Renewable energy systems (RES) are currently being deployed on a large scale to meet the ambitious sustainable development goals for the next decades. A higher penetration of sustainable means of power production passes through the diffusion of RES-based distributed energy systems. The hybridization of such systems and their integration with Energy Storage Systems (ESS) can help improve reliability and level the mismatch between power production and consumption. In this paper, a novel modular tool for the simulation of distributed energy systems is presented by means of its application to a case study. The considered system is composed by PV modules, ESS and heat pumps. The optimal sizing of the components for self-consumption has been obtained through an electricity production cost minimization. A comparison between two different configurations has been conducted: in the first case, the thermal load is completely satisfied by a natural gas-fired boiler, while in the latter case, part of the thermal load is satisfied by a heat pump. The results have highlighted the impact of ESS on the economics of distributed energy systems and how the investment in such systems, in conditions similar to the case study, can be more easily sustained if a share of the total energy consumption of the unit is shifted from the thermal to the electrical part.
Hydrodynamics cavitation has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a wide range of industrial processes, including water treatment, chemical reactions, food processing, and biomass pretreatment. Cavitation can be used to replace traditional processing methods that are more energy-intensive or use harmful chemicals, which can help to increase the sustainability of industrial processes. Overall, using cavitation for process intensification can help improve efficiency, sustainability, and circularity in industry. One of the most used device that is easy to integrate with the production line is the cavitating Venturi reactor. In the present work, influence of the key geometric parameters such as the height and length of Venturi throat are evaluated to find the optimum reaction conditions enhancing cavitating treatment intensity and minimizing the pressure drop. The analysis has been conducted by varying the ratio of the throat section to the inlet section, keeping constant the cavitation number, to have cavitation dependent only on the geometry. A series of multiphase simulations have been performed using an open-source solver (OpenFOAM) that implements the Zwart-Gerber-Belamri cavitation model. The adopted modelling approach was the VOF (volume of fluid) mixture type coupled with the URANS (Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes) method, in which a komegaSST turbulence model has been applied. An FFT analysis was conducted to evaluate the cavitation regime. It was observed that by increasing the throat diameter, the frequency of the re-entrant jet mechanism decreases while the cavitation region extends. Finally the impact of pressure drop in various geometries was evaluated and compared with the CEP (cavitation efficiency parameter), a term developed to properly evaluate the efficiency of the cavitation phenomenon.
This paper examines a Renewable Energy Community (REC) made up of 10 dwellings that collectively self-consume energy produced by a photovoltaic field connected to a water purifier. Each dwelling heat demand is satisfied by means of Heat Pump (HP) coupled with Thermal Energy Storage (TES), which can be managed to perform load shifting and increase collective-self-consumption (CSC). Techno-economic analyses are performed accounting for HPs' COP variation with temperature and part load operations, as well as TES heat dispersion. A new centralised control strategy for HPs is proposed and a sensitivity analysis is performed to assess the impact of varying TES system capacity. The results show that the centralised strategy can increase the CSC by 12-30%, with TES sizes of 100-1000 litres respectively. But the electricity consumption of HPs increases by 2-5% due to higher storage system temperatures causing worse average COPs by 2.3-0.6% and higher thermal losses by 29-58%. As a result, REC's energy independence rise, as does the amount of CSC incentives, but electricity bills also increase. Comparing these trends shows that CSC incentives should be adjusted according to energy prices to ensure cost-effective outcomes for all stakeholders and encourage the adoption of similar centralised control strategies.
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