existing energy systems be more efficient? What are the potentials of various energy harvesting technologies? How can individual energy systems be modified to form integrated networks to meet the heating, cooling, electricity and gas demands simultaneously?

The expected research papers will cover dedicated survey and technological assessment. Case studies and advanced algorithms related to energy modeling, simulation, design and operation are also welcome. This Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research articles, review articles, and other papers. Suggested topics include but are not limited to the following:

Energy system design and optimization;
Energy system operation management and control;
Thermo-economic analysis of energy systems;
Energy system evaluation and assessment;
Integrated energy systems;
Novel energy harvesting technologies;
Life cycle assessment;
Case studies and pilot demonstrations;
Energy–food–water nexus;
Decarbonization strategies;
Renewable energy exploitation and utilization;
Data related to climate, renewable energy, energy policy, carbon-neutral policy, etc.

Dr. Xiaoya Li
Dr. Rui Jing
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short 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 thoroughly refereed through a single-blind 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 semimonthly 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 2400 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.

Keywords

carbon neutral
renewable energy
integrated energy system
energy harvesting
energy–food–water nexus
system design and optimization
life cycle assessment

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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14 pages, 3102 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimentally Identifying the Influences of Key Parameters for an Organic Rankine Cycle Using R123

by Yan Gao, Qianxi Song, Wen Su, Xinxing Lin, Zhi Sun, Zhisheng Huang and Yaping Gao

Sustainability 2023, 15(1), 814; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010814 - 2 Jan 2023

Viewed by 1359

Abstract

As an efficient energy conversion technology, the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been widely applied in medium- and low-grade heat sources. In order to explore the experimental performance of ORC and reveal the effects of operation parameters, an experimental setup was built and R123 was selected as the working fluid. In the experiments, the heat source temperature as well as the mass flow rates of the working fluid and cooling water were controlled. Under the design conditions, the net work and cycle efficiency can, respectively, reach up to 0.55 kW and 8.7%. As for the influences of key parameters, with the increase in heat source temperature from 130 °C to 160 °C, the involved heat has a small increase, while the net work increases from 0.44 kW to 0.55 kW, and the cycle efficiency greatly increases from 6.71% to 8.72% at a mass flow rate of working fluid 25 g/s. As for the mass flow rate of cooling water, it has a similar impact on the cycle performances. The difference is that the effect of the cooling water rate is relatively smaller. At the mass flow rate 25 g/s, when the cooling water rate increases from 0.68 kg/s to 0.83 kg/s, the net work varies from 0.46 kW to 0.55 kW, the cycle efficiency increases in the range 7.41~9.4%. Furthermore, except cycle efficiency, all performances are proportional to the mass flow rate of working fluid. In the test range, the difference of cycle efficiency among different mass flow rates is less than 0.7%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toward Carbon Neutrality: Renewable Energy and Energy Engineering)

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18 pages, 7159 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Numerical Analysis of Heat Transfer Behaviours of Melting Process for Ice Thermal Storage Based on Various Heat Source Configurations

by Chunwei Zhang, Dongdong Chai, Yubin Fan, Wenyun Zhang, Meng Yu, Zhenwu Wang and Long Jiang

Sustainability 2023, 15(1), 365; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010365 - 26 Dec 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2032

Abstract

Ice thermal storage (ITS) performance for cooling systems is greatly influenced by the poor thermal conductivity of phase change material (PCM). The effect of natural convection on the melting process is significant for heat transfer enhancement. Thus, the melting performance of PCM in a shell-and-tube latent heat storage (STLHS) unit is numerically studied by considering natural convection in terms of various heat source positions and configurations, i.e., central position, eccentric position, and flat-tube type. Temperature distribution, melting time, and the overall heat transfer coefficient during the process are investigated. The results show that the circulation vortex formed by natural convection is a dominant factor that affects melting front evolution and the overall heat transfer coefficient. When input heat flux is relatively weak, PCM below the heat source is liquefied first. In contrast, PCM in the upper part melts earlier when the heat flux is excellent. The overall heat transfer coefficient decreases sharply with the increase in melting time in the early stage. Then, the heat transfer coefficient tends to be constant. PCM in an STLHS unit with a heat source in a lower position and a configuration of vertical flat-tube type has a desirable performance when compared with other cases, which could provide good support for ITS application. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toward Carbon Neutrality: Renewable Energy and Energy Engineering)

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17 pages, 1472 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Renewable Energy for Balancing Carbon Emissions and Reducing Carbon Transfer under Global Value Chains: A Way Forward

by Xixuan Guo, Kaixiang Huang, Lanyu Li and Xiaonan Wang

Sustainability 2023, 15(1), 234; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010234 - 23 Dec 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1766

Abstract

Research on the relationship between a country’s renewable energy consumption and carbon emissions is of great significance for reducing carbon emissions embodied in international trade. There always exists a gap between production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions. Accordingly, this paper investigates the influence of renewable energy consumption on carbon emission balance, the ratio of production-based emissions to consumption-based emissions, in various countries using the ordinary least square (OLS) method and generalized method of moments (GMM) method. We found that a 1% increase in renewable energy consumption can decrease the carbon emission balance by 5.8%. Furthermore, renewable energy consumption can help narrow the gap between production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions in net emission exporters. In addition, renewable energy consumption can also weaken the negative impact of the global value chains (GVCs) division system on the carbon emission balance. The findings in this study fill the research gap by analyzing the heterogeneous impacts of renewable energy consumption on carbon emission balance embodied within a GVC division system in various countries and provide policy suggestions that renewable energy consumption should be encouraged in net emission exporters to reduce the carbon emission transfers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toward Carbon Neutrality: Renewable Energy and Energy Engineering)

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25 pages, 4748 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Joint Estimation Method with Multi-Innovation Unscented Kalman Filter Based on Fractional-Order Model for State of Charge and State of Health Estimation

by Yonghong Xu, Cheng Li, Xu Wang, Hongguang Zhang, Fubin Yang, Lili Ma and Yan Wang

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15538; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315538 - 22 Nov 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1067

Abstract

This study simulates the polarization effect during the process of battery charging and discharging, and investigates the characteristics of the process. A fractional-order model (FOM) is established and the parameters of the FOM are identified with the adaptive genetic algorithm. As Kalman filter estimation causes error accumulation over time, using the fractional-order multi-innovation unscented Kalman filter (FOMIUKF) is a better choice for state of charge (SOC) estimation. A comparative study shows that the FOMIUKF has higher accuracy. A multiple timescales-based joint estimation algorithm of SOC and state of health is established to improve SOC estimation precision and reduce the amount of computation. The FOMIUKF algorithm is used for SOC estimation, while the UKF algorithm is used for SOH estimation. The joint estimation algorithm is then compared and analyzed alongside other Kalman filter algorithms under different dynamic operating conditions. Experimental results show that the joint estimation algorithm possesses high estimation accuracy with a mean absolute error of under 1% and a root mean square error of 1.35%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toward Carbon Neutrality: Renewable Energy and Energy Engineering)

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21 pages, 23674 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Investigation of the Output Performance of Compressed-Air-Powered Vehicles with a Pneumatic Motor

by Yonghong Xu, Xin Wang, Hongguang Zhang, Fubin Yang, Jia Liang, Hailong Yang, Kai Niu, Zhuxian Liu, Yan Wang and Yuting Wu

Sustainability 2022, 14(22), 15377; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142215377 - 18 Nov 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1434

Abstract

Compressed-air vehicles have the advantages of zero pollution and low cost. A compressed-air engine test bench is established in this study. The effects of rotational speed, torque, and regulated pressure on the power performance, economy, and energy conversion efficiency of the pneumatic motor are investigated. The differences in power output, compressed-air consumption rate, and energy conversion efficiency between forward and reverse rotation of the pneumatic motor are compared and analyzed. To effectively investigate the performance of a compressed-air vehicle under various road conditions, this study compares and analyzes the power performance, economy, and energy conversion efficiency of pneumatic motors under different road conditions. Experimental results show that the power output and energy conversion efficiency of the pneumatic motor in reverse rotation are less than those in forward rotation, indicating that the pneumatic motor has better power performance and higher efficiency with forward rotation than reverse rotation. The compressed-air consumption rate of the pneumatic motor with reverse rotation is higher than that with forward rotation, indicating that the pneumatic motor with forward rotation has better economic performance than with reverse rotation. The maximum power output and energy conversion efficiency of the pneumatic motor are about 1220 W and 13.23%, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toward Carbon Neutrality: Renewable Energy and Energy Engineering)

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Review

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20 pages, 2230 KiB

Open AccessReview

China’s Biogas Industry’s Sustainable Transition to a Low-Carbon Plan—A Socio-Technical Perspective

by Yanbo Wang, Boyao Zhi, Shumin Xiang, Guangxin Ren, Yongzhong Feng, Gaihe Yang and Xiaojiao Wang

Sustainability 2023, 15(6), 5299; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15065299 - 16 Mar 2023

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2592

Abstract

China’s biogas industry has experienced ups and downs over the past two decades, with various challenges pointing to misplaced expectations that biogas technology is overly focused on energy production. With the promotion of China’s low-carbon strategy, a more rational and sustainable transformation strategy is crucial for the development of the biogas industry. To elucidate the sustainable development process of the biogas industry, this study applies the socio-technical transition theory and the strategic niche management (SNM) approach to understand the multi-regime interactions of biogas systems and their possible future paths. At present, the Chinese biogas industry needs to abandon the expectation of energy recovery and establish the expectation of multi-functional combination, especially including nutrient cycling. This study proposes a sustainable transformation path for the biogas industry and predicts three phases based on the type of socio-technological transformation path: a transformation path to 2030 to promote niche innovation and develop core technologies; a reconfiguration path from 2030 to 2050, which will require a lot of trials and errors; and the expansion of market share in 2050 through technology replacement. This study highlights the importance of niche experimentations and broad advocacy coalitions for the biogas industry. This research also illustrates how the transformation of China’s biogas industry can be achieved through incremental innovation with consistent policy support. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toward Carbon Neutrality: Renewable Energy and Energy Engineering)

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