This book details three main topics: the screening and characterization of hydrocarbons from air, soil and water; technologies in the biodegradation of hydrocarbons; and the bioconversion of hydrocarbons for biofuel/chemicals, as well as recent developments in the remediation of hydrocarbons and their environmental benefits. The first section focuses on screening methods, qualitative and quantitative analysis of hydrocarbons from soil, air and water environments, speciation of hydrocarbons, and natural bioremediation strategies in such environments. The second section examines technologies for removing hydrocarbon contaminants from various environments, especially advanced technologies for the removal of hydrocarbons and in-situ and ex-situ remediation strategies and problems, as well as concrete case studies. The last section, covering the bioconversion of hydrocarbons for biofuel/chemicals, highlights the biochemicals and bioproducts developed from hydrocarbons, with a particular focus on biochemical and chemical technologies used to produce biopolymers, biofuel precursors and commodity chemicals from hydrocarbons.

This book presents an approach to energy-efficient building design, which takes into account the most important challenges in climate change mitigation and adaptation in Southern Europe. It outlines a specific approach related to residential buildings and their intergenerational and vulnerable occupants, such as ageing population and users in fuel poverty. It also focuses on the use of passive energy measures throughout the year, and on pursuing a realistic and affordable approach to the efficient rehabilitation of resilient residential buildings. In addition, the book presents case studies that include surveys, monitoring, and simulation of residential buildings in Spain and other Southern European representative locations, in order to go further on the study of this challenging topic.

Intelligent prediction and decision support systems are based on signal processing, computer vision (CV), machine learning (ML), software engineering (SE), knowledge based systems (KBS), data mining, artificial intelligence (AI) and include several systems developed from the study of expert systems (ES), genetic algorithms (GA), artificial neural networks (ANN) and fuzzy-logic systems The use of automatic decision support systems in design and manufacturing industry, healthcare and commercial software development systems has the following benifits: Cost savings in companies, due to employment of expert system technology. Fast decision making, completion of projects in time and development of new products. Improvement in decision making capability and quality. Usage of Knowledge database and Preservation of expertise of individuals Eases complex decision problems. Ex: Diagnosis in Healthcare To address the issues and challenges related to development, implementation and application of automatic and intelligent prediction and decision support systems in domains such as manufacturing, healthcare and software product design, development and optimization, this book aims to collect and publish wide ranges of quality articles such as original research contributions, methodological reviews, survey papers, case studies and/or reports covering intelligent systems, expert prediction systems, evaluation models, decision support systems and Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD).

Bioenergy Systems for the Future: Prospects for Biofuels and Biohydrogen examines the current advances in biomass conversion technologies for biofuels and biohydrogen production, including their advantages and challenges for real-world application and industrial-scale implementation. In its first part, the book explores the use of lignocellulosic biomass and agricultural wastes as feedstock, also addressing biomass conversion into biofuels, such as bioethanol, biodiesel, bio-methane, and bio-gasoline. The chapters in Part II cover several different pathways for hydrogen production, from biomass, including bioethanol and bio-methane reforming and syngas conversion. They also include a comparison between the most recent conversion technologies and conventional approaches for hydrogen production. Part III presents the status of advanced bioenergy technologies, such as applications of nanotechnology and the use of bio-alcohol in low-temperature fuel cells. The role of advanced bioenergy in a future bioeconomy and the integration of these technologies into existing systems are also discussed, providing a comprehensive, application-oriented overview that is ideal for engineering professionals, researchers, and graduate students involved in bioenergy.

This book addresses the topic of fractional-order modeling of nuclear reactors. Approaching neutron transport in the reactor core as anomalous diffusion, specifically subdiffusion, it starts with the development of fractional-order neutron telegraph equations. Using a systematic approach, the book then examines the development and analysis of various fractional-order models representing nuclear reactor dynamics, ultimately leading to the fractional-order linear and nonlinear control-oriented models. The book utilizes the mathematical tool of fractional calculus, the calculus of derivatives and integrals with arbitrary non-integer orders (real or complex), which has recently been found to provide a more compact and realistic representation to the dynamics of diverse physical systems. Including extensive simulation results and discussing important issues related to the fractional-order modeling of nuclear reactors, the book offers a valuable resource for students and researchers working in the areas of fractional-order modeling and control and nuclear reactor modeling.

The Power Grid: Smart, Secure, Green and Reliable offers a diverse look at the traditional engineering and physics aspects of power systems, also examining the issues affecting clean power generation, power distribution, and the new security issues that could potentially affect the availability and reliability of the grid. The book looks at growth in new loads that are consuming over 1% of all the electrical power produced, and how combining those load issues of getting power to the regions experiencing growth in energy demand can be addressed. In addition, it considers the policy issues surrounding transmission line approval by regulators. With truly multidisciplinary content, including failure analysis of various systems, photovoltaic, wind power, quality issues with clean power, high-voltage DC transmission, electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic interference, privacy concerns, and data security, this reference is relevant to anyone interested in the broad area of power grid stability.

Lead-Acid Batteries: Science and Technology: A Handbook of Lead-Acid Battery Technology and Its Influence on the Product, Second Edition presents a comprehensive overview of the technological processes of lead-acid battery manufacture and their influence on performance parameters. The book summarizes current knowledge on lead-acid battery production, presenting it in the form of an integral theory that is supported by ample illustrative material and experimental data that allows technologists and engineers to control technological processes in battery plants. In addition, the book provides university lecturers with a tool for a clear and in-depth presentation of lead-acid battery production in courses. This updated edition includes new supplementary material (text and illustrations) in chapters 2, 4, 6 and 16, as well as a brand new chapter on the action of carbon as an additive to the negative active material and the utilization of the lead-carbon supercapacitor electrodes. Substantial revisions of other chapters have been made, making the book beneficial for battery researchers, engineers and technologists.

Distributed Generation Systems: Design, Operation and Grid Integration closes the information gap between recent research on distributed generation and industrial plants, and provides solutions to their practical problems and limitations. It provides a clear picture of operation principles of distributed generation units, not only focusing on the power system perspective but targeting a specific need of the research community. This book is a useful reference for practitioners, featuring worked examples and figures on principal types of distributed generation with an emphasis on real-world examples, simulations, and illustrations. The book uses practical exercises relating to the concepts of operating and integrating DG units to distribution networks, and helps engineers accurately design systems and reduce maintenance costs.

Fire Pump Arrangements at Industrial Facilities, Third Edition delivers a practical reference from an author with a successful professional career in fire protection and loss prevention engineering in the oil and gas industry. While most regulatory standards are left to interpretation and try to cover multiple industries in one location, this book focuses on the equipment, standards and operations specific to the petroleum industry, covering quality controls, pump drivers and scheduled maintenance and audits so the equipment remains in safety compliance. Enhanced with new sections on human factors, case studies for modeling fire accidents and a look at recent events that have further shaped the safety and testing of fire pumps, the book provides the engineer and manager with a critical oil and gas resource for every aspect of firewater pumps.

This book treats dynamic stability of structures under nonconservative forces. it is not a mathematics-based, but rather a dynamics-phenomena-oriented monograph, written with a full experimental background. Starting with fundamentals on stability of columns under nonconservative forces, it then deals with the divergence of Euler's column under a dead (conservative) loading from a view point of dynamic stability. Three experiments with cantilevered columns under a rocket-based follower force are described to present the verifiability of nonconservative problems of structural stability. Dynamic stability of columns under pulsating forces is discussed through analog experiments, and by analytical and experimental procedures together with related theories. Throughout the volume the authors retain a good balance between theory and experiments on dynamic stability of columns under nonconservative loading, offering a new window to dynamic stability of structures, promoting student- and scientist-friendly experiments.

This book explores the philosophical understanding of the "energy consumption" in warehousing process that can be found in the literature. It presents known technical solutions that, if they are used in cold storage rooms, can effectively reduce energy consumption: through lower power consumption and/or energy recovery, such as the use of photovoltaic panels. The final part of the book explores the problems discussed on the basis of a concrete example - a project involving energy recovery in a refrigerated warehouse.This publication also describes the design of refrigerated warehouses, taking into account their energy intensity. In the case of logistic warehousing systems, the pallets in warehouses can offer a source of energy - namely of the potential energy stored in the loads on the shelves. Given that today's construction warehouses have heights on the order of several tens of meters, that energy can be considerable. In the case of refrigerated warehouses and cold storage facilities, it is necessary to monitor the stored goods in order to maintain a constant freezing temperature, in keeping with the requirements of the HACCP system. Inevitably, this calls for constant cooling of the air inside the warehouse, and thus produces a fixed, high and constant level of energy usage. And, just as in any other context, it becomes important to identify methods for reducing energy consumption.

People scratching a living from parched land, women walking miles for scraps of firewood are both familiar images of Africa. But, in many places, people, with the help of governments and aid agencies, are putting the land into good shape, growing more food and creating a healthy cover of trees. This book joins the literature of hope by looking at these advances from the viewpoint of the energy crisis of the poor. This crisis can only be solved by going beyond the narrow confines of energy to consider all the needs of local people and the potential for change. Drawing on a wide range of case histories, the authors describe the gains in farming and forestry and woodfuel supply that have come about through this broader, people-centered approach. They also write about woodfuel prices, markets and other key elements of survival strategies for the cities. Huge efforts will be needed to recover from the failures of the past, but Leach and Mearns show that important lessons are at last being learned and that new roads to success can be mapped. Originally published in 1988

This book is a collection of selected papers presented at the 10th International Conference on Scientific Computing in Electrical Engineering (SCEE), held in Wuppertal, Germany in 2014. The book is divided into five parts, reflecting the main directions of SCEE 2014: 1. Device Modeling, Electric Circuits and Simulation, 2. Computational Electromagnetics, 3. Coupled Problems, 4. Model Order Reduction, and 5. Uncertainty Quantification. Each part starts with a general introduction followed by the actual papers. The aim of the SCEE 2014 conference was to bring together scientists from academia and industry, mathematicians, electrical engineers, computer scientists, and physicists, with the goal of fostering intensive discussions on industrially relevant mathematical problems, with an emphasis on the modeling and numerical simulation of electronic circuits and devices, electromagnetic fields, and coupled problems. The methodological focus was on model order reduction and uncertainty quantification.

This book provides a basic understanding of spectroscopic ellipsometry, with a focus on characterization methods of a broad range of solar cell materials/devices, from traditional solar cell materials (Si, CuInGaSe2, and CdTe) to more advanced emerging materials (Cu2ZnSnSe4, organics, and hybrid perovskites), fulfilling a critical need in the photovoltaic community. The book describes optical constants of a variety of semiconductor light absorbers, transparent conductive oxides and metals that are vital for the interpretation of solar cell characteristics and device simulations. It is divided into four parts: fundamental principles of ellipsometry; characterization of solar cell materials/structures; ellipsometry applications including optical simulations of solar cell devices and online monitoring of film processing; and the optical constants of solar cell component layers.

Renewable Energy Forecasting: From Models to Applications provides an overview of the state-of-the-art of renewable energy forecasting technology and its applications. After an introduction to the principles of meteorology and renewable energy generation, groups of chapters address forecasting models, very short-term forecasting, forecasting of extremes, and longer term forecasting. The final part of the book focuses on important applications of forecasting for power system management and in energy markets. Due to shrinking fossil fuel reserves and concerns about climate change, renewable energy holds an increasing share of the energy mix. Solar, wind, wave, and hydro energy are dependent on highly variable weather conditions, so their increased penetration will lead to strong fluctuations in the power injected into the electricity grid, which needs to be managed. Reliable, high quality forecasts of renewable power generation are therefore essential for the smooth integration of large amounts of solar, wind, wave, and hydropower into the grid as well as for the profitability and effectiveness of such renewable energy projects.

Trends in Oil and Gas Corrosion Research and Technologies: Production and Transmission delivers the most up-to-date and highly multidisciplinary reference available to identify emerging developments, fundamental mechanisms and the technologies necessary in one unified source. Starting with a brief explanation on corrosion management that also addresses today's most challenging issues for oil and gas production and transmission operations, the book dives into the latest advances in microbiology-influenced corrosion and other corrosion threats, such as stress corrosion cracking and hydrogen damage just to name a few. In addition, it covers testing and monitoring techniques, such as molecular microbiology and online monitoring for surface and subsurface facilities, mitigation tools, including coatings, nano-packaged biocides, modeling and prediction, cathodic protection and new steels and non-metallics. Rounding out with an extensive glossary and list of abbreviations, the book equips upstream and midstream corrosion professionals in the oil and gas industry with the most advanced collection of topics and solutions to responsibly help solve today's oil and gas corrosion challenges.

This book brings together successful stories of deployment of synchrophasor technology in managing the power grid. The authors discuss experiences with large scale deployment of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) in power systems across the world, enabling readers to take this technology into control center operations and develop good operational procedures to manage the grid better, with wide area visualization tools using PMU data.

This Open Access book examines the implications of welfare policy for energy poverty and engages with key conceptual debates at the forefront of energy demand research. Academic work on energy poverty has rarely been brought into conversation with practice-theory-based approaches to energy use and sustainability. This book reveals how novel insights can be made visible through combining these different ways of thinking about energy demand issues. It presents a distinctive approach to energy poverty that places inequalities at the heart of debates about the advancing energy intensity of contemporary societies.

This book discusses the latest developments of the synthesis, preparation, characterization, and applications of nano/microstructure-based materials in biomedical and energetic fields. It introduces several popular approaches to fabricating these materials, including template-assisted fabrication, electrospinning of organic/inorganic hybrid materials, biomineralization-mediated self-assembly, etc. The latest results in material evaluation for targeted applications are also presented. In particular, the book highlights the latest advances and future challenges in polymer nanodielectrics for energy storage applications. As such, it offers a valuable reference guide for scholars interested in the synthesis and evaluation of nano/microstructure-based materials, as well as their biomedical and energetic applications. It also provides essential insights for graduate students and scientists pursuing research in the broad fields of composite materials, polymers, organic/inorganic hybrid materials, nano-assembly, etc.

Energy Management in Wireless Sensor Networks discusses this unavoidable issue in the application of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). To guarantee efficiency and durability in a network, the science must go beyond hardware solutions and seek alternative software solutions that allow for better data control from the source to delivery. Data transfer must obey different routing protocols, depending on the application type and network architecture. The correct protocol should allow for fluid information flow, as well as optimizing power consumption and resources - a challenge faced by dense networks. The topics covered in this book provide answers to these needs by introducing and exploring computer-based tools and protocol strategies for low power consumption and the implementation of routing mechanisms which include several levels of intervention, ranging from deployment to network operation.

This book reports on the formulation of a multi-stage optimization framework for the Danish power system, taking into account the real operational cost, the voltage constraints and the uncertainty associated to the forecasting errors of the wind power. It describes in detail the implementation of this framework into a simulation platform and its validation in real-world applications. The book especially focuses on automatic voltage control systems and on methods to handle uncertainty in them. All in all, it provides readers with a comprehensive overview of power system optimization and future trends in power system operation.